“And just to think!” Tavia groaned, as the two girls rode slowly down the riverside an hour after sunrise. “We hadn’t any business having an adventure at all.”
“I—don’t—know,” responded Dorothy, slowly.
“Well, I do! The boys will tease us to death about it. There the ponies were, tied where we left them, just in another opening in the woods, not a hundred yards away from where we spent the night. But when I first heard them whinnying for water at daybreak, I was scared into fits—weren’t you, Doro?”
Dorothy admitted her fright. Tavia’s whole statement was not far from correct. The entire adventure had been preventable. Dorothy considered herself seriously to blame.
If she and her chum had marked their path up the steep hillside beyond the spot where the ponies had been abandoned, they would have had no difficulty in finding their mounts again.
So, had they recovered the ponies they could easily have returned to the ranch-house by dark. Aunt Winnie, Dorothy knew, must have been dreadfully worried over their disappearance.
Indeed, the whole country round about had been roused, as the girls quickly learned. Half a dozen search parties were out after them. While they still followed the course of Lost River they heard whooping, and rifle shots, ahead.
“Come on!” cried Tavia, “they are searching for us.”
Both girls hurried their ponies, rounded a turn in the path, and were hailed with delight by Ned, Nat and half a dozen cowpunchers, who had started into the hills for a second search for the lost girls.
They had ridden over the ranges and lower country all night, searching for the runaways, and after breakfasting at the bunkhouse, had started forth again.