The dogs did not bay. But in a minute or two a pair of the rabbits appeared over the rise, and then the two long-legged canines followed in their tracks.
“Wait till the jacks see us and dodge,” called out Frances, in a low tone. “Then you can fire without getting the dogs in line.”
Mrs. Edwards was a good shot. She got one of the rabbits. After several of the others snapped at the second one, and missed him, Frances brought him down just as he leaped toward a clump of sagebrush. Behind it he would have been lost to them.
“My goodness!” murmured Pratt. “What a shot you are, Frances!”
“She’s quite got the best of us in shooting,” complained one of the other girls. “She’ll bag them all.”
Frances laughed, and spurred Molly out of the group, “I’ll put away my gun and use my rope instead,” she remarked. “Perhaps I have a handicap over the rest of you with a rifle. Father taught me, and he is considered the best rifle shot in the Panhandle.”
“My goodness, Frances,” said Pratt again. “What isn’t there that you don’t do better than most of ’em?”
“Parlor tricks!” flashed back the girl of the ranges, half laughing, but half in earnest, too. “I know I should be just a silly with a lorgnette, or trying to tango.”
“Well!” gasped the young fellow, “who isn’t silly under those circumstances, I would like to know.”
Mixing talk of lorgnettes and dancing with shooting jack-rabbits did not suit very well, for the next pair of the long-eared animals that the dogs started got away entirely.