“Did you like my legend?” she asked, as the ponies, foot-bunched, minced down the steepest of the trail.

“Very much; all but the moral.”

“Don’t you want to die?”

“Not a bit.”

“Then I’ll have to.”

“That would be the same thing.”

And Bennington dared talk in this way, for the next day began the
Pioneer’s Picnic, and lately she had been very kind.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PIONEER’S PICNIC

The Lawtons were not going to the picnic.  Bennington was to take Mary down to Rapid, where the girl was to stay with a certain Dr. McPherson of the School of Mines.

An early start was accomplished.  They rode down the gulch through the dwarf oaks, past the farthermost point, and so out into the hard level dirt road of Battle Creek canon.  Beyond were the pines, and a rugged road, flint-edged, full of dips and rises, turns and twists, hovering on edges, or bosoming itself in deep rock-strewn cuts.  Mary’s little pony cantered recklessly through it all, scampering along like a playful dog after a stone, leading Bennington’s larger animal by several feet.  He had full leisure to notice the regular flop of the Tam o’Shanter over the lighter dance of the hair, the increasing rosiness of the cheeks dimpled into almost continual laughter, to catch stray snatches of gay little remarks thrown out at random as they tore along.  After a time they drew out from the shadow of the pines into the clearing at Rockerville, where the hydraulic “giants” had eaten away the hill-sides, and left in them ugly unhealed sores.  Then more rough pine-shadowed roads, from which occasionally would open for a moment broad vistas of endless glades, clear as parks, breathless descents, or sharp steep cuts at the bottom of which Spring Creek, or as much of it as was not turned into the Rockerville sluices, brawled or idled along.  It was time for lunch, so they dismounted near a deep still pool and ate.  The ponies cropped the sparse grasses, or twisted on their backs, all four legs in the air.  Squirrels chattered and scolded overhead.  Some of the indigo-coloured jays of the lowlands shot in long level flight between the trees.  The girl and the boy helped each other, hindered each other, playing here and there near the Question, but swerving always deliciously just in time.

After lunch, more riding through more pines.  The road dipped strongly once, then again; and then abruptly the forest ceased, and they found themselves cantering over broad rolling meadows knee-high with grasses, from which meadow larks rose in all directions like grasshoppers.  Soon after they passed the canvas “schooners” of some who had started the evening before.  Down the next long slope the ponies dropped cautiously with bunched feet and tentative steps.  Spring Creek was forded for the last time, another steep grassy hill was surmounted, and they looked abroad into Rapid Valley and over to the prairie beyond.