“That’s all right, Barnes—I’ll cut down the aspens for you, and Polly, with the other girls, will drag them out of the way. The work will keep us from freezing,” said Jack, cheerily.
“Don’t forget me,” called Mrs. Courtney, trying to act as cheery as Jack.
“If you only knew how to manage it, you ought to throw the blankets over the animals, or we may not have them fit to carry us back to the cabins,” suggested the guide.
“We do know how to do it,” replied Dodo. “I was brought up in Colorado, and Polly knows enough about horses to break the worst broncho. Jack, too, has been on the ranch. Just watch us.”
So saying, Dodo jumped from her saddle, and Eleanor managed to slide out of hers. It took Mrs. Courtney longer to dismount, as she had become so cold and stiff.
The three,—Jack, Polly and Dodo,—then began to remove the saddles that they might pull off the blankets which were strapped under them. This done, they started to rearrange the blankets in order to cover the quaking horses.
“Jack, you better get busy chopping the aspens, because Dodo and I can blanket the animals,” suggested Polly.
“Good! Hand me the axe from Barnes’ side,” returned Jack, turning to the man who was trying to get upon one foot and assist the girls.
“You just sit still, Barnes—or you’ll have a compound fracture. We’ll get this straightened out in a jiffy,” said Jack. Then he took the axe and began to whack at the nearest aspen. It was one directly ahead of Barnes’ horse, and Jack figured logically that cutting down the few ahead of the horses would make it easier for them to turn, because the leader could step in and go around the narrow turn he proposed making. Then they would face the opposite direction from the one in which they now stood.
Polly and Dodo had blanketed three horses, and all three girls were engaged with the others, when Jack whacked a hard blow at the tree he was felling. The axe struck sideways, and a long sharp chip flew up and scuttled horizontally through the air. It struck the leading horse directly between the eyes, and that poor beast, already frightened by the blasts of howling wind which bore such cold sheets of sleet and snow into his face and chest, leaped up on his hind legs. In a second, he came pounding down again, and then started off along the trail, pulling the other horses in his wake.