Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

19. CHAPTER NINETEEN (continued)

Fanny sprang up, filled with a furious energy. She felt strangely light and clear-headed. She ran on, stopped, ran again. Now she was making little short runs here and there. It was snowing furiously, vindictively. It seemed to her that she had been running for hours. It probably was minutes. Suddenly she sank down, got to her feet again, stumbled on perhaps a dozen paces, and sank down again. It was as though her knees had turned liquid. She lay there, with her eyes shut.

"I'm just resting," she told herself. "In a minute I'll go on. In a minute. After I've rested."

"Hallo-o-o-o!" from somewhere on the other side of the snow blanket. "Hallo-o-o-o!" Fanny sat up, helloing shrilly, hysterically. She got to her feet, staggeringly. And Clarence Heyl walked toward her.

"You ought to be spanked for this," he said.

Fanny began to cry weakly. She felt no curiosity as to his being there. She wasn't at all sure that he actually was there, for that matter. At that thought she dug a frantic hand into his arm. He seemed to understand, for he said, "It's all right. I'm real enough. Can you walk?"

"Yes." But she tried it and found she could not. She decided she was too tired to care. "I stumbled over a thing--a horrible thing--a gravestone. And I must have hurt my leg. I didn't know----"

She leaned against him, a dead weight. "Tell you what," said Heyl, cheerfully. "You wait here. I'll go on down to Timberline Cabin for help, and come back."

"You couldn't manage it--alone? If I tried? If I tried to walk?"

"Oh, impossible." His tone was brisk. "Now you sit right down here." She sank down obediently. She felt a little sorry for herself, and glad, too, and queer, and not at all cold. She looked up at him dumbly. He was smiling. "All right?"