“It’s not likely even now,” sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told Dickie, “that you can make it to Miss Blake’s place.  No, sir, nor to Hilliard’s neither.  Hidden Creek’s up.  She’s sure some flood this time of the year.  It’s as much as your life’s good for, stranger.”

But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was “good in deep water.”  And he rode away from Rusty without looking back.

He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his heart.  The flood straddled across his path like Apollyon.

A dozen times the horse refused the ford—­at last with a desperate toss of his head he made a plunge for it.  Almost at once he was swept from the cobbled bed.  He swam sturdily, but the current whirled him down like a straw—­Dickie slipped from the saddle on the upper side so that the water pressed him close to the horse, and, even when they both went under, he held to the animal with hands like iron.  This saved his life.  Five blind, black, gasping minutes later, the horse pulled him up on the farther bank and they stood trembling together, dazed by life and the warmth of the air.

It was growing dark.  The heavy shadow of the mountain fell across them and across the swollen yellow river they had just escaped.  There began to be a dappling light—­the faint shining of that slim young moon.  She was just a silver curl there above the edge of the hill.  In an hour she would set.  Her brightness was as shy and subtle as the brightness of a smile.  The messenger pulled his trembling body to the wet saddle and, looking about for landmarks that had been described to him, he found the faint trail to Hilliard’s ranch.  Presently he made out the low building under its firs.  He dropped down, freed the good swimmer and turned him loose, then moved rapidly across the little clearing.  It was all so still.  Hidden Creek alone made a threatening tumult.  Dickie stopped before he came to the door.  He stood with his hands clenched at his sides and his chin lifted.  He seemed to be speaking to the sky.  Then he stumbled to the door and called,

“Sheila—­”

She seemed to rise up from the floor and stand before him and put her hands on his arms.

A sort of insanity of joy, of childish excitement came upon Sheila when she had recognized her visitor.  She flitted about the room, she laughed, she talked half-wildly—­it had been such a long silence—­in broken, ejaculatory sentences.  It was Dickie’s dumbness, as he leaned against the door, looking at her, that sobered her at last.  She came close to him again and saw that he was shivering and that streams of water were running from his clothes to the floor.

“Why, Dickie!  How wet you are!”—­Again she put her hands on his arms—­he was indeed drenched.  She looked up into his face.  It was gray and drawn in the uncertain light.