Nancy, leaning against her, had dropped sound asleep and Beatrice herself dozed at last. Her last clear thought had been of Dabney Mills. Even the puzzle of his suspicions would be solved, she felt sure. But why had he thought——?
Her eyes closed and opened again with a start upon a different world. She could not tell how long a time had passed. The storm was over, the moon was up and the whole mountain-side was bathed in light. Leaning forward, she attempted to look down into the valley and was surprised to see no valley there. A level floor of clouds, as smooth as the surface of a lake, but of a strange, shadowy whiteness that no water could ever show, lay below her, a flood of mist that filled Broken Bow Valley to the brim. Fascinated, she sat watching, while the moonlight grew clearer and the soft white turned to glistening silver. Although she thought herself awake, she dozed again, for she had a dim idea that she could walk forth on the smooth level of that white floor, past the mountain tops, straight away toward the moon, while all the time another self sat cold and nodding by the fire, feeding the failing flame mechanically, with one arm around the slumbering Nancy. Vaguely she knew that complete oblivion would mean the end of the fire, the quenching of the warmth that kept them alive and of the light that was to be a signal to their rescuers.
How she longed to lay down her head and give herself up to slumber! How far away her dream was carrying her, out across that white sea whose further edge seemed to roll across the peaks and break against the stars! Some inward spirit kept her faithful to her task, even after real consciousness had vanished. When she did give up to heavy slumber it was only when her work was done, when her drowsy ears heard afar the chink of iron hoofs upon the trail, heard the scrambling of feet and the sound of men’s voices coming nearer.
“They are coming; they see us,” she thought, and her head dropped upon her arm in absolute exhaustion.
It must have been only for a moment that she slept, although it seemed that hours must have passed when she awoke with a jump to a bewildered confusion of sights and sounds. The red light of a lantern was flashing in her face, the huge, grotesque shadow of a horse’s head danced back and forth on the rock wall beside her, and Dr. Minturn’s voice sounded in her ear.