American fiction -- 20th century; Arizona -- Fiction; Western stories
Helen saw a splendid elk silhouetted against the sky. He was a light
gray over all his hindquarters, with shoulders and head black. His
ponderous, wide-spread antlers towered over him, adding to the wildness
of his magnificent poise as he stood there, looking down into the
valley, no doubt listening for the bay of the hound. When he heard
Dale's horse he gave one bound, gracefully and wonderfully carrying his
antlers, to disappear in the green.
Again on a bare patch of ground Dale pointed down. Helen saw big round
tracks, toeing in a little, that gave her a chill. She knew these were
grizzly tracks.
Hard riding was not possible on this ridge crest, a fact that gave Helen
time to catch her breath. At length, coming out upon the very summit
of the mountain, Dale heard the hound. Helen's eyes feasted afar upon
a wild scene of rugged grandeur, before she looked down on this western
slope at her feet to see bare, gradual descent, leading down to sparsely
wooded bench and on to deep-green canuon.
“Ride hard now!” yelled Dale. “I see Bo, an' I'll have to ride to catch
her.”
Dale spurred down the slope. Helen rode in his tracks and, though she
plunged so fast that she felt her hair stand up with fright, she saw him
draw away from her. Sometimes her horse slid on his haunches for a
few yards, and at these hazardous moments she got her feet out of the
stirrups so as to fall free from him if he went down. She let him choose
the way, while she gazed ahead at Dale, and then farther on, in the hope
of seeing Bo. At last she was rewarded. Far Down the wooded bench she
saw a gray flash of the little mustang and a bright glint of Bo's hair.
Her heart swelled. Dale would soon overhaul Bo and come between her and
peril. And on the instant, though Helen was unconscious of it then,
a remarkable change came over her spirit. Fear left her. And a hot,
exalting, incomprehensible something took possession of her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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