ge when you reach the bottom. That'll
show me where you are. Now I'm going to drop the rope to you. Look out it
doesn't get tangled."

"All right! Let 'er come!"

"I'll have to leave you if I'm to catch that buckskin before it gets dark,
stranger. You'll get along all right?" she added.

"Surest thing you know!"

She dropped the rope. He gathered it in quickly and then uttered a
cheerful shout.

"All clear?" asked Helen.

"Don't worry about me. I'm all right," he assured her.

Helen leaped back to her waiting pony. Already the golden light was dying
out of the sky. Up here in the foothills the "evening died hard" as the
saying is; but the buckskin pony had romped clear across the plateau. He
was now, indeed, out of sight.

She whirled Rose about and set off at a gallop after the runaway. It was
not until then that she remembered she had no rope. That buckskin would
have to be fairly run down. There would be no roping him.

"But if you can't do it, no other horsie can," she said, aloud, patting
the Rose pony on her arching neck. "Go it, girl! Let's see if we can't
beat any miserable little buckskin that ever came into this country. A
strawberry roan forever!"

Her "E-e-e-yow! yow!" awoke the pony to desperate endeavor. She seemed to
merely skim the dry grass of the open plateau, and in ten minutes Helen
saw a riderless mount plunging up the side of a _coulee_ far ahead.

"There he goes!" cried the girl. "After him, Rosie! Make your pretty hoofs
fly!"

The excitement of the chase roused in Helen that feeling of freedom and
confidence that is a part of life on the plains. Those who live much in
the open air, and especially in the saddle, seldom think of failure.

She knew she was going to catch the runaway pony. Such an idea as
non-success never entered her mind. This was the first hard riding she had
done since Mr. Morrell died; and now her thoughts expanded and she shook
off the hopeless feeling which had clouded her young heart and mind since
they had buried her father.

While she rode on, and rode hard, after the fleeing buckskin her revived
thought kept time with the pony's hoofbeats.

No longer did the old tune run in her head: "If I only _could_ clear dad's
name!" Instead the drum of confidence beat a charge to arms: "I know I
_can_ clear his name!

"To think of poor dad living out here all these years, with suspicion
resting on his reputation back there in New York. And he wasn't guilty! It
was