side to side that he might watch the thing that
menaced him, heedless of the fact that danger might lie ahead of him
also. Lorraine knew that he was running senselessly, that he might
leave the trail at any bend and go rolling into the canyon.

A sense of unreality seized her. It could not be deadly earnest, she
thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully
in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director,
and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and
counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little
farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead
would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had
"put it over."

She looked over her shoulder and saw them still coming. It was real.
It was terribly real, the way that team was fleeing down the grade.
She had never seen anything like that before, never seen horses so
frantically trying to run from the swaying load behind them. Always,
she had been accustomed to moderation in the pace and a slowed camera
to speed up the action on the screen. Yellowjacket, too--she had never
ridden at that terrific speed down hill. Twice she lost a stirrup and
grabbed the saddle horn to save herself from going over his head.

They neared a sharp turn, and it took all her strength to pull her
horse to the inside and save him from plunging off down the canyon's
side. The nose of the hill hid for a moment her dad, and in that
moment she heard a crash and knew what had happened. But she could not
stop; Yellowjacket had his ears laid back flat on his senseless head,
and the bit clamped tight in his teeth.

She heard the crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon.
There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the
sharp staccato of pounding hoofs.

CHAPTER XI

SWAN TALKS WITH HIS THOUGHTS

Lorraine, following instinct rather than thought, pulled Yellowjacket
into the first opening that presented itself. This was a narrow,
rather precipitous gully that seamed the slope just beyond the bend.
The bushes there whipped her head and shoulders cruelly as the horse
forged in among them, but they trapped him effectually where the gully
narrowed to a point. He stopped perforce, and Lorraine was out of the
saddle and running down to the trail before she quite realised what she
was doing.

At the bend she looked down, saw the marks