She had the hand’s clasp of mountain blossoms stripped down to a few small flowers of varied blooms.  They heard the coming of the groom, half running.  A silence fell over all the great encampment.  The girl’s father made a half step forward, even as her mother sank down, cowering, her hands at her face.

Then, without a word, with no plan or purpose, Molly Wingate turned, sprang away from them and fled out into a night that was black indeed.

Truly she had but one thought, and that in negation only.  Yonder came to claim her a man suddenly odious to her senses.  It could not be.  His kiss, his arms—­if these were of this present time and place, then no place in all the world, even the world of savage blackness that lay about, could be so bad as this.  At the test her philosophy had forsaken her, reason now almost as well, and sheer terrified flight remained her one reaction.

She was gone, a white ghost in her wedding gown, her little slippers stumbling over the stones, her breath coming sobbingly as she ran.  They followed her.  Back of them, at the great fire whose illumination deepened the shadows here, rose a murmur, a rising of curious people, a pressing forward to the Wingate station.  But of these none knew the truth, and it was curiosity that now sought answer for the delay in the anticipated divertisement.

Molly Wingate ran for some moments, to some distance—­she knew of neither.  Then suddenly all her ghastly nightmare of terror found climax in a world of demons.  Voices of the damned rose around her.  There came a sudden shock, a blow.  Before she could understand, before she could determine the shadowy form that rose before her in the dark, she fell forward like the stricken creature.

CHAPTER XXX

THE DANCE IN THE DESERT

There was no wedding that night at the Independence Rock.  The Arapahoes saw to that.  But there were burials the day following, six of them—­two women, a child, three men.  The night attack had caught the company wholly off guard, and the bright fire gave good illumination for shaft and ball.

“Put out the fires!  Corral!  Corral!”

Voices of command arose.  The wedding guests rushed for the shelter of their own wagons.  Men caught up their weapons and a steady fire at the unseen foe held the latter at bay after the first attack.

Indeed, a sort of panic seized the savages.  A warrior ran back exclaiming that he had seen a spirit, all in white, not running away from the attack, but toward them as they lay in cover.  He had shot an arrow at the spirit, which then had vanished.  It would be better to fall back and take no more like chances.

For this reason the family of Molly Wingate, pursuing her closely as they could, found her at last, lying face down in the grass, her arms outspread, her white wedding gown red with blood.  An arrow, its shaft cracked by her fall, was imbedded in her shoulder, driven deep by the savage bowman who had fired in fear at an object he did not recognize.  So they found her, still alive, still unmutilated, still no prisoner.  They carried the girl back to her mother, who reached out her arms and laid her child down behind the barricaded wagon wheels.