Bo gazed after him and then back at Helen.
“I suppose if I'd been kicked and smashed and killed you'd laugh,” she said. And then she melted. “Oh, my pretty riding-suit! What a mess! I must be a sight.... Nell, I rode that wild pony—the sun-of-a-gun! I rode him! That's enough for me. YOU try it. Laugh all you want. It was funny. But if you want to square yourself with me, help me clean my clothes.”
Late in the night Helen heard Dale sternly calling Pedro. She felt some little alarm. However, nothing happened, and she soon went to sleep again. At the morning meal Dale explained.
“Pedro an' Tom were uneasy last night. I think there are lions workin' over the ridge somewhere. I heard one scream.”
“Scream?” inquired Bo, with interest.
“Yes, an' if you ever hear a lion scream you will think it a woman in mortal agony. The cougar cry, as Roy calls it, is the wildest to be heard in the woods. A wolf howls. He is sad, hungry, and wild. But a cougar seems human an' dyin' an' wild. We'll saddle up an' ride over there. Maybe Pedro will tree a lion. Bo, if he does will you shoot it?”
“Sure,” replied Bo, with her mouth full of biscuit.
That was how they came to take a long, slow, steep ride under cover of dense spruce. Helen liked the ride after they got on the heights. But they did not get to any point where she could indulge in her pleasure of gazing afar over the ranges. Dale led up and down, and finally mostly down, until they came out within sight of sparser wooded ridges with parks lying below and streams shining in the sun.
More than once Pedro had to be harshly called by Dale. The hound scented game.
“Here's an old kill,” said Dale, halting to point at some bleached bones scattered under a spruce. Tufts of grayish-white hair lay strewn around.