Mexico Missouri message., 1917-06-14
CHAPTER xxx.
Gambling With Death.

SdTUplI1H WIN Dedhns
Beyond giving his horse q safe head
way from the shelter, De S,-qin 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 clearest 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 a 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 its broadsides of fro
zen snow in mOnstrous waves across
the maddened sky, challenging every
living thing. 1t 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 1t.
Encouraging the Lady with kind
words, and caressing her IN her crop
ing efforts as she turned head and tail
from the binding sheets of snow ana
ice, De Spain let her drift, hoping she
might bring them through, what he
confessed in his heart to be, the mar
rOwest of chances.
He bent low in his saddle under the
unending blasts. He buffeted his legs
and arms to fight off the fatal cold. He
slipped more than once from his seat,
and with a 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 STAYED
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 q 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 a 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 il 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 PROSTATE in
the snow beside his horse. When he
would cry out to her his frozen lips
could humble no words. 1t was the
fight no longer of man against ma
ture, but only of an indomitable soul
against q cruel, hateful death. He
struggled to his feet only to fall again
more heavily. He pulled himself up
this time by the stlrrup strap, got his
hands and arms up to the pommel, and
clung to 1t for a few PAGES 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 n moment, then backed her
up a step, pulled her head down by
the bride, clasped his wooden arms
around her neck, spoke to her, and
lifting her head, the mare dragged him
to his feet. Clumslly and helplessly
he loosened the tugs and the whlffle-
tree, beat his hands together with idi-
otic effort, hooked the middle point
of the whiffletree 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 whifiletree.
He drew the tugs stifily over the
Lady's back, unloosed the cinches OF
the saddle, pushed it OFF 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 still breathing
human being. Less than an hour be
fore it had been a man. 1t 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 it.