ther
side of the trail. Aggie called out once that we had just passed a
grizzly bear, but Tish never faltered. The region grew more and more
wild. The trail was broken with mudholes and crossed by fallen logs.
With a superb disdain Tish rode across all obstacles, not even glancing
at them. But Aggie and I got off at the worst places and led our horses.
At one mudhole I was unfortunate enough to stumble. A horse with a
particle of affection for a woman who had ridden it and cared for it for
several days would have paused.

Not so my animal. With a heartlessness at which I still shudder the
creature used me as a bridge, and stepped across, dryfoot, on my back.
Owing to his padded feet and to the depth of the mud--some eight feet, I
believe--I was uninjured. But it required ten minutes of hard labor on
the part of both Tish and Aggie to release me from the mud, from which I
was finally raised with a low, hissing sound.

"Park!" said Aggie as she scraped my obliterated features with a small
branch. "Park, indeed! It's a howling wilderness. I'm fond of my native
land," she went on, digging out my nostrils, so I could breathe, "but I
don't calculate to eat it. As for that unfeeling beast of yours, Lizzie,
I've never known a horse to show such selfishness. Never."

Well, we went on at last, but I was not so enthusiastic about teaching
people lessons as I had been. It seemed to me that we might have kept on
along the trail and had a mighty good time, getting more and more nimble
and stopping now and then to bake a pie and have a decent meal, and
putting up our hair in crimps at night, without worrying about other
folks' affairs.

Late in the afternoon of that day, when so far as I could see Tish was
lost, and not even her gathering a bunch of wild flowers while the
horses rested could fool me, I voiced my complaint.

"Let me look at the map, Tish," I suggested. "I'm pretty good at maps.
You know how I am at charades and acrostics. At the church supper--"

"Nonsense, Lizzie," she returned. "You couldn't make head or tail of
this map. It's my belief that the man who made it had never been here.
Either that or there has been an earthquake since. But," she went on,
more cheerfully, "if we are lost, so are the others."

"If we even had Bill along!"

"Bill!" Tish said scornfully. "It's my belief Bill is in the whole
business, and that if we hadn't got rid of him we'd have been the next
advertising dodge. As far as that goes,