store, though."

* * * * *

The Marshalls and Louise paced slowly up and down the station platform,
chatting about the East and Louise's last visit there, before Anne was
married. Presently they were interrupted by a wild clatter of hoofs and
the grind and screech of a hastily applied brake. The borrowed
buckboard, strong, light, two-seated, and built for service, had arrived
dramatically. Collie leaned back, the reins wrapped round his wrists,
and his foot pressing the brake home. In the harness stood, or rather
gyrated, Boyar and Collie's own pony Apache. It is enough to say that
neither of them had ever been in harness before. The ponies were trying
to get rid of the appended vehicle through any possible means. Louise
gasped.

"Price's team is out--over to the Oro Ranch. I knew you wanted a team in
a hurry--" said Collie.

"It looks quite like a team in a hurry," commented Dr. Marshall. "Your
man is a good driver?"

"Splendid!" said Louise. "Come on, Anne. You always said you wanted to
ride behind some real Western horses. Here they are."

"Why, this is just--just--bully!" whispered the stately Anne Marshall.
"And isn't he a striking figure?"

"Yes," assented Louise, who was just the least bit uncertain as to the
outcome of Collie's hasty assembling of untutored harness material. "It
is just 'bully.' Where in the world did you unearth that word, Anne?"

CHAPTER XVIII

A RED EPISODE

Dr. Marshall's offhand designation of the buckboard as "a team in a
hurry" was prophetic, even unto the end.

What Boyar could not accomplish in the way of equine gymnastics in
harness, Apache, Collie's pony, could.

Louise was a little fearful for her guests, yet she had confidence in
the driver. The Marshalls apparently saw nothing more than a pair of
very spirited "real Western horses like one reads about, you know,"
until Dr. Marshall, slowly coming out of a kind of anticipatory haze, as
Boyar stood on his hind feet and tried to face the buckboard, recognized
the black horse as Louise's saddle animal. He took a firmer grip on the
seat and looked at Collie. The young man seemed to be enjoying himself.
There wasn't a line of worry on his clean-cut face.

"Pretty lively," said the doctor.

Collie, with his foot on the brake and both arms rigid, nodded.
Moonstone Canon Trail was not a boulevard. He was not to be lured into
conversation. He was giving his whole mind and all of his ma