Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. BESOTTED. The girls lay still as they were bidden for fifteen minutes, wrapped up in the blanket. But human endurance has limits, and on this hot night it was so much like premature burial that at the end of the quarter of an hour, Bel, the younger of the sisters, despite a remonstrance from her companion, extricated her head for a moment and took a long breath of fresh air. To her horror she saw a pair of shining eyes within a few inches of her face, and something cold and clammy touched her forehead. This was more than the excitable girl could bear, and she threw aside the blanket with a suppressed scream. Whereupon a furry body fawned upon her with reassuring whines. It was a dog. At the same moment Nat came up at a run. The dog sprang to meet him with a whine of joy. "Down, Shep!" the girls heard him say in a deepwhisper which made the animal cower at his feet; "you have done for us, boy." Then to the girls as calmly as though nothing had happened,— " Get up, please, and give me the blanket. They will have heard you, and we must run as long as you have any breath. The horses are near. Shep, follow and guard." The girls obeyed with feverish haste, and set off at their utmost speed, holding Nat's hands so as not to be separated in the darkness, the dog trotting behind, snuffing the air uneasily as he ran. This violent exertion, however, soon began to tell upon the girls, tired and overwrought as they were, and before long, Maizie, the weaker of the two, stumbled, caught her foot in a prairie-dog hole, and fell on her face. Nat said nothing, but picked her up and, carrying her in his arms as if she were a baby, ran on, faster than before. A few minutes later and Bel's breath failed her. " I cannot run any more," she panted out, with a sob. " Oh, wha... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.