The Dolores star., 1916-12-22
CHAPTER ~.

Physical exhaustion will finally tell.
even over such handicaps as a noun
tain feather bed and the fumes of a
backwoods cabin.
II Juanita Holland did not at last
actually fall asleep. she drifted into a
sort Of nightmare coma from which
she awoke with a start.
Finally she fell again into that half
sleep which dreams Of wakefulness.
Il may have lasted minutes or hours.
but suddenly she reused again with q
start from a new nightmare and lay
trembling under the oppression of
poignant foreboding. What was 1t that
she had subconsciously heard or imag-
ined? She was painfully wide awake
In the slumbering cabin. At last she
was sure of a sound. low but instinct
with warning.
Beardog was growing Just outside
the door.
Then. violently and without the pref.
aee of gradual approach-precisely as
though horsemen had sprung from tho
earth-there clattered and beat past
tn front of the cabin a staccato thur
der Of wildly galloping hoofs and 4
rattle Of scattered rocks. She felt on
uncanny freezing of her marrow.
Horses travel perilous and broken
roads in that fashion only when tn cir
riders are in wild haste.
As abruptly as the drumbeat had
come It died again into silence. and
there was no diminuendo Of hoofbeats
receding into distance. The thing was
weird and ghostly. She had not no
ticed in the weariness of her arrival at
the cabin that the road ran deep IN
sand to the corner Of the fence and
that after fifty yards OF rough and
broken rock 1t fell away again iato an
other sound-mufiing stretch. She
knew only that she was thoroughly
frightened, and that whatever the
noise was. It proclaimed hot and des-
perate haste.
Yet even in her terror she had
moved only to turn her head and had
opened her eyes cautiously and mar
rowly.
There was no sound in the cabin
now; not even the stertorous breath of
a snore. The fire flickered family and
occasionally sent up from its white
bed of ashes dying squirt. before
which the darkness fell back a little
for the moment.
She could see that Fetch McNash
had half risen in his bed. His head
was partly turned in an attitude Of
intent listening, and his pose was as
rigid as that of bird-dog frozen on a
point. It had all been momentary, and
as Juanita gazed she saw other fig
ures stir uneasily, though no one
spoke. The missionary lay still, but
the woman's figure moved restlessly
beneath the heaped-up comforter.
So. for a few moments. the strange
and tense tableau held. and the girl.
watching the householder's alert yet
motionless pose. remembered him as
he had hunched drunkenly over his
plate few hours ago. The two pic
lures were hard to reconcile
Then. at some warning which her
less acute ears failed to register, she
saw Fetch McNash's right hand sweep
outward toward the wall and come up
gripping the rife.
Still there was no word. but the ED
est boys head had risen from the
pallet.
Keyed now to concert pitch. the girl
held her body rigid. and through half
closed lids looked across the dim
room. While she was SO staring and
pretending to sleep. there drifted from
long way Oh an insistent. animal
like yell with peculiar quaver in its
final note. She did not know that II
was the famous McBriar rallying cry.
and that trouble Inevitably followed