“When the time comes to act, you will know what to do.”
So Dr. Minturn had said, and he had been right. Beatrice knew well that now was the moment for action, not waiting; and she felt her mind surprisingly calm and cool. They must follow the spidery line of trail that zig-zagged back and forth over the precipitous mountain-side, and find the spot, high above, from which the black mare had fallen.
“You wait here, Nancy,” she ordered, but she heard the other horse’s hoofs pattering behind her even as she turned. It was useless to try to make Nancy stay behind. What was it Hester had said that way was called—that tiny path that crawled out upon the smooth face of the rock wall? It was Dead Man’s Mile.
There were moments when the brown pony slipped, moments when the vast depths below made both the girls so giddy that they were forced to shut their eyes. A big stone rolled under Presto’s foot and he drew back only just in time to keep from plunging after it. Beatrice tried not to watch it, but she could not keep her eyes away as it slid and bounded in longer and longer leaps until finally it disappeared into the woods below.
“Are you safe, Nancy?” she called. She did not dare look back.
“Yes,” came the reply, rather unsteadily, from Nancy close behind.
Up and up they went. It seemed as though they would remember for all their lives every treacherous inch of that trail along which they crawled as a fly crawls crookedly up a window-pane, and yet that they would never be able to find their way down again. Up and up—and there suddenly was John Herrick, lying on a narrow shelf of rock just below them, his white face turned upward to the sky, and the stones and tufts of grass about him stained with blood. Just ahead, at the turn of the trail, they could see his little tent, his various belongings heaped together, and the aimless, drifting smoke of his still smoldering camp fire.
Before Nancy could even cry out, Beatrice was down from her horse, down from the trail, and was kneeling beside him. A gash across the forehead was his most evident injury, but that could not account for all this blood. No, here on the under side of his arm, where the sleeve of his coat was torn away, this was the deeper wound from which had poured forth that crimson deluge that had soaked his clothes and stained the ground under him. Thanks to instructions that she had received long before, she knew what to do. But could she be quick enough? Might she not be too late? As she twisted her handkerchief, she tried to remember just what she had been told, where the knot was to come, just which spot was the proper one for the pressure.