The fearful pain from the tortured arm, torn at times almost from its socket, the gradual snapping of straining ligaments, the constant rupture of capillaries and veins sustained his consciousness for a while. Then the torturing pain abated, the rough dragging shattered the bruised body less. It was as if the Lady and the storm together were making easier for the slowly dying man his last trail across the desert. He still struggled to keep alive, by sheer will-power, flickering sparks of consciousness, and to do so concentrated every thought on Nan. It was a poignant happiness to summon 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 merciless wind were kinder as he called her image from out of the storm. She seemed to speak--to lift him in 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. * * * * * Lady Jane, pushing on and on, enlightened by that instinct before which the reason of man is weak and pitiful, seeing, as it were, through the impenetrable curtain of the storm where refuge lay, herself a slow-moving crust of frozen snow, dragged to her journey's end--to the tight-shut doors of the Calabasas barn--her unconscious burden, and stood before them patiently waiting until some one should open for her. It was one of the heartbreaks of a tragic day that no one ever knew just when the Lady reached the door or how long she and her unconscious master waited in the storm for admission. 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 drooping horse into the barn. It was the Indian, Scott, who, reading 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 a knife from his pocket, cut the incumbered arm and white hand free from the whiffletree and, carrying the stiffened body into the office, began with insane haste to cut away the clothing.