the mare?" "Bill and Jack's holdin' her at the crossin'." "Let 'em hold
on a minit longer," said Dick.

He turned and re-entered the house softly. By the light of the guttering
candle and dying fire he saw that the door of the little room was open.
He stepped toward it on tiptoe and looked in. The Old Man had fallen
back in his chair, snoring, his helpless feet thrust out in a line with
his collapsed shoulders, and his hat pulled over his eyes. Beside him,
on a narrow wooden bedstead, lay Johnny, muffled tightly in a blanket
that hid all save a strip of forehead and a few curls damp with
perspiration. Dick Bullen made a step forward, hesitated, and glanced
over his shoulder into the deserted room. Everything was quiet. With
a sudden resolution he parted his huge mustaches with both hands and
stooped over the sleeping boy. But even as he did so a mischievous
blast, lying in wait, swooped down the chimney, rekindled the hearth,
and lit up the room with a shameless glow from which Dick fled in
bashful terror.

His companions were already waiting for him at the crossing. Two of them
were struggling in the darkness with some strange misshapen bulk, which
as Dick came nearer took the semblance of a great yellow horse.

It was the mare. She was not a pretty picture. From her Roman nose to
her rising haunches, from her arched spine hidden by the stiff machillas
of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony legs, there was not a
line of equine grace. In her half-blind but wholly vicious white eyes,
in her protruding under lip, in her monstrous color, there was nothing
but ugliness and vice.

"Now then," said Staples, "stand cl'ar of her heels, boys, and up with