ilted his head a little and looked down at the bluff beneath
him. The game was beginning. He must get down that bluff and overtake
those specks and drive them somewhere. He glanced up and down the
bluff to see if a better trail offered. Billy Louise laughed
understandingly.

"It's this or nothing, Blue. Looks pretty fierce, all right, doesn't
it? Of course, if you're going to make a perfect lady get off and
walk--"

Blue snuffed at the ledge with his neck craned. The rim-rock had
crumbled and sunk low into the bluff, like a too rich pie-crust when
the oven is not quite hot enough. From a ten- or fifteen-foot wall it
shrunk here to a three-foot ledge. And below the rocks and bowlders
were not actually piled on top of one another; there were clear spaces
where a wary, wise, old cow-horse might possibly pick his way.

Blue chose his trail and crumpled at the knees with his hoofs on the
very edge of the ledge; went down with a cat-jump and landed with all
four feet planted close together. He had no mind to go on sliding in
spite of himself, and the bluff was certainly steep enough to excuse a
bungle.

"So far so good." Billy Louise glanced ruefully back at the ledge.
"We're down; but how the deuce do you reckon we'll get up again?"

Blue was not worrying about that part. He went on, picking his way
carefully among the bowlders, with his nose close to earth, setting his
hindlegs stiffly and tobogganing down loose, shale slopes. Billy
Louise sat easily in the saddle and enjoyed it all. She was making up
in big doses for the drab dullness of those hospital weeks. She ought
to walk down the bluff, for this was dangerous play; but she craved
danger as an antidote to that shut-in life of petty rules and
regulations.

It was with a distinct air of triumph that Blue reached the bottom,
even though he slid the last forty feet on his haunches and landed
belly-deep in a soft snow-bank. It was with triumph to match his perky
ears that Billy Louise leaned and slapped him on the neck. "We made
it!" she cried, "and I didn't have to walk a step, did I, Blue? You're
there with the goods, all right!"

Blue scrambled out of the bank to firm footing on the ripened grass of
the bottom, and with a toss of his head set off in a swinging lope,
swerving now and then to avoid a badger hole or a half-sunken rock.
They had done something new, those two; they had reached a place where
neither had ever been before, and Blue ac