He was anxious, too, as to Dick’s physical condition.  The twitching was gone, but he was very pale and he slept like a man exhausted and at his physical limit.  But the necessity of crossing the pass before nightfall or of waiting until dawn to do it drove Bassett back from an anxious reconnoitering of the trail at five o’clock, to rouse the sleeping man and start on again.

Near the pass, however, Dick roused himself and took the lead.

“Let me ahead, Bassett,” he said peremptorily.  “And give your horse his head.  He’ll take care of you if you give him a chance.”

Bassett was glad to fall back.  He was exhausted and nervous.  The trail frightened him.  It clung to the side of a rocky wall, twisting and turning on itself; it ran under milky waterfalls of glacial water, and higher up it led over an ice field which was a glassy bridge over a rushing stream beneath.  To add to their wretchedness mosquitoes hung about them in voracious clouds, and tiny black gnats which got into their eyes and their nostrils and set the horses frantic.

Once across the ice field Dick’s horse fell and for a time could not get up again.  He lay, making ineffectual efforts to rise, his sides heaving, his eyes rolling in distress.  They gave up then, and prepared to make such camp as they could.

With the setting of the sun it had grown bitterly cold, and Bassett was forced to light a fire.  He did it under the protection of the mountain wall, and Dick, after unsaddling his fallen horse, built a rough shelter of rocks against the wind.  After a time the exhausted horse got up, but there was no forage, and the two animals stood disconsolate, or made small hopeless excursions, noses to the ground, among the moss and scrub pines.

Before turning in Bassett divided the remaining contents of the flask between them, and his last cigarettes.  Dick did not talk.  He sat, his back to the shelter, facing the fire, his mind busy with what Bassett knew were bitter and conflicting thoughts.  Once, however, as the reporter was dozing off, Dick spoke.

“You said I told you there was a girl,” he said.  “Did I tell you her name?”

“No.”

“All right.  Go to sleep.  I thought if I heard it it might help.”

Bassett lay back and watched him.

“Better get some sleep, old man,” he said.

He dozed, to waken again cold and shivering.  The fire had burned low, and Dick was sitting near it, unheeding, and in a deep study.  He looked up, and Bassett was shocked at the quiet tragedy in his face.

“Where is Beverly Carlysle now?” he asked.  “Or do you know?”

“Yes.  I saw her not long ago.”

“Is she married again?”

“No.  She’s revived ‘The Valley,’ and she’s in New York with it.”

Dick slept for only an hour or so that night, but as he slept he dreamed.  In his dream he was at peace and happy, and there was a girl in a black frock who seemed to be a part of that peace.  When he roused, however, still with the warmth of his dream on him, he could not summon her.  She had slipped away among the shadows of the night.