With a stab of torment in her mind she scrambled over the debris toward her home. Her parents--what might have happened to them! She fought her way, falling over splintered boards and timbers. In the terrible quiet following the wind she heard and felt the agony on every side of her. How she got to her father’s house she never knew. She heard a voice which she recognized as her mother’s, and she hurried in that direction. By a flicker of lightning she saw her father stretched upon the ground, unnaturally--her mother bending over him. He groaned. “Mamma!” the girl gasped in anguish. “_Daddy!_” She was in distraction. “Oh, what are we to do?” “Mary?” Dr. Collins asked. “I’m not bad--a timber got me on the leg--it’s broken.” He did not add that two ribs were splintered and that he felt himself bleeding internally. He was a doctor--the only one in Rock Springs. As with most medical men his own injuries caused him no more emotion than those of other people. He looked at them objectively. “The town’s wiped out!” cried Mary. “There are no lights--what shall we do?” Suddenly Dr. Collins was speaking in his professional voice. “Mary, you must go for help!” he exclaimed, with remarkable self-possession. “I’m hurt--we need a doctor quickly. Get to a telephone and call Uvalde--have them send a doctor. Tell them what’s happened--they’ll have to get medical supplies from San Antonio--serum and instruments. These people are suffering terribly! You must hurry!” “But you--” “Don’t think of me! I’ll get along--we’ll get to shelter somewhere. Hurry!” The girl thought immediately of the car, and a lightning flash revealed it where it had been standing before the wind struck. But it was not a car now--it was a heap of metal on its side in the middle of the street. With a sob of anxiety for them, she kissed both her parents and started toward the road that led out of town, seeing her way by streaks of lightning that burned themselves out before her eyes. The rain boomed down suddenly and beat at her, but she fought her way. The blinding whip of flying water cut at her face and body; the wind, rising again, sought to drive her back, but she went on. One mile, two, three. She knew that the nearest telephone by which she could call Uvalde was liable to be nine or ten miles down the rocky road. Ten miles through this storm! Dimly she wondered how far her strength would carry her. For countless hours, through a torture of mud and water and driving wind, she struggled on, following a road that was at times beaten smooth by the fall of water, and at other times was a raging wash. She reached the limit of human endurance, and still fought her way along the road; she came to the time when she thought she would collapse from exhaustion, but the thoughts of human suffering there behind her goaded her to greater efforts.