The Ozark spectator., 1917-07-04
CHAPTER xxx. ,,sss
Gambling With Death.


 way from the shelter, De Spain made little effort to guide her. He had cho- sen the Lady, not because she was fresher, for she was not, but because he believed she possessed of the three horses the dearest instinct to bring her through the fight for the lives that were at stake. He did not deceive him. self with the idea he could do anything to help the beast find way to succor that instinct rested wholly in the La dy's head, not in his. He only knew that if she could not get back to help, he could not. His own part in the effort was quite outside any aid to the Lady-it was no more than to reach alive whatever aid she could find. that he might direct 1t to where Nan and her companion would endure few hours longer the fury of the storm. His own struggle for life, he real ized. was with the wind-the roaring wind that hurled it's broadsides of fro zen snow in mOnstrous waves across the maddened sky, challenging every living thing. It drove icy knives into his face and ears, paralyzed in its swift grasp his muscles and sinews, fought the stout flow of blood through his veins, and searched his very heart to still it.
 Encouraging the Lady with kind words, and caressing her in her grop- ing efforts as she turned head and tail from the binding sheets of snow and ice, De Spain let her drift, hoping she might kDring them through, what he confessed in his heart to be, the nar- rowcSt of chances.
 He bent low in his saddle under the intending blasts. He buffeted his legs and arms to fight off the fatal cold. He slipped more than once from his seat, and with hand on the pommel | tramped beside the horse to revive his failing circulation. there would come time, he realized, when he could no longer climb up again, but he staved that issue off to the last possible mo- ment of endurance, because the Lady made better time when he was on her back. When the struggle to remount had been repeated until nature could no longer by any staggering effort be made to respond to his will, until his legs were no longer part of his be- numbed being-until below his hips he had no body answerable to his com | mands, but only two insensible masses of lead that anchored him to the grOund-he still forced the frozen feet | to carry him, in feeble, monstrous gait beside the Lady, while he dragged | with his hands on the saddle for her patient aid.
 One by one every thought, as if con- gealed in their brain cells, deserted his mind-save the thought that he must not freeze to death. More than once he had hoped the insensate fury of the blizzard might abate. The Lady had long since ceased to try to face it- like q stripped vessel before a hurri- cane. she was drifting under it. De Spain realized that his helpless legs would not carry him farther. His ] hands, freezing to the pommel, no longer supported him. They finally slipped from it and he fell prostrate in the snow beside his horse. When he would cry out to her his frozen lips could humble no words. It was the fight no longer of man against na- ture. but only of an indomitable soul against cruel, hateful death. He struggled to his feet only to fall again more heavily. He pulled himself up ] thls time by the stirrup strap, got his hands aud arms Ap to the pommel. and chung to 1t for few paces more. But he fell at last. and could no longer rise from the ground. The storm swept un- ceasingly on.
 The Lady, checked by the lines wrapped on his arm. stopped. De Spain lay a moment, then backed her up step, pulled her head down by the bridle, clasped his wooden arms around her neck. spoke to her. and. lifting her head. the mare dragged him to his feet. Clumsily and helplessly he loosened the tugs and the whiffie- tree, beat his hands together with idl- otic effort. hooked the middle point of the whifiletree into the elbow of his left arm. brought the forearm and hand against his shoulder. and with the hitching strap lashed his forearm and upper arm tightly together around the whfiletree.
 He drew the tugs stlay over the Lady's back, unloosed the clnches of the saddle, pushed il of the horse and, sinking into the snow behind her, struck with his free arm at her feet. Relieved of the saddle, the Lady once more started, dragging slowly behind her through the snow n still breathing human being. Less than an hour be- fore 1t had been man. It was hardly more now, as the Lady plodded on, than an insensate log. But not even death could part 1t again from the horse to which De Spain, alive. had fastened 1t.
 The fearful pain from the tortured arm. torn at times almost from its