"Very pretty," she said.
"Would you dress up as a drummer-boy and follow your lover to the wars, like Polly did?" Jack asked.
"No," she said promptly.
"Why not?" he demanded, taken aback.
"She was a poor thing," said Mary scornfully. "She couldn't live single, she said. When she did get to the wars she was only in the way, and put him to the trouble of rescuing her; but it makes a pretty song of course."
"You're not very romantic," grumbled Jack.
Mary smiled to herself, and attended to the bannock. After a long time, when Jack had forgotten all about Polly, she said: "I think romances are for people who don't feel very much themselves."
After lunch, leaving Mary and Davy to finish packing, Jack circled wide over the river-meadows to round up the horses, and reconnoitre generally. Mary and Davy were to follow him. He found that two of the horses were still missing; the others were in good condition. Riding on up the trail, he dismounted at a little stream to read what was to be seen in the tracks. He saw that the horses had been driven back two days before, and that none of them was hobbled when they crossed the stream.
At this moment all Jack's senses were suddenly roused to the qui vive by the sound of the hoof-beats of two horses approaching along the trail from up the valley. Here was a new factor entering the situation. Quickly mounting, he held his horse quiet under the bushes beside the trail. The newcomers trotted around a bend; all the horses whinnied, and Jack found himself face to face with Jean Paul Ascota.