Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/191

Rh burst open the heart and force the jets of blood through the walls of the veins. Hugh was riding for Alice's life, and the least fraction of the last second might hold the issue.

He had only one thought and one prayer: that he could arrive in time. He scarcely tried to guide the horse. He left it to the animal's instincts to keep to the trail. It was only a little moonlit serpent between walls of brush or through the open tree lanes; it had treacherous turns, and here and there great logs had fallen across it, yet the reins hung loose and he flailed at the animal's side with the strap ends. He didn't know when a low-hanging limb of a tree would crush his skull, when the horse would trip and hurl him to his death. These things simply did not matter. They scarcely entered his mind.

All thoughts of self, even realization of self-identity was gone from him: he was simply the rescuer, speeding to give aid. He suddenly knew—in a blinding flash of light—that in this undertaking not even his own life mattered a hair. If she had been a stranger to him, even the lowliest herdsman, Hugh Gaylord would still have raced to give aid. The Old Colonel had not been mistaken in his judgment of Hugh's basic metal, and he would have stood, bravely and strongly, this elemental test of manhood. But this was more. The forest was shadowed, the trail was dark, yet Hugh saw more clearly than ever before. Life and death were not the