back and kicked
viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail
without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into
a juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very
permanently placed there. Lorraine stepped off on the uphill side of
him, thanked her lucky stars she had not broken a leg, and tried to
reassure Yellowjacket and to persuade him that no real harm had been
done him. Straightway she discovered that Yellowjacket had a mind of
his own and that a pessimistic mind. He refused to scramble back into
the trail, preferring to sit where he was, or since Lorraine made that
too uncomfortable, to stand where he had been sitting. Yellowjacket, I
may explain, owned a Roman nose, a pendulous lower lip and drooping
eyelids. Those who know horses will understand.

By the time Lorraine had bullied and cajoled him into making a somewhat
circuitous route to the road, where he finally appeared some distance
above the point of his descent, Brit was there, hitching the team to
the wagon.

"What yuh doing up there?" he wanted to know, looking up with some
astonishment.

Lorraine furnished him with details and her opinion of both Caroline
and Yellowjacket. "I simply refuse to ride this comedy animal another
mile," she declared with some heat. "I'll drive the team and you can
ride him home, or he can be tied on behind the wagon."

"He won't lead," Brit objected. "Yeller's all right if you make up
your mind to a few failin's. You go ahead and ride him home. You sure
can't drive this team."

"I can!" Lorraine contended. "I've driven four horses--I guess I can
drive two, all right."

"Well, you ain't going to," Brit stated with a flat finality that
abruptly ended the argument.

Lorraine had never before been really angry with her father. She
struck Yellowjacket with her quirt and sent him sidling past the wagon
and the tricky Caroline, too stubborn to answer her dad when he called
after her that she had better ride behind the load. She went on,
making Yellowjacket trot when he did not want to trot down hill.

Behind her she heard the chuck-chuck of the loaded wagon. Far ahead
she heard some one whistling a high, sweet melody which had the queer,
minor strains of some old folk song. For just a few bars she heard it,
and then it was stilled, and the road dipping steeply before her seemed
very lonely, its emptiness cooling her brief anger to a depression that
had