wall, and turned back whence he had come. The Kid giggled a little over
the way he had fooled the pilgrim, and wished that the bunch had been
there to see him do it. He kept Silver galloping until he had reached
the other end of the level, and then he pulled him down to a walk and
let the reins drop loosely upon Silver's neck. That was what Daddy Chip
and the boys had told him he must do, next time he got lost and did not
know the way home. He must just let Silver go wherever he wanted to go,
and not try to guide him at all. Silver would go straight home; he had
the word of the whole bunch for that, and he believed it implicitly.

Silver looked back inquiringly at his small rider, hesitated and then
swung back up the coulee. The Kid was afraid that H. J. Owens would come
back and see him and cut off his ears if he went that way--but he did
not pull Silver back and make him go some other way, for all that. If
he left him alone, Silver would take him right straight home. Daddy Chip
and the boys said so. And he would tell them how mean that man was. They
would fix him, all right!

Halfway up the coulee Silver turned into a narrow gulch that seemed to
lead nowhere at all except into the side of a big, black-shadowed bluff.
Up on the hillside a coyote began to yap with a shrill staccato of
sounds that trailed off into a disconsolate whimper. The Kid looked
that way interestedly. He was not afraid of coyotes. They would not hurt
anyone; they were more scared than you were--the bunch had told him so.
He wished he could get a sight of him, though. He liked to see their
ears stick up and their noses stick out in a sharp point, and see them
drop their tails and go sliding away out of sight. When he was ten and
Daddy Chip gave him a gun, he would shoot coyotes and skin them his own
self.

The coyote yapped shrilly again, and the Kid wondered what his Doctor
Dell would say when he got home. He was terribly hungry, and he was
tired and wanted to go to bed. He wished the bunch would happen
along and fix that man. His heart swelled in his chest with rage and
disappointment when he thought of those baby bear cubs that were not
anywhere at all--because the man was just lying all the time. In spite
of himself the Kid cried whimperingly to himself while he rode slowly
up the gorge which Silver had chosen to follow because the reins were
drooping low alongside his neck and he might go where he pleased.

By and by the moon rose and lig