sappear in the green.

Again on a bare patch of ground Dale pointed down. Helen saw big round
tracks, toeing in a little, that gave her a chill. She knew these were
grizzly tracks.

Hard riding was not possible on this ridge crest, a fact that gave Helen
time to catch her breath. At length, coming out upon the very summit
of the mountain, Dale heard the hound. Helen's eyes feasted afar upon
a wild scene of rugged grandeur, before she looked down on this western
slope at her feet to see bare, gradual descent, leading down to sparsely
wooded bench and on to deep-green canuon.

"Ride hard now!" yelled Dale. "I see Bo, an' I'll have to ride to catch
her."

Dale spurred down the slope. Helen rode in his tracks and, though she
plunged so fast that she felt her hair stand up with fright, she saw him
draw away from her. Sometimes her horse slid on his haunches for a
few yards, and at these hazardous moments she got her feet out of the
stirrups so as to fall free from him if he went down. She let him choose
the way, while she gazed ahead at Dale, and then farther on, in the hope
of seeing Bo. At last she was rewarded. Far Down the wooded bench she
saw a gray flash of the little mustang and a bright glint of Bo's hair.
Her heart swelled. Dale would soon overhaul Bo and come between her and
peril. And on the instant, though Helen was unconscious of it then,
a remarkable change came over her spirit. Fear left her. And a hot,
exalting, incomprehensible something took possession of her.

She let the horse run, and when he had plunged to the foot of that slope
of soft ground he broke out across the open bench at a pace that made
the wind bite Helen's cheeks and roar in her ears. She lost sight of
Dale. It gave her a strange, grim exultance. She bent her eager gaze to
find the tracks of his horse, and she found them. Also she made out the
tracks of Bo's mustang and the bear and the hound. Her horse, scenting
game, perhaps, and afraid to be left alone, settled into a fleet and
powerful stride, sailing over logs and brush. That open bench had looked
short, but it was long, and Helen rode down the gradual descent at
breakneck speed. She would not be left behind. She had awakened to a
heedlessness of risk. Something burned steadily within her. A grim, hard
anger of joy! When she saw, far down another open, gradual descent, that
Dale had passed Bo and that Bo was riding the little mustang as never
before, then Helen flamed with a madne