Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

thrown forward again, fighting to keep from sliding in and under the
horse’s neck, her foot still entangled. They reached the bottom of the mountain
and the horse’s hoofs struck the hard flat surface of the desert. Lifting her
eyes Mrs. Pollifax looked ahead and saw now that the deep cut in the earth
contained a boiling racing mountain stream and that the horse was going to leap
that canyon and that he was not going to make it. Nor would she.
    And all because she had mounted a horse to have her picture taken...
    In one last desperate frenzy Mrs. Pollifax applied herself to
disentanglement. Hanging on recklessly by one hand to the horse’s mane she slid
her other hand down to the tangled stirrup, tugged, shifted, wrenched, and
miraculously felt her foot slip free. Lifting her leg over the horse’s back she
sat sidesaddle for a fleeting second and then she kicked herself off and away
from the horse, flew high into the air and went down.
    She struck the ground hard, instinctively breaking the fall with her
left hand, and lay there stunned, feeling the blessedness of the earth beneath
her. After a moment she lifted her head, found her neck intact, rolled over on
the ground and stared at her left hand lying inert on the pebbles beside her. Odd, she thought, wondering vaguely why she could neither lift it nor feel it as an
appendage. She was still staring at it when Peter rode up to her, flung himself
from his horse and ran to her side.
    ”My God, are you hurt?” he cried. ”Believe me, it wasn’t supposed to be
like this.”
    Wasn’t supposed to be like this... what an extraordinary thing for him
to say, she thought.
    ”Mrs. Pollifax, are you all right?”
    ”It’s my left hand,” she told him. ”It just lies there. Otherwise,” she
added with a return of spirit, ”I’m basically fine. Perhaps a little in shock,
perhaps a little dazed. Yes, definitely a little dazed.” She placed her right
hand underneath her left one and lifted it. Cradling it and supporting it, she
sat up. ”But what,” she demanded, ”happened to that damn runaway horse?”
    Peter said, ”Can you stand up?”
    ”Of course I can stand up, just give me a minute.”
    ”But I can’t give you a minute,” he cried despairingly. ”I can’t,
damn it—this is where I disappear, don’t you see? Oh damn it, Mrs.
Pollifax—Emily—I’m sorry, believe me I’m sorry. I stuck a burr under that horse’s
saddle so that he’d run away with you, poor devil. Except I was so sure I’d
catch him long before the top of the mountain. I thought—oh hell, we don’t have time. I never expected this, can you ever forgive me? Is your wrist
broken?”
    ”Probably,” she said calmly. ”Where are the others?”
    ”I told them I could handle it—bring you back okay—but heaven only knows
how much time we have before they—”
    ”Yes,” she said, and told herself that she could put all this together
and recover later; she could even understand the sense of what he’d done. ”Help
me up,” she said, giving him her good hand. ”I thought it was going to be the
waterfall. What happened to that horse?”
    He groaned as he helped her to her feet. ”I feel like a murderer, he
crashed down into the river. It’s got horrible currents, it’s the same one I
had to cross to reach X’s camp. I haven’t looked but I saw the horse go down. Heard him, too, it was ghastly.”
    She nodded. ”And now you disappear too?”
    ”Yes, supposedly drowned in this river and swept away while trying to
rescue you but of course I was really going to backtrack into the mountain to
the cave.”
    She nodded. ”Then it’s a very good thing the horse met with such an
accident, I really have nothing personal against him but it will fill out the
picture. Yes, definitely it supports your being drowned and swept away.”
    Peter looked at her in astonishment. ”You’re right, I hadn’t thought of
that; am I in shock too, I wonder? But I can’t leave you like this. Does your
hand hurt? It’s swelling already.”
    Standing, she gave a shaky laugh. ”Of course you can leave me like this.
Yes my wrist hurts, but mostly it feels numb, as if a spring has broken
inside—a very interesting feeling, actually, but never mind that. For heaven’s
sake, Peter, where’s your professionalism? Go!”
    Behind them a pleasant and very familiar voice said, ”Nobody’s going
anywhere, at least not without me.”
    They wheeled to see Joe Forbes standing several paces