g shears or sharp knives, but the
berries grew high, and Old Dolliver's boy had to climb for them.

Then the accident occurred--a totally unexpected and unlooked for
accident. In stepping out on a high branch, the boy slipped, fell, and
came down to the ground, hitting each intervening limb, and so saving his
life, but dashing every bit of breath from his lungs, it seemed!

The girls ran together, screaming. The teacher almost fainted. Old
Dolliver stooped over the fallen boy and wiped the blood from his lips.

"Don't tech him!" he croaked. "He's broke ev'ry bone in his body, I make
no doubt. An' he'd oughter have a doctor----"

"I'll get one," said Ann Hicks, briskly, in the old man's ear. "Where's
the nearest--and the best?"

"Doc Haverly at Lumberton."

"I'll get him."

"It's six miles, Miss. You'd never walk it. I'll take one of the
teams----"

"You stay with him," jerked out Ann. "I can ride."

"Ride? Them ain't ridin' hosses, Miss," declared Old Dolliver.

"If a horse has got four legs he can be ridden," declared the girl from
the ranch, succinctly.

"Take the off one on my team, then----"

"That old plug? I guess not!" exclaimed Ann, and was off.

She unharnessed one of the pitching, snapping mustangs. "Whoa--easy! You
wouldn't bite me, you know," she crooned, and the mustang thrust forward
his ears and listened.

She dropped off the heavy harness. The bridle she allowed to remain, but
there was no saddle. The English teacher came to her senses, suddenly.

"That creature will kill you!" she cried, seeing what Ann was about.

"Then he'll be the first horse that ever did it," drawled Ann. "Hi, yi,
yi! We're off!"

To the horror of the teacher, to the surprise of Old Dolliver, and to the
delight of the other girls, Ann Hicks swung herself astride of the dancing
pony, dug her heels into his ribs, and the next moment had darted out of
sight down the wood road.

CHAPTER XI

A NUMBER OF THINGS

There may have been good reason for the teacher to be horrified, but how
else was the mustang to be ridden? Ann was a big girl to go tearing
through the roads and 'way into Lumberton astride a horse. Without a
saddle and curb, however, she could not otherwise have clung to him.

Just now haste was imperative. She had a picture in her mind, all the way,
of that boy lying in the snow, his face so pallid and the bloody foam upon
his lips.

In twenty-five minutes she was at the physician's gate. Sh