The Ozark spectator., 1917-07-04

her picture to his fainting senses; he knew he should hold to life as long as he could think of her. Love, stronger than death, welled in his heart. The bitter cold and the merci- less wind were kinder as he called her image from out of the storm. She seemed to speak--tO lift him on her arms. Ahead, distant mountains rose, white peaked. The sun shone. He rode with her through green fields, and a great peace rested on his weary senses.
 l Lady Jane, pushing on and on, en- frightened by that instinct before which the reason of man is weak and pitiful, seeing, as it were, through the i'm penetrable curtain of the storm where refuge lay, herself slow-moving crust of frozen snow. dragged to her jour ney's end-to the tight-shut doors of the Calabasas barn-her unconscious burden. and stood before them patient ly waiting until someone should open for her. It was one of the heartbreaks of tragic day that no one ever knew just when the Lady reached the door l or how long she and her unconscious master waited in the storm for adms- sion. A startled exclamation from John Lefever. who had periodically and anxiously left the red-hot stove in the office to walk moOdily to the window. brought the men tumbling over one another as he ran from his companions to throw open the outer door and pull the dropping horse into the barn.
 It was the Indian. Scott. who, read ing first of all the men everything in the dread story, sprang forward with a stifled exclamation, as the horse dragged in the snow-covered log. whipped knife from his pocket. cut the incumbered arm and white hand free from the whiffletree, and, carry ing the stiffened body into the office, began with insane haste to cut away the clothing.
 Lefever, perceiving it was De Spain thus drawn to their feet, shouted, while he tore from the blade of Scott's knife the frozen garments, the orders for the snow, the heated water, the warm blankets, the alcohol and bran dy, and, stripped to his waist, chafed the marble feet. The Indian, better than staff of doctors, used the cun- ming of n sorcerer to revive the spark of inanimate life not yet extinguished by the storm. A fearful interval of suspense followed the silence into which the work settled, a silence bro- ken only by the footsteps of men run ming to and from the couch over which Scott, Lefever and McAlpin, half naked, worked in mad concert.
 De Spain opened his eyes to wander from one to the other of the faces. He half rose up. struggling in frenzy with the hands that restrained him. While his companions pleaded to quiet him, he fought them until, restored to its seat of reason his mind reassert ed itself, and, lying exhausted, he told them in his exquisite torture of whom he had left. and what must be done to find and bring them in.
 While the relief wagons. equipped with straining teams and fanked by veteran horsemen. were flashing out of the barn. he lapsed into uncon- sciousness. But he had been able to hold Scott's hand long enough to tell him he must find Nan and bring her in, or never come back.
 It was Scott who found her. In their gropings through the blizzard the three had wandered nearer Calabasas than any one of them dreamed. And on the open desert, far south and east of the upper lava beds, it was Scott's horse that put foot through the bottom of the overturned wagon box. The sus- pected mound of snow. with the buried horses scrambling 10 their feet. rose upright at the crash. Duke crouched, half-conscious, under the rude shelter. Lying where he had placed her, snugly between the horses, Scott found Nan. He spoke to her when she opened her staring eyes. picked her up in his arms, called to his companions for the covered wagon, and began to restore her, without moment of delay. to life. He even promised if she would drink the hateful draft he put to her lips and let him cut away her shoes and leggings and the big coat frozen on her. that in less than an hour she should see Henry de Spain alive and well.
 CHAPTER XXI.