she's taken my pony."
"It sounded that way," observed the officer quietly. "I guess it's up to you, Dexter. How long will it take you to catch her?"
Devreaux spoke with serene assurance, and the corporal nodded coolly in acceptance of what amounted to a command. Both had learned by experience that a man afoot can walk down any horse in a prolonged chase. And Susy was jaded from days of hard travel.
"Can't say," answered Dexter. "That pony doesn't like strangers, and she'll shake her rider off if she can. But in any event, if it doesn't storm again, I should catch her tomorrow afternoon, or by evening at the latest."
"I'll camp here and wait for you," volunteered Devreaux. "Bring the woman with you." The superintendent shot an approving glance at the upright figure before him. "Give you anything I've got," he said.
"Trade flashlights with me, please. My last battery's burned out."
The exchange was made, the two nodded briefly in farewell and Dexter once more set forward on his trail.
Tracks of small shoes led him to the gulley where he had left his horse for the night. The girl must have heard the neighing and turned over that way in hope of picking up a mount. The scuffled snow indicated that there had been a struggle before she succeeded in climbing on the pony's back. Afterwards she had ridden away without a saddle, using a halter rope instead of a bridle.
By the hoof marks Dexter saw that he had correctly interpreted the sounds he heard a few minutes before. Susy had broken into a run the moment she felt the weight on her back. With features unnaturally grave, the trailer followed through the underbrush. In a couple of minutes he reached the bank of the brook and found that the filly had not checked her stride here, but had plunged downward and crossed the ice at full gallop.
The shod tracks swerved abruptly on reaching the opposite embankment, traveling southward along the brook course over a stretch of stony and pitted ground. Dexter walked onward at a fast pace, swinging the shaft of his light, his intent gaze searching before him with ominous expectancy.
And a quarter of a mile farther down the stream the trail ended, as he had known that sooner or later it surely must end. In a hollow of ground, beyond an outcropping shale of rock, he found his pony stretched flat and motionless among the stones, with her head flung backward and her forelegs doubled limply under her body. And a few paces farther on a slim-built, girlish figure was lying prone upon the snow.
CHAPTER VIIITHE RUNAWAY GIRL
With teeth fastened in his lips the corporal stepped forward to bend above the tumbled figure of the woman. She was so quiet he thought she was dead. But her fingers were warm, he found when he pulled off her mitten, and the tide of life still flowed 

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