, "it was a great
idea to get that eastern pad. I've cut down my riding weight nearly
twenty pounds by dropping all that gear. Blazing Star can clear six
inches higher and go a foot farther in a jump, and I'll bet it gives him
one hundred feet in a mile run."

Again Belle harked back to the school project. "It could be done for
half the teacher's salary and every one of the neglected children might
get a chance. It all depends on the attitude that School Trustee
Higginbotham takes. My idea is to approach him through Hannah. She has a
mighty level head, and if you and Dr. Jebb----"

"Oh! look at this coyote!" ejaculated Hartigan. "I must give him a run";
and away he went. For half a mile there was an open flat, and the
superior speed of the horse reduced the distance, at a very rapid rate.
But the coyote reached a gully and disappeared with the quickness and
cleverness of its race. Hartigan came galloping back.

Belle was looking amused and also worried. "Oh, Jim," she said, "I don't
know what I am going to do with you. You won't talk Church, you won't
talk school, you won't talk shop. All your thoughts are centred on
horses, hunting--and coyotes," she added with a laugh.

"Sure, Belle, I never see a coyote run without thinking of a night I
spent on the Cheyenne, when that puling little English lord spent the
whole night shivering up a tree, to hear me and Little Breeches snoring
on the ground and he thought it was wolves eating us up, because a
little while before a coyote yelled in the bushes----" and again he was
off in a racy account of those thrilling moments.

"Jim," she said, "I am going to say nothing but 'yes' and 'no' for a
while, until you exhaust all your horse talk. Then I am going to make
one more effort."

"A jack rabbit, by the powers!" Sure enough, a big white jack leaped up
and darted away. A jack is speedier than a coyote, so Hartigan could not
resist. "Hi, Hi, Hi!" he shouted to Blazing Star; and with flat hand on
the croup, he raised the speed to top gear in a few jumps.

It was a fair sight to behold, and to many a cow-man it would have been
information. The jack rabbit, next to the antelope, is the speediest
quadruped on the plains. The cowboy does not try to follow the jack
rabbit, but the blooded racer did. In a quarter of a mile the horse was
nearly on him. He dodged like chain lightning--dodged as his life had
taught him to dodge before the coyote and the hawk. The horse slowed up;
the