fficult for the girls to force their ponies closer to the dying bull.

Therefore, after all, Ruth had to abandon her lariat, tying the end of
it to a tree and by this means keeping the bull from sinking out of
sight after she had put a merciful bullet into him.

As they rode near the Hubbell Ranch they stopped and told of their
adventure at the swamp, and a party of the boys rode out and saved both
bear and bull meat from the coyotes or from cougars that sometimes came
down from the hills.

The three girls had not been idly riding about the country during these
several days which had been punctuated, as it were, with the adventure
of the bull and the bear. That very day they had found the canyon which
Mr. Hammond and the director had been hoping to find and use in filming
some of the most thrilling scenes of "Brighteyes."

As Ruth was the writer of the scenario it was natural that she should be
quite capable of choosing the location. The lovely and sheltered canyon
offered all that was needed for the taking of the scenes indicated.

The girls went back the next day, taking Mr. Hammond with them. This
time they merely glanced at the spot where the bear and the bull had
died, and they did not visit the family of nesters at all. The shadowy
mouth of the canyon, its sides running up steeply into the hills, was
long in sight before the little cavalcade reached it.

From the mouth of it Mr. Hammond could not judge if Ruth's selection of
locality was a wise one. Certain natural attributes were necessary to
fit the needs of the story she had written. When, after they had ridden
a couple of miles up the canyon, he saw the cliff path and the lip of
the overhanging rock on which the hero of the story and _Brighteyes_'
Indian lover were to struggle, he proclaimed himself satisfied.

"You've got it, I do believe," the producer declared. "This will delight
Jim Hooley, I am sure. We can stake out a net down here under that rock
so if either or both the boys fall, they will land all right. It will be
some stunt picture, and no mistake!"

He wanted to look around the place, however, before riding back, and the
girls dismounted too. The bottom of the canyon was a smooth lawn--the
grass still green. For although the tang of winter was now in the air
even at noon, the weather had been remarkably pleasant. Only on the
distant heights had the snow fallen, and not much there.

There was a silvery stream wandering through the meadow ov