Part 68 (2/2)
But she's there, the trail is. You can bet on it.”
”I don't want to bet on it.” Shortly. She was still mad at him. He had saved her life, he had succeeded in saving the family ranch, he had put her under eternal obligations, but he had called her thought for him foolishness. It was too much.
Yet all the time she was ashamed of herself. She knew that she was small and mean and narrow and deserved a spanking if any girl did. She wanted to cuff Racey, cuff him till his ears turned red and his head rang. For that is the way a woman feels when she loves a man and he has hurt her feelings. But she feels almost precisely the same way when she hates one who has. Truth it is that Love and Hate are close akin.
Down, down they dropped two thousand feet, and when they came out upon the fairly level top of the saddle back Racey mounted behind Molly.
”He'll have to carry double now,” he explained. ”She's two mile to the bridge, and my wind ain't good enough to run me two mile.”
It was not his wind that was weak, it was his feet--his tortured, blistered feet that were two flaming aches. Later they would become numb. He wished they were numb now, and cursed silently the man who first invented cowboy boots. Every jog of the trotting horse whose back he bestrode was a twitching torture.
”We'll be at the bridge in another mile,” he told her.
”Thank Heaven!”
Silent and gra.s.s-grown lay the Daisy trail when they came out upon it winding through a meagre plantation of cedars.
”No one's come along yet,” vouchsafed Racey, turning into the trail after a swift glance at its trackless, undisturbed surface.
He tickled the horse with both spurs and stirred him into a gallop.
There was not much spring in that gallop. Racey weighed fully one hundred and seventy pounds without his clothes, Molly a hundred and twenty with all of hers, and the saddle, blanket, sack, rifle, and cartridges weighed a good sixty. On top of this weight pile many weary miles the horse had travelled since its last meal and you have what it was carrying. No wonder the gallop lacked spring.
”Bridge is just beyond those trees,” said Racey in Molly's ear.
”The horse is nearly run out,” was her comment.
”He ain't dead yet.”
They rocked around the arrowhead grove of trees and saw the bridge before them--one stringer. There had been two stringers and adequate flooring when Racey had seen it last. The snows of the previous winter must have been heavy in the Frying-Pan Mountains.
Molly s.h.i.+vered at the sight of that lone stringer.
”The horse is done, and so are we,” she muttered.
”Nothing like that,” he told her, cheerfully. ”There's one stringer left. Good enough for a squirrel, let alone two white folks.”
”I--I couldn't,” shuddered Molly.
They had stopped at the bridge head, Racey had dismounted, and she, was looking down into the dark mouth of the cleft with frightened eyes.
”It must be five hundred feet to the bottom,” she whispered, her chin wobbling.
”Not more than four hundred,” he said, rea.s.suringly. ”And that log is a good strong four-foot log, and she's been shaved off with the broadaxe for layin' the flooring so we got a nice smooth path almost two feet wide.”
In reality, that smooth path retained not a few of the spikes that had once held the flooring and it was no more than eighteen inches wide.
Racey gabbled on regardless. If chatter would do it, he'd get her mind off that four-hundred-foot drop.
”I cue-can't!” breathed Molly. ”I cue-can't walk across on that lul-log! I'd fall off! I know I would!”
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