hird of the way, and stopped just in time to save herself
from going over a sheer wall of rocks--stopped because a rock which she
dislodged with her foot rolled down the slope a few feet, gave a leap
into space and disappeared.

A step at a time Miss Allen crept down to where the rock had bounced off
into nothingness, and gave one look and crouched close to the earth.
A hundred feet, it must be, straight down. After the first shock she
looked to the right and the left and saw that she must go back, and down
upon the other side.

Away down there at the bottom, the Kid sat still on his horse and stared
up at her. And Miss Allen calling to him that she would come, started
back up to the peak.

CHAPTER 18. THE LONG WAY ROUND

Miss Allen turned to yell encouragingly to the Kid, and she saw that he
was going on slowly, his head turned to watch her. She told him to wait
where he was, and she would come around the mountain and get him and
take him home. "Do you hear me, baby?" she asked imploringly after she
had told him just what she meant to do. "Answer me, baby!"

"I ain't a baby!" his voice came faintly shrill after a minute. "I'm a
rell ole cowpuncher."

Miss Allen thought that was what he said, but at the time she did not
quite understand, except his denial of being a baby; that was clear
enough. She turned to the climb, feeling that she must hurry if she
expected to get him and take him home before dark. She knew that every
minute was precious and must not be wasted. It was well after noon--she
had forgotten to eat her lunch, but her watch said it was nearly one
o'clock already. She had no idea how far she had ridden, but she thought
it must be twelve miles at least.

She had no idea, either, how far she had run down the butte to the
cliff--until she began to climb back. Every rod or so she stopped to
rest and to look back and to call to the Kid who seemed such a tiny mite
of humanity among these huge peaks and fearsome gorges. He seemed to be
watching her very closely always when she looked she could see the pink
blur of his little upturned face. She must hurry. Oh, if she could only
send a wireless to his mother! Human inventions fell far short of the
big needs, after all, she thought as she toiled upward.

From the top of the peak she could see the hazy outline of the Bear
Paws, and she knew just about where the Flying U Coulee lay. She
imagined that she could distinguish the line of its bluff in the far