The flexible riata straightened as a
rod of iron, the steer's head jerked sideways; his horns buried
themselves in the ground; he fell, almost at her feet. And then, as the
cowboy leaped from his horse, Helen felt herself sinking into a soft,
thick darkness that, try as she might, she could not escape.
Still master of himself, but with a kind of fierce coolness, Patches ran
to the fallen steer and securely tied the animal down. But when he
turned to the woman who lay unconscious on the ground, a sob burst from
his lips, and tears were streaming down his dust-grimed cheeks. And as
he knelt beside her he called again and again that name which, a year
before, he had whispered as he stood with empty, outstretched arms,
alone, on the summit of the Divide.
Lifting her in his arms, he carried her to the hammock, and finding
water and a towel, wet her brow and face; and all the while, in an agony
of fear, he talked to her with words of love.
Overwrought by the unexpected, and, to him, almost miraculous meeting
with Helen--weak and shaken by the strain of those moments of her
danger, when her life depended so wholly upon his coolness and
skill--unnerved by the sight of her lying so still and white, and beside
himself with the strength of his passion--the man made no effort to
account for her presence in that wild and lonely spot, so far from the
scenes amid which he had learned to know and love her.
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