o this place.

"I guess I won't say Russ did it," she decided. "It wouldn't be so. And
I expect right now he is hunting for me, and is worried 'most to death
about where I am. And daddy--and Mother Bunker! I guess they will want
to know where I've got to. This--this is just dreadful. Maybe I shall
have to stay here days and days! And what shall I ever eat, if I do?
And I haven't even any bed out here!"

The lost girl felt pretty bad. It seemed to her, now that she thought
more about it, that she was very ill used. Russ did not usually desert
her when she was in trouble. And Rose Bunker felt that she was in very
serious trouble now.

She sat down again in plain view of the lame coyote and cried a few more
tears. But what was the use of crying when there was nobody here to
care? The lame coyote had its own troubles, and although it watched her,
it did not care a thing about her.

"He is only afraid I might do something to hurt him," thought Rose. "And
I wouldn't do a thing to hurt the poor doggy. I wonder if he is
thirsty?"

The stream of water into which Rose had tumbled from Pinky's back was
only a few yards away, and perhaps the wounded coyote had been trying to
get to it before the little girl and the pony came to this place. But
the animal was too wary to go down to drink while Rose was in sight. And
fortunately there was nothing Rose could take water to the coyote in.
For she certainly would have tried to do that, if she could. She was
just that tender-hearted.

But it would have been unwise, for the coyote's teeth were as sharp as
they looked to be, and it would not have understood that the little girl
merely wished to help.

Rose sat and watched the beast, and the lame coyote crouched under the
bushes and watched her, and it grew into mid-afternoon. Rose felt very
sad indeed. She did not see how she could walk back to the ranch house,
even if she knew the way. And she could not understand why Russ did not
come for her.

Meanwhile Russ was urging his pinto pony as fast as he could after
Cowboy Jack and Daddy Bunker. They followed the regular wagon-track
through the valley and over the ridge which had now become quite
familiar to the little boy. They passed the cabin by the stream and then
came to the knoll from which that morning Russ and Rose had seen the
moving picture cameras.

But neither those machines nor the men who worked them nor the Indians
on the hillside were now in sight. Cowboy Jack, howev