Jack gave a cry of pleasure. "See!" she called back. "I haven't brought you to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I have led you to a pool of silver." She had brought Hotspur to a standstill in front of a little silver lake, where the ravine extended in a circle into the woods.
For a moment the four riders were breathless with admiration, then a big brown form lumbered out of a clump of low bushes. Hotspur reared and the indistinct mass rolled by Jacqueline and made for a thicket.
"It's a bear!" Jack shouted triumphantly. "Who would have thought we could have had such luck? Let's go after old Bruin and see what becomes of him; he won't eat us up."
Jack was only joking. She had no real idea of following the bear; she wasn't even sure what beast had trundled by them, but was only in a wild humor and wondered how far the others would follow her. She gave Hotspur a little cut with her whip.
"Come back, Miss Ralston," Frank called sharply. He had ridden near enough to her to reach out for her bridle.
Jack grew more reckless. She sprang aside but did not notice that the ground opened in front of her in a narrow, broken crevice, until Hotspur's fore feet went down the incline and Jack pitched headlong over him, falling with a crash in the brushwood beyond.
In the medley of cries and confusion that followed, Jacqueline did not know whether she had been unconscious a second or an age when she was aroused by a peculiar noise which she was familiar with. It was a horse's terrible cry of pain. She tried to sit up. Jean and Frank Kent had dismounted hurriedly and come over to her, while Harry Pryor was trying to get Hotspur out of the gully.
"I am afraid you will have to help me, Frank, if Miss Ralston isn't hurt; I am afraid Hotspur has broken his leg."
Jacqueline gave a little cry and Jean covered her cousin's eyes with her hands. There was a pain in Jack's shoulder that was wrenching and tearing at her, but it was nothing to the feeling that Harry's words created.
"It can't be true," she sobbed. "I couldn't have hurt my pony like that."