“Pile on to him now, while I hold him still.  Or shall I pick you up and put you on?” Starr smiled while he said it, but there was a look in his eyes and around his mouth that made Helen May yield suddenly.

By her awkwardness Starr and Rabbit both knew that she had probably never before attempted to mount a horse.  By the set of her lips Starr knew that she was afraid, but that she would break her neck before she would confess her fear.  He liked her for that, and he was glad to see that Rabbit understood the case and drew upon his reserve of patience and good nature, standing like a rock until Helen May was settled in the saddle and Starr had turned the stirrups on their sides in the leather so that they would come nearer being the right length for her.  Starr’s hand sliding affectionately up Rabbit’s neck and resting a moment on his jaw was all the assurance Rabbit needed that everything was all right.

“Now, just leave the reins loose, and let Rabbit come along to please himself,” Starr instructed her quietly.  “He’ll follow me, and he’ll pick his own trail.  You don’t have to do a thing but sit there and take it easy.  He’ll do the rest.”

Helen May looked at him doubtfully, but she did not say anything.  She braced herself in the stirrups, took a firm grip of the saddlehorn with one hand, and waited for what might befall.  She had no fear of Starr, no further uneasiness over the coming night, the loneliness, the goats, or anything else.  She felt as irresponsible, as safe, as any sheltered woman in her own home.  I did not say she felt serene; she did not know yet how the horse would perform; but she seemed to lay that responsibility also on Starr’s capable shoulders.

They moved off quietly enough, Starr afoot and driving the goats, Rabbit picking his way after him in leisurely fashion.  So they crossed the arroyo mouth and climbed the ragged lip of its western side and traveled straight toward the flaming eye of the sun that seemed now to have winked itself nearly shut.  The goats for some inexplicable reason showed no further disposition to go in nine different directions at once.  Helen May relaxed from her stiff-muscled posture and began to experiment a little with the reins.

“Why, he steers easier than an automobile!” she exclaimed suddenly.  “You just think which way you want to go, almost, and he does it.  And you don’t have to pull the lines the least bit, do you?”

Starr delayed his answer until he had made sure that she was not irritating Rabbit with a too-officious guidance.  When he saw that she was holding the reins loosely as he had told her to do, and was merely laying the weight of a rein on one side of the neck and then on the other, he smiled.

“I guess you’ve rode before,” he hazarded.  “The way you neck-rein—­”

“No, honest.  But my chum’s brother had a big six, and Sundays he used to let me fuss with it, away out where the road was clear.  It steered just like this horse; just as easy, I mean.  I—­why, see!  I just wondered if he’d go to the right of that bush, and he turned that way just as if I’d told him to.  Can you beat that?”