Forty-nine reached his horse in the brown grass, laid his burden down, threw on the saddle, drew the girth with sudden strength and energy, as if for a long and desperate ride. Then resuming his load, tenderly, as if it were a sleeping infant, he vaulted into the saddle and dashed away for the Sierras, that lay before him, and lifted like a city of snowy temples, reared to the worship of the Eternal. It was a desperate ride for life. The girl's long soft black hair was in the wind. The air was purer, sweeter here; there was a sense of liberty, of life, in this ride, right in the face of the rising sun as it streamed down over the snowy summits of the Sierras. Every plunge of the strong swift mustang, brought them nearer to home, to hope, to life. The horse seemed to know that now was his day of mighty enterprise. Perhaps he was glad to get away and up and out of that awful valley of death; for he forged ahead as horse never plunged before, with his strange double burthen, that had frightened many a better trained mustang than he. At last they began to climb the chapparal hills. Then they touched the hills of pine, and the breath of balsam had a sense of health and healing in it that only the invalid who is dying for his mountain home can appreciate. The horse was in a foam; the day was hot; the old man was fainting in the saddle. Water! Water at last! Down a steep, mossy crag, hung with brier and blossom, came tumbling, with loud laughter like merry girls at play, a little mountain stream. Cool as the snow, sweet as the blossom, it fell foaming in its pebbly bed at the base of the crag, under the deep, cool shadows of the pines. The old man threw himself from his horse, and beast and man drank together as he held the girl in his arms, where the spray dashed down like a holy baptismal from the very hand of God upon her hair and face. The hands clutched, the breast heaved a little, the lips moved as if to drink in the cool sweet water. Her eyes feebly opened. And then the old man bore her back under the pines, and laid her on the soft bed of dry sweet-smelling pine-quills. Then clasping his hands above her, as he bent his face to hers, he uttered his first prayer--the first for many and many a weary year. It was a prayer of thanksgiving, of gratitude. The girl would live; and he would now have something to live for--to love. It had been a strange weird sight, that old man, his long hair in the wind, his strong horse plunging madly ahead, all white with foam, climbing the Sierras as the sun climbed up. The girl lay in his arms before him, her long dark hair all down over the horse's neck, tangled in the horse's mane, catching in the brush and the wild vines and leaves that hung over the trail as they flew past. And oftentime back over his shoulder the old man threw his long white beard and looked back. He felt, he knew, that he was pursued. He fancied he could all the time hear the sound of horses' feet.