resources sorely taxed to meet this emergency.
Miles from camp and no horses!

Kitty stalked into the road and started to walk, holding her head high
and swinging her arms as though _she_ didn't mind a little matter of
five or six miles. Blue Bonnet, with the training of a lifetime,
stopped to put up the bars before setting out on the long tramp. It
was already noon and the sun glared down, unbearably hot. Before she
had gone a mile Blue Bonnet looked about for a mesquite bush, and
finding one sank down in its shade. Kitty kept doggedly on.

"Oh, Kitty!" Blue Bonnet called after her. "I've heard of people who
hadn't sense enough to come in out of the rain, and I think it's a
heap sillier not to have sense enough to come in out of the sun!"

Kitty wavered; and was lost. Turning back she threw herself beside
Blue Bonnet with a groan.

"My feet are one big blister," she moaned, her anger swallowed up in
the anguish of the moment.

"We can't possibly walk," said Blue Bonnet. "And I've an idea. If that
cloud of dust I saw on the road towards camp was Firefly and
Rowdy--and it probably was--the girls will soon be after us."

And so it proved; except that it was Alec and Knight instead of the
girls who came riding furiously down the road in search of them. When
Alec heard Blue Bonnet's ranch-call he threw his hat in the air with a
whoop of relief.

"We've been looking for your mangled remains all along the way," he
declared, as they reached the girls. "We had the fright of our lives
when Firefly and Rowdy came trotting into camp minus their riders."

"You thought we'd been thrown?" Blue Bonnet asked.

"I would have thought so if there had been only one, but it didn't
seem likely that both of you could have come a cropper," Knight
replied.

"Is Grandmother worried?" Blue Bonnet asked hastily.

"She doesn't know. The girls didn't tell her anything except that you
and Kitty had loafed along the way. She didn't see the horses. But
we'd better hurry back."

Each boy had led one of the errant ponies, and now the girls mounted
and lost no time in getting back to camp.

"I'm so sorry--" Blue Bonnet began to speak as soon as she came within
sight of her grandmother, "--I didn't mean to be so late."

"I can't quite understand, Blue Bonnet, why you and Kitty could not
come back with the other girls. It is long past noon." Mrs. Clyde had
been worried, and required more of an explanation than an apology.
Blue Bonnet's tir