Then he had thrown the reins over his broncho's neck, headed the horse back up the Ridge and was slithering down the steep slope giving her hand-hold as of steel-springs. So short was the interval, it could not be measured in time. Yet it had rivetted eternity. She saw the rolling clouds of ink writhing up the Valley turning everything to blackness: yet she did not know it. The little flutter of air changed to whiplashes and puffs of wind that curled the black hair forward over her unhatted face in a frame. Wayland looked at her and felt his masterdom going to those same winds; for the pace had painted her ivory cheeks, not rose color, but the deep flame of the wild flower. Some day, perhaps,--no matter; he set his teeth and screwed the whipcord muscles taut; for the moraine stones had begun to roll, and there was a zig-zag flash of lightning that sent fire balls sizzling over the rock. He braced her to the leap down the steep sliding moraine, and felt the frenzy of joy from her touch. "There! We took the jump together! You didn't push me over the edge of things," he said, as their feet touched the pine needle slope. This time, the lightning came with a ripping splintering rocking echo. "It's like Love and Life racing in the picture," she laughed back and they bounded into the buckboard, Wayland standing braced behind the seat, "to stop her kiting down the hill if we break loose," he said; she, forward with the driver, feet braced to the iron foot-rest, hands holding the seat-guard. Then, the brim of his felt hat flapping, the bronchos' ears laid back, necks craned out, the old man whirling the whip, they were off for the Rim Rocks. The breaking storm, the whipping winds, the wild pace, the rush of the fringed rain, seemed a part of the furious exaltation breaking the bounds of her own consciousness. "Cross the ford, Sir," shouted the Ranger bending forward, "it's shorter than the bridge;" and her hair tossed in his face as the buckboard splashed into the River and bounced up the far side with hind wheels swaying. "Are y' all right, there?" called the old driver over his shoulder. "Stay with it," yelled Wayland, "straight ahead where the road cuts the Rim Rocks." "We're splitting the air all right," shouted the old man. "Ye mind y' talked of sawing air. Split it, man, an' y'll get somewhere." Up a hummock, down a ravine, over a fallen log with a hurdle jump that threatened to break the buckboard's back. "Are ye there yet?" called the old man. "Split the wind, Sir," shouted Wayland; and the rig went rattling up the red earth road of the Rim Rocks not a wheel's width from the edge. "We're leaving the storm behind; look back," she said. Up the Valley swept the rains in a wall of whipped spray jagged by the zig-zag streaks of lightning.