ss to catch her, to beat her in
that wonderful chase, to show her and Dale what there really was in the
depths of Helen Rayner.

Her ambition was to be short-lived, she divined from the lay of the land
ahead, but the ride she lived then for a flying mile was something that
would always blanch her cheeks and prick her skin in remembrance.

The open ground was only too short. That thundering pace soon brought
Helen's horse to the timber. Here it took all her strength to check his
headlong flight over deadfalls and between small jack-pines. Helen lost
sight of Bo, and she realized it would take all her wits to keep from
getting lost. She had to follow the trail, and in some places it was
hard to see from horseback.

Besides, her horse was mettlesome, thoroughly aroused, and he wanted a
free rein and his own way. Helen tried that, only to lose the trail and
to get sundry knocks from trees and branches. She could not hear the
hound, nor Dale. The pines were small, close together, and tough. They
were hard to bend. Helen hurt her hands, scratched her face, barked her
knees. The horse formed a habit suddenly of deciding to go the way he
liked instead of the way Helen guided him, and when he plunged between
saplings too close to permit easy passage it was exceedingly hard on
her. That did not make any difference to Helen. Once worked into a
frenzy, her blood stayed at high pressure. She did not argue with
herself about a need of desperate hurry. Even a blow on the head that
nearly blinded her did not in the least retard her. The horse could
hardly be held, and not at all in the few open places.

At last Helen reached another slope. Coming out upon canuon rim, she
heard Dale's clear call, far down, and Bo's answering peal, high and
piercing, with its note of exultant wildness. Helen also heard the bear
and the hound fighting at the bottom of this canuon.

Here Helen again missed the tracks made by Dale and Bo. The descent
looked impassable. She rode back along the rim, then forward. Finally
she found where the ground had been plowed deep by hoofs, down over
little banks. Helen's horse balked at these jumps. When she goaded him
over them she went forward on his neck. It seemed like riding straight
downhill. The mad spirit of that chase grew more stingingly keen to
Helen as the obstacles grew. Then, once more the bay of the hound and
the bawl of the bear made a demon of her horse. He snorted a shrill
defiance. He plunged with