I've seen some
cavalry things in my day, but for sheer cool bravery nothing touches
that."
"How did it end? Did they run them down?" I asked, with terror at such a
result.
"No, they crowded her toward the cut-bank, and she was edging them off
and was almost past, when they came to a place where the bank bit in,
and her iron-mouthed brute wouldn't swerve, but went pounding on, broke
through, plunged; she couldn't spring free because of Joe, and pitched
headlong over the bank, while the cattle went thundering past. I flung
myself off Jingo and slid down somehow into the sand, thirty feet below.
Here was Joe safe enough, but the bronco lay with a broken leg, and half
under him was Gwen. She hardly knew she was hurt, but waved her hand to
me and cried out, 'Wasn't that a race? I couldn't swing this hard-headed
brute. Get me out.' But even as she spoke the light faded from her eyes,
she stretched out her hands to me, saying faintly, 'Oh, Duke,' and lay
back white and still. We put a bullet into the buckskin's head, and
carried her home in our jackets, and there she lies without a sound from
her poor, white lips."
The Duke was badly cut up. I had never seen him show any sign of grief
before, but as he finished the story he stood ghastly and shaking. He
read my surprise in my face and said:
"Look here, old chap, don't think me quite a fool.
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