Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/393

 was the sharp whistle of a, a stinging blow cut him across the face. The blood rushed to his head in a sudden fury, but instinctively he kept his hold upon the plunging horses. They had all but dragged him to the track when the train rushed by. The whole thing had happened in twenty seconds of time.

He dropped his hold and sprang to one side while the horses dashed on and tore round the projecting corner of rock, the buggy slewing wildly after them.

Waldo Kean stood an instant with clenched hands and crimson face, a straight welt standing out white and angry across his cheek. Then,—"Pooh! he muttered, I'm going to college all the same!"—and he picked up his hat which the horses had trampled out of shape, shouldered his pack and strode on down the pass. His cheek was smarting with pain, but he was hardly aware of that; there was a yawning rip in the arm-hole of his coat, but that was of still less consequence. He had all he could do to attend to the conflicting emotions of the moment; the sense of outraged dignity contending, not very successfully, with a lively concern for the fate of those people he had tried to rescue. He thought it more than likely that they would both get killed, for the