"But the extra horse?" cried Barton. With a sudden little chuckle of
relief he pointed to the chunky gray. There was a side-saddle on the
chunky gray. "Who's going with us?"

Almost insolently little Eve Edgarton narrowed her sleepy eyes.

"I always taken an extra horse with me, Mr. Barton--Thank you!" she
yawned, with the very faintest possible tinge of asperity.

"Oh!" stammered Barton quite helplessly. "O--h!" Heavily, as he spoke,
he lifted one foot to his stirrup and swung up into his saddle.
Through all his mental misery, through all his physical discomfort, a
single lovely thought sustained him. There was only one really good
riding road in that vicinity! And it was shady! And, thank Heaven, it
was most inordinately short!

But Eve Edgarton falsified the thought before he was half through
thinking it.

She swung her horse around, reared him to almost a perpendicular
height, merged herself like so much fluid khaki into his great,
towering, threatening neck, reacted almost instantly to her own
balance again, and went plunging off toward the wild, rough,
untraveled foot-hills and--certain destruction, any unbiased onlooker
would have been free to affirm!

Snortingly the chunky gray went tearing after her. A trifle sulkily
Barton's roan took up the chase.