Before sundown they reached the timber-land on Bear Top. The horses slipped on the pine needles when Al left the trail and rode up a gentle incline where the trees grew large and there was little underbrush. It was very beautiful, with the slanting sun-rays painting broad yellow bars across the gloom of the forest. In a little while they reached the crest of that slope, and Lorraine, looking back, could only guess at where the trail wound on among the trees lower down.
Birds called companionably from the high branches above them. A nesting grouse flew chuttering out from under a juniper bush, alighted a short distance away and went limping and dragging one wing before them, cheeping piteously.
While Lorraine was wondering if the poor thing had hurt a leg in lighting, Al clipped its head off neatly with a bullet from his six-shooter, though Lorraine had not seen him pull the gun and did not know he meant to shoot. The bird's mate whirred up and away through the trees, and Lorraine was glad that it had escaped.
Al slid the gun back into his holster, leaned from his saddle and picked up the dead grouse as unconcernedly as he would have dismounted, pulled his knife from his boot and drew the bird neatly, flinging the crop and entrails from him.
"Them juniper berries tastes the meat if you don't clean 'em out right away," he remarked casually to Lorraine, as he wiped the knife on his trousers and thrust it back into the boot-scabbard before he tied the grouse to the saddle by its blue, scaley little feet.
When he was ready to go on, Snake refused to budge. Tough as he was, he had at last reached the limit of his energy and ambition. Al yanked hard on the bridle reins, then rode back and struck him sharply with his quirt before Snake would rouse himself enough to move forward. He went stiffly, reluctantly, pulling back until his head was held straight out before him. Al dragged him so for a rod or two, lost patience and returned to whip him forward again.
"What a brute you are!" Lorraine exclaimed indignantly. "Can't you see how tired he is?"
Al glanced at her from under his eyebrows. "He's all in, but he's got to make it," he said. "I've been that way myself—and made it. What I can do, a horse can do. Come on, you yella-livered bonehead!"
Snake went on, urged now and then by Al's quirt. Every blow made Lorraine wince, and she made the wincing perfectly apparent to Al, in the hope that he would take some notice of it and give her a chance to tell him what she thought of him without opening the conversation herself.
But Al did not say anything. When the time came—as even Lorraine saw that it must—when Snake refused to attempt a steep slope, Al still said nothing. He untied her ankles from the stirrups and her hands from the saddle horn, carried her in his arms to his own horse and compelled her to mount. Then he retied her exactly as she had been tied on Snake.