第50章 CHAPTER XI(3)

Helen urged her horse after them and they broke across a comer of the swale to the woods. Pedro was running straight, with his nose high. He let out one short bark. He headed into the woods, with Dale not far behind. Helen was on one of Dale's best horses, but that fact scarcely manifested itself, because the others began to increase their lead.

They entered the woods. It was open, and fairly good going.

Bo's horse ran as fast in the woods as he did in the open.

That frightened Helen and she yelled to Bo to hold him in.

She yelled to deaf ears. That was Bo's great risk -- she did not intend to be careful. Suddenly the forest rang with Dale's encouraging yell, meant to aid the girls in following him. Helen's horse caught the spirit of the chase. He gained somewhat on Bo, hurdling logs, sometimes two at once.

Helen's blood leaped with a strange excitement, utterly unfamiliar and as utterly resistless. Yet her natural fear, and the intelligence that reckoned with the foolish risk of this ride, shared alike in her sum of sensations. She tried to remember Dale's caution about dodging branches and snags, and sliding her knees back to avoid knocks from trees. She barely missed some frightful reaching branches. She received a hard knock, then another, that unseated her, but frantically she held on and slid back, and at the end of a long run through comparatively open forest she got a stinging blow in the face from a far-spreading branch of pine. Bo missed, by what seemed only an inch, a solid snag that would have broken her in two. Both Pedro and Dale got out of Helen's sight. Then Helen, as she began to lose Bo, felt that she would rather run greater risks than be left behind to get lost in the forest, and she urged her horse.

Dale's yell pealed back. Then it seemed even more thrilling to follow by sound than by sight. Wind and brush tore at her. The air was heavily pungent with odor of pine. Helen heard a wild, full bay of the hound, ringing back, full of savage eagerness, and she believed Pedro had roused out the lion from some covert. It lent more stir to her blood and it surely urged her horse on faster.

Then the swift pace slackened. A windfall of timber delayed Helen. She caught a glimpse of Dale far ahead, climbing a slope. The forest seemed full of his ringing yell. Helen strangely wished for level ground and the former swift motion. Next she saw Bo working down to the right, and Dale's yell now came from that direction. Helen followed, got out of the timber, and made better time on a gradual slope down to another park.

When she reached the open she saw Bo almost across this narrow open ground. Here Helen did not need to urge her mount. He snorted and plunged at the level and he got to going so fast that Helen would have screamed aloud in mingled fear and delight if she had not been breathless.

Her horse had the bad luck to cross soft ground. He went to his knees and Helen sailed out of the saddle over his head.

Soft willows and wet grass broke her fall. She was surprised to find herself unhurt. Up she bounded and certainly did not know this new Helen Rayner. Her horse was coming, and he had patience with her, but he wanted to hurry. Helen made the quickest mount of her experience and somehow felt a pride in it. She would tell Bo that. But just then Bo flashed into the woods out of sight. Helen fairly charged into that green foliage, breaking brush and branches. She broke through into open forest. Bo was inside, riding down an aisle between pines and spruces. At that juncture Helen heard Dale's melodious yell near at hand. Coming into still more open forest, with rocks here and there, she saw Dale dismounted under a pine, and Pedro standing with fore paws upon the tree-trunk, and then high up on a branch a huge tawny colored lion, just like Tom.

Bo's horse slowed up and showed fear, but he kept on as far as Dale's horse. But Helen's refused to go any nearer. She had difficulty in halting him. Presently she dismounted and, throwing her bridle over a stump, she ran on, panting and fearful, yet tingling all over, up to her sister and Dale.

"Nell, you did pretty good for a tenderfoot," was Bo's greeting.

"It was a fine chase," said Dale. "You both rode well. Iwish you could have seen the lion on the ground. He bounded -- great long bounds with his tail up in the air -- very funny. An' Pedro almost caught up with him. That scared me, because he would have killed the hound. Pedro was close to him when he treed. An' there he is -- the yellow deer-killer. He's a male an' full grown."With that Dale pulled his rifle from its saddle-sheath and looked expectantly at Bo. But she was gazing with great interest and admiration up at the lion.

"Isn't he just beautiful?" she burst out. "Oh, look at him spit! Just like a cat! Dale, he looks afraid he might fall off.""He sure does. Lions are never sure of their balance in a tree. But I never saw one make a misstep. He knows he doesn't belong there."To Helen the lion looked splendid perched up there. He was long and round and graceful and tawny. His tongue hung out and his plump sides heaved, showing what a quick, hard run he had been driven to. What struck Helen most forcibly about him was something in his face as he looked down at the hound. He was scared. He realized his peril. It was not possible for Helen to watch him killed, yet she could not bring herself to beg Bo not to shoot. Helen confessed she was a tenderfoot.

"Get down, Bo, an' let's see how good a shot you are, said Dale. Bo slowly withdrew her fascinated gaze from the lion and looked with a rueful smile at Dale.

"I've changed my mind. I said I would kill him, but now Ican't. He looks so -- so different from what I'd imagined."Dale's answer was a rare smile of understanding and approval that warmed Helen's heart toward him. All the same, he was amused. Sheathing the gun, he mounted his horse.

"Come on, Pedro," he called. "Come, I tell you," he added, sharply, "Well, girls, we treed him, anyhow, an, it was fun.