There were arms secreted
beneath the hay for such an emergency. She would run there, swing-to its
open doors, and get ready to barricade them.
She ran crouchingly, seeking the higher grasses and brambles of the
ridge to escape observation from the meadow until she could descend upon
the barn from the rear. She threw aside her impeding shawl; her brown
holland sun-bonnet, torn off her head and hanging by its strings from
her shoulders, let her coarse silver-threaded hair stream like a mane
over her back; her face and hands were bleeding from thorns and whitened
by dust. But she struggled on fiercely like some hunted animal until
she reached the descending trail, when, letting herself go blindly, only
withheld by the long grasses she clutched at wildly on either side, she
half fell, half stumbled down the slope and emerged beside the barn,
breathless and exhausted.
But what a contrast was there! For an instant she could scarcely believe
that she had left the ridge with her husband's savage outcry in her
ears, and in her eyes the swift vision of his furious cavalcade.
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