uldn't it?"

The two girls looked at each other; their eyes sparkled already with
a fearful joy,--they drew a long breath of guilty anticipation. For a
moment Susy even believed in her imaginary sketch of Pedro's devotion.

"Papa said I wasn't to use the whip except in a case of necessity,"
she said, reaching for the slender silver-handled toy, and setting
her pretty lips together with the added determination of disobedience.
"G'long!"--and she laid the lash smartly on the shining backs of the
animals.

They were wiry, slender brutes of Mojave Indian blood, only lately
broken to harness, and still undisciplined in temper. The lash sent
them rearing into the air, where, forgetting themselves in the slackened
traces and loose reins, they came down with a succession of bounds that
brought the light buggy leaping after them with its wheels scarcely
touching the ground. That unlucky lash had knocked away the bonds of
a few months' servitude and sent the half-broken brutes instinctively
careering with arched backs and kicking heels into the field towards the
nearest cover.

Mary Rogers cast a hurried glance over her shoulder. Alas, they had
not calculated on the insidious levels of the terraced plain, and the
faithful Pedro had suddenly disappeared; the intervention of six inches
of rising wild oats had wiped him out of the prospect and their possible
salvation as completely as if he had been miles away. Nevertheless,
the girls were not frightened; perhaps they had not time. There was,
however, the briefest interval for the most dominant of feminine
emotions, and it was taken advantage of by Susy.

"It was all YOUR fault, dear!" she gasped, as the forewheels of the
buggy, dropping into a gopher rut, suddenly tilted up the back of the
vehicle and shot its fair occupants into the yielding palisades of dusty
grain. The shock detached the whiffletree from the splinter-bar, snapped
the light pole, and, turning the now thoroughly frightened animals again
from their course, sent them, goaded by the clattering fragments, flying
down the turnpike. Half a mile farther on they overtook the gleaming
white canvas hood of a slowly moving wagon drawn by two oxen, and,
swerving again, the nearer pony stepped upon a trailing trace and
ingloriously ended their career by rolling himself and his companion in
the dust at the very feet of the peacefully plodding team.

Equally harmless and inglorious was the catastrophe of Susy and her
frie