e Steve left us, to go to the house, while Oscar and I unloaded the
sleighs.

Suddenly I felt uncomfortable, for no reason in this world. The land
about us was rejoicing with the booming of that kind, warm wind, yet a
sharp uneasiness stopped me and forced me to raise my head. For
three-quarters of a circle nothing met my eyes but the vanishing
snow-drifts. I reached the house; nothing wrong there. Steve was
walking briskly out toward us, smoking his pipe. Then the corrals--all
right, number one, two, three, four--Lord have mercy!

"Oscar!" I shrieked, and snatched him to his feet. He rose, bewildered
and half angry, then looked to where I pointed.

Through the centre of number four corral tripped Sally, dear little
timid Sally, glad to be out in this lovely air, her eyes and mind on
Oscar doubtless, and in the same corral, shut off from her sight by a
projection of the sheds, stood Geronimo. And he saw her, too, for as
she waved a hand to us, he bared his great teeth and clashed them
together. The earth seemed to rock and sink from me. Every soul on
the ranch was told to keep away from the corral with the two buffalo
skulls over the gates, a warning sufficiently big and gruesome to stop
anyone. What fatal lapse of memory had struck the girl?

She was beyond help. We were all of two hundred yards away, and Steve
still farther; she was not a quarter of that from the brute. If we
shouted, if we moved, we might bring her end upon her--and such an end!
When I thought of that dainty, pretty little woman beneath those hoofs,
I felt a hideous sickness. The man beside me said, "My God! My
mistake!" A corral opened on each side of the box stall in which
Geronimo was confined. One of these was usually empty, a reserve. It
was into this that Oscar had turned the horse. The other was the
corral of the skulls.

Geronimo leaped out. The girl halted, stark, open-mouthed, every sign
of life stricken from her at a blow. Geronimo sprang high and snapped
at nothing, in evil play before the earnest. It was horrible. We
could do neither harm nor good now, so we ran for the spot. It was
down hill from us to them. I doubt that anything on two legs ever
covered distance as we did, for all the despair. Geronimo reared and
stood upon his hind feet, as straight as a man. He advanced, striking,
looming above his victim. "All over," I thought, and tried to take my
eyes away. I could not.

At that instant a white-h