“I don’t think he’d better carry a gun through this going,” the doctor said. “Especially as it is somebody else’s gun, and he’s somebody else’s boy, whom I’m responsible for.”
“Well, of course, I don’t want to worry my uncle,” Bennie assented, with surprising cheerfulness.
“You mean you need both hands to hang on to your horse,” said Spider.
“Marvelous, Sherlock, simply marvelous!” Bennie laughed. “When we get to the old bear, I’ll take the gun from my bearer, and put a well-directed bullet through his brain.”
Now, in the fast increasing daylight, they were off, Mr. Vreeland leading the way and sitting his horse as straight as a ramrod. The boys were stiff and sore, but once on the saddle they felt easier than the day before.
The leader crossed the meadow to the upper side, and put his horse up on a long sloping ridge covered with an open stand of yellow pine. As they climbed this ridge, the boys could see a long distance between the trees, and discovered that the side of the mountain was composed of a series of long ridges, like this one, with deep erosion gullies between them. The sides of these gullies were very steep, and at the bottom grew thick stands of lodge-pole pines. After climbing a way on the first ridge, and evidently seeing nothing which appealed to him, Mr. Vreeland suddenly turned his horse right down the side, into the gully. As the boys followed they found their horses’ heads almost underneath them, and they had to lean far back in the saddles to keep their balance. At the bottom, Mr. Vreeland simply rode right into the dense stand of little lodge-pole pines and disappeared. The doctor, Mr. Stone and Tom and Pep followed. And after them went the three horses that carried the three boys. There was nothing to do about it. The horses were trained to follow in file, and it was their job to go through where the others went. But the boys made an interesting, not to say painful discovery.
They discovered that when a horse goes through a thicket of lodge-pole pines, he picks out a place that is wide enough for him to squeeze through, and high enough so his head doesn’t hit a limb. But he doesn’t pay any attention to the fact that his rider’s feet and legs stick out on either side and his rider’s head is considerably higher than his own. He’s looking out only for himself, and it’s up to the rider to take the consequences for getting on his back.
When they emerged on the farther side of the gully, Bennie didn’t have any cap, Dumplin’ had a hole torn in the right knee of his trousers, and Spider had a rent in the left shoulder of his shirt and a long scratch on his face.
But there was no stopping for repairs. Already the other horses were up on the next ridge, and with a heave and snort the boys’ horses suddenly stood on their hind legs and scrambled up also, the boys leaning far forward and hanging on to the horns of their saddles to keep aboard.
“Some sport!” panted Bennie. “Gee, that was a good cap, too.”