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216 Once it caught her in the open, the storm flew at her throat like a maddened animal that thirsted for blood. Its shriek of eldritch joy fairly deafened her. Judith was well-nigh swept off her feet, while Alan, in the weakness of his fatigue and suffering, actually staggered and was beaten to his knees.

Yet when he was warned of her approach by some subtle instinct he rose and battled blindly on. …

With the meekness of the strong, she made herself his shadow. And she was now the stronger, for she had had more than an hour's rest beside the water-hole which he had missed on the way of that rocky windbreak. Sooner or later his strength must fail him and he would need her: till then she was content to bide her hour.

It befell presently in startling fashion: she was not a yard behind him when he vanished abruptly. The next moment Judith herself was trembling on the crumbling brink of an arroyo of depth and width interminable in the obscurity of the duststorm. Down this, evidently, Alan had fallen.

At once she scouted along that brink until she found a spot which seemed to offer a less sheer descent, and let herself down.

Alan she found lying insensible. There was a slight cut upon his brow, a bruise about his left temple. She tore linen from her bosom, and with sparing aid from the canteen washed the cut clean