had all along been a
subject of discord between them. She had learned to ride very well
along the bridle-paths of Golden Gate Park, but Robert Grant Burns
seemed to expect her to ride--well, like this girl, for instance, which
was unjust.

One could not blame her for glaring jealously while Jean tightened the
cinch and remounted, tying her rope to the saddle horn, all ready to
pull; with her muscles tensed for the coming struggle with the
sand,--and perhaps with her horse as well,--and with every line of her
figure showing how absolutely at home she was in the saddle, and how
sure of herself.

"I've tied my rope, Lite," Jean drawled, with a little laugh at what
might happen.

Lite turned his face toward her. "You better not," he warned. "Things
are liable to start a-popping when that engine wakes up."

"Well, then I'll want both hands for Pard. I've taken a couple of
half-hitches, anyway."

"You folks want to be ready at the wheels," Lite directed, waiving the
argument. "When we start, you all want to heave-ho together. Good
team-work will do it.

"All set?" he called to Jean, when Pete Lowry bent his back to start
the engine. "Business'll be pickin' up, directly!"

"All set," replied Jean cheerfully.

It seemed then that everything began to start at once, and to start in
different directions. The engine snorted and pounded so that the whole
machine shook with ague. When Pete jumped in and threw in the clutch,
there was a backfire that sounded like the crack of doom. The two
horses went wild, as their riders had half expected them to do. They
lunged away from the horror behind them, and the slack ropes tightened
with a jerk. Both were good rope horses, and the strain of the ropes
almost recalled them to sanity and their training; at least they held
the ropes tight for a few seconds, so that the machine jumped ahead and
veered toward the firmer soil beside the trail, in response to Pete's
turn of the wheel.

Then Pard looked back and saw the thing coming after him, and tried to
bolt. When he found that he could not, because of the rope, he bucked
as he had not done since he was a half-broken broncho. That started
Lite Avery's horse to pitching; and Pete, absorbed in watching what
would have made a great picture, forgot to shut off the gas.

Robert Grant Burns picked himself out of the sand where he had sprawled
at the first wild lunge of the machine, and saw Pete Lowry, humped over
the wheel lik