e team when Caroline humped her back and kicked
viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail
without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into a
juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very permanently
placed there. Lorraine stepped off on the uphill side of him, thanked
her lucky stars she had not broken a leg, and tried to reassure
Yellowjacket and to persuade him that no real harm had been done him.
Straightway she discovered that Yellowjacket had a mind of his own and
that a pessimistic mind. He refused to scramble back into the trail,
preferring to sit where he was, or since Lorraine made that too
uncomfortable, to stand where he had been sitting. Yellowjacket, I may
explain, owned a Roman nose, a pendulous lower lip and drooping eyelids.
Those who know horses will understand.

By the time Lorraine had bullied and cajoled him into making a somewhat
circuitous route to the road, where he finally appeared some distance
above the point of his descent, Brit was there, hitching the team to the
wagon.

"What yuh doing up there?" he wanted to know, looking up with some
astonishment.

Lorraine furnished him with details and her opinion of both Caroline and
Yellow jacket. "I simply refuse to ride this comedy animal another
mile," she declared with some heat. "I'll drive the team and you can
ride him home, or he can be tied on behind the wagon."

"He won't lead," Brit objected. "Yeller's all right if you make up your
mind to a few failin's. You go ahead and ride him home. You sure can't
drive this team."

"I can!" Lorraine contended. "I've driven four horses--I guess I can
drive two, all right."

"Well, you ain't going to," Brit stated with a flat finality that
abruptly ended the argument.

Lorraine had never before been really angry with her father. She struck
Yellowjacket with her quirt and sent him sidling past the wagon and the
tricky Caroline, too stubborn to answer her dad when he called after her
that she had better ride behind the load. She went on, making
Yellowjacket trot when he did not want to trot down hill.

Behind her she heard the chuck-chuck of the loaded wagon. Far ahead she
heard some one whistling a high, sweet melody which had the queer, minor
strains of some old folk song. For just a few bars she heard it, and
then it was stilled, and the road dipping steeply before her seemed very
lonely, its emptiness cooling her brief anger to a depr