"'Now just keep cool!' I told him. 'What's the trouble?' "Craven snorted, but he told me, as the quickest way out of it. Haig had been hurt--trying to ride Sunnysides. He's--" "Hurt? How?" asked Marion; and Smythe was relieved to detect a new steadiness in her voice. She had passed the danger point. "The horse went over backwards, pinning him to the ground, with the saddle horn in his stomach. Craven's gone for the doctor." She gave him one long, searching look, as if to pluck out anything he might have been hiding from her. Then she turned swiftly toward the automobile. "Come, Robert! Quick!" she commanded. She climbed quickly into the machine, followed by Hillyer, who was puzzled and alarmed by what he had seen in Marion's face. "You too, Mr. Smythe. Hurry!" cried Marion. "But my horse?" objected Smythe. "He'll run home," answered Marion impatiently. "Come! We may need you." Smythe obeyed, and jumped into the tonneau, while Robert cranked up and threw in the clutch. "Fast!" cried Marion. Hillyer glanced at her. She was very white; her lips were pressed together, her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The machine lurched under them. "Faster!" urged Marion, in another minute. The machine, with a kind of shudder, responded to Hillyer's hand, and shot out with fresh speed. Another brief silence. "The cut-out!" she ordered. Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with the muffler off, roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of her seat. "The doctor?" she shouted in his ear. "Craven had started for Tellurium," he yelled back. "Said he'd kill the sorrels. I told him there was a doctor at Lake Cobalt--Doctor Norris of Omaha--just arrived, with his family. 'You're not such a fool after all,' said Craven. (I'll talk with him about that later.) 'Thanks!' I said, and pulled my horse out of the way. 'That saves two days.' He gave the horses the whip again, and I started for Huntington's to tell you--Watch out! There's the turn!" he shouted in Hillyer's ear. The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with the power off but still going at more than half-speed under its momentum, skidded and scraped around the turn into Haig's road. "Now!" cried Marion. Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went clamoring like a mad thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her worst fears. "Where is he?" she asked, with a swift look around.