“I’m a pretty good rider, too, now,” said the Scout, frankly. “I guess maybe this horse isn’t quite as good as Ted, but he’s a very good horse. His name is Mabel. He”—he leaned toward her and sunk his treble a tone or two—“he’s a lady horse. Well, I guess we’d better be going back to Cold Spring.” He turned the lady horse in the trail, looking over his shoulder to explain to her. “I don’t know if you understand that you must always turn your horse with his nose toward the cañon—then he can see what he’s doing. If you turned him the other way, he might back over; many a horse and rider’s been lost that way.”
“I’ll remember that,” said the girl, gravely, “and thank you for telling me.”
“That’s all right,” he said, easily. “I guess there’s a good many things I could tell you about horses and camping. Of course”—he was painstakingly honest about it—“the Ranger taught me. I lived in the city, and a person can’t learn much there. The Ranger knows—everything.”
“Does he, really?”
“You betcher. He can ride like anything and he can shoot like—like anything! He was a soldier in the War, and I’ll bet he killed two or three hundred Germans himself. But he doesn’t like to kill things, the Ranger doesn’t. He won’t shoot deer—only rattlesnakes and varmints. But he can shoot—oh, boy!” He glanced back at the shabby Airedale who was heeling sedately behind Mabel. “I guess you didn’t notice my dog. His name is Rusty.”
“Hello, Rusty!” said Ginger, politely.
“Of course he isn’t really my dog, but I call him my dog. He likes me better than he does the Ranger, but you ought to see how Snort loves the Ranger.”
“Snort?” she said sharply. “Why—oh, of course—this must have been the man the doctor wanted him for!” It was strange how the sound of that horse’s name, all these miles away, and after thirteen months, could make her heart turn over. She had been thankful to persuade ’Rome Ojeda to let him go because she hadn’t wanted ever to see him again; now, it appeared, she must see him again.
“Look!” said the Scout as they rounded a sharp curve in the trail. “You can see Cold Spring from here and the—” he stopped, catching his breath, pointing. “Looky!” he gasped. “It’s a mountain lion, chasing a fawn! Oh, gee ... gee—”
Cold Spring was in an elbow of the trail—it was like an arm sharply crooked to hold it. Snort, his reins over his head, cropped the sparse, green grass; the figure of a man lounged at ease. It was an entirely peaceful picture. But, just beyond, in the opposite direction from that in which the girl and the Scout were coming, there was no peace, but war; relentless war of extermination by the strong upon the weak. A young fawn, breathless, almost exhausted, ran stumbling and swaying, a pitifully few paces before a lion, long, lithe, trotting easily, sure of its prey.