head of the horses, down the
road; then to one side and the other of it impartially, covering them.
Only what knocked me was that there was no sign of a wolf either before
or beside us on the narrow, black-dark highway,--and that she was
shooting into the jungle-thick swamp hemlocks on each side of it at the
breast height of a man!

And at a single ghastly, smothered cry I burst out, "By gad, it _is_
men!" For I knew she had shot one. I listened, over the rattling roll of
the wheels on the corduroy, but there was no second cry. There was only
what seemed dead silence after the thunder of the wheels on the uneven
logs, as we swept out on the level road that led straight to the Halfway
stable. It was light, too, after the dead blackness of the narrow swamp
road. I saw the girl turn on Danny carelessly, as if she were in a
saddle, and wave her hand forward for me to keep going. But the only
thought I had was to get her back into the wagon. Not because I was
afraid of a smash, for if the mended pole had held in that crazy,
tearing gallop from the top of the hill it would hold till the Halfway.
I just wanted her safe beside me. I had had enough of seeing a girl do
stunts that stopped my blood. "Come back out of that," I shouted at her;
"I'm going to stop the horses--and you come _here_!"

She motioned forward, crying out something unintelligible. But before I
could pull up the horses, before I even guessed what she meant to do, I
saw her stand up on Danny's back, spring from his rump, and,--land
lightly in the wagon!

It may be true that I damned her up in heaps from sheer fright; I know I
asked fiercely if she wanted to kill herself. She said no, quite coolly.
Only that that pole would not bear any more running on it, or the jerk
of a sudden stop either: it was that she had called out to me.

"Neither can I bear any more--of tricks that might lose your life to
save me and my miserable gold," I said angrily. "Sit down this minute
and wrap that coat round you." I had ceased to care that it was
Dudley's. "It's bitter cold. And there's the light at the Halfway!"

"What I did wasn't anything--for me," my dream girl retorted oddly. "And
I don't know that it was altogether to save you, Mr. Stretton, or your
gold either, that you thought I meant to steal. I was pretty afraid for
myself, with those wolves!"

I was too raging with myself to answer. Of course it had not been she
who had meant to steal my gold; and no matter how