"Oh, Collie?" said Louise. "Of course, you will meet him. He's our right-hand man. Uncle Walter says he couldn't get along without him and Aunty Eleanor just thinks he is perfect."
"And Louise?" queried Anne Marshall.
"Same," said Louise non-committally. "I don't see why he took Boyar with him to the store, though."
The Marshalls and Louise paced slowly up and down the station platform, chatting about the East and Louise's last visit there, before Anne was married. Presently they were interrupted by a wild clatter of hoofs and the grind and screech of a hastily applied brake. The borrowed buckboard, strong, light, two-seated, and built for service, had arrived dramatically. Collie leaned back, the reins wrapped round his wrists, and his foot pressing the brake home. In the harness stood, or rather gyrated, Boyar and Collie's own pony Apache. It is enough to say that neither of them had ever been in harness before. The ponies were trying to get rid of the appended vehicle through any possible means. Louise gasped.
"Price's team is out—over to the Oro Ranch. I knew you wanted a team in a hurry—" said Collie.
"It looks quite like a team in a hurry," commented Dr. Marshall. "Your man is a good driver?"
"Splendid!" said Louise. "Come on, Anne. You always said you wanted to ride behind some real Western horses. Here they are."
"Why, this is just—just—bully!" whispered the stately Anne Marshall. "And isn't he a striking figure?"
"Yes," assented Louise, who was just the least bit uncertain as to the outcome of Collie's hasty assembling of untutored harness material. "It is just 'bully.' Where in the world did you unearth that word, Anne?"