They were spreading out, too, and thus thinned, the mob was not likely to do much damage. Only one horse came over the overturned buckboard. He smashed several spokes of two wheels, and knocked the back seat awry.
The peril to the girl was over in half a minute, but the trouble for the ranch hands lasted all night and the next day. They were until the next evening collecting all the ponies again.
Lance Petterby helped them, for he considered that his mother’s pet hen was one cause of the stampede. “Though, if thet thar miser’ble little houn’ dawg had kep’ his nose out o’ thet thar basket, thar wouldn’t have been no combobberation,” drawled Lance. “That’s as sure as kin be.”
They made much of Lance at the ranch-house the evening of the stampede, for the adventure lost nothing in Dorothy’s telling. Tavia undertook to “play tricks with her eyes,” as Dorothy accused, and was taken firmly to task for it by her chum.
“Now, Tavia, you are not going to act like a grown-up society girl with Lance Petterby. I won’t have it,” Dorothy said. “He’s a fine fellow, and you shan’t try to make him look silly. He helped us, that time we were left behind, to follow Aunt Winnie and the boys, and now he’s actually saved my life.”
“It wouldn’t be my luck, of course, to be snatched from beneath the hoofs of a whole pack of wild horses,” pouted Tavia.
“If you think it was fun, Miss——”
“Well! it was dreadfully romantic,” declared Tavia, using her well-worn expression. “You don’t half appreciate your adventure.”
“Adventure! And have your heart almost jump out of your mouth?”
“But that’s only for the moment,” sighed Tavia. “You’re all right now.”