After they had passed the valley and lower buttes, great, rolling tablelands came in view, their jagged bluffs fringed with scrub-pine and spruce.
“This is the open range,” Jean said. “It goes on for miles and miles to the north, higher and higher till it blends into Bear Lodge.”
“Oh, girls, don’t you remember that place in the Bible?” exclaimed Polly, halting to lift her head and draw in deep breaths of the clear fine air. “I mean where it tells about the cattle on a thousand hills. Who’d want an old, smelly, burnt sacrifice, when he could have this, and all the cattle on them.”
The full heat of the day was still far off, and the morning calm and hazy. The lazy, droning sound of insects came from the shadowy depths of sage-brush on either side of the path, and High Jinks would shy every now and then as a honey-laden bee or flippant butterfly darted by his nose.
“Is it far?” asked Polly, after they had passed the low, sun-dried bed of Coon Creek, and struck out across a long, open stretch of upland with only a ragged pine here and there to break its barren monotony.
“About five miles the short way, but nearly fifteen if we had to go around the hills west of here. Father fixed a short cut years ago when we used to pasture our herd on the Black Pine stretch. He built a bridge over the gulch up here. Some of the road is so overgrown now that you have to take your time. Polly, don’t hold Jinks in if you can stand a little gallop. He’s just ready to dance for a run.”
“I won’t hold him in—” began Polly, and she slackened her hold on the bridle. The pony shook his head free joyously, and started off on a helter-skelter canter that made Polly lean forward, and grip his sides with her knees like an Indian. Her cap dropped off, and her hair tumbled down from its pins, but she liked it. Jean and Peggie had shown her how to adjust herself to every turn and twist of the pony, how to grip with her knees, and lean over his neck, and stand in the stirrups when he ran. Many things had she learned with the other girls too, in just one day at the Crossbar, and not the least of them was to consider the temperament and feelings of the pony she rode.
“They’re all good chums, if you only know how to treat them right,” Peggie had said, and the girls believed it.
Peggie came after her on her pony, Twinkle, but Polly beat her, and they both reined up short and waited for the rest. Sue had dismounted, picked up Polly’s cap, and was bringing it.
“Twinkle isn’t quite as fast a runner as Jinks,” Peggie said loyally, “but he has a very understanding way with him. I like a horse that understands, don’t you? I don’t like the white patch over Jinks’ eye, because it always looks as if he had an eyeglass on, like Mr. Cameron, the owner of the Red Star outfit.”