Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/253

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AVALANCHE
219

With a sigh and a little shiver she revived. Then, with a struggle, she sat up.

Neither spoke.

She shivered again in his arms, and he put his coat about her shoulders. It wrung her heart that he should so expose himself for her sake, yet not for worlds would she have had it otherwise.

Then they struggled on in strange, dumb companionship of misery.

Thus an hour passed, and for all their desperate struggles neither could see that the light on the mountainside was a yard nearer.

Suddenly Alan, again exhausted, dropped as if shot. Instantly she was kneeling by his side. But in the act of bending over him she drew back to stare amazed at two twin glaring eyes sweeping down upon them with all the speed attainable by a six-cylinder touring-car negotiating a trackless desert.

When Judith did move, it was not to comfort Alan. Her first act was to draw from her pocket a heavy, blunt-nosed revolver, break it at the breech, and blow its barrel clear of dust. Her hand went next to the holster on Alan's hip. From this she extracted his Colt's .45, treating it as she had the other. Then she crouched low above the man she loved, as if thinking to escape notice from the occupants of the motor-car. But the glare of the headlights fell upon