“And so the party moved on for an hour or two, with the roguish young roughnecks cutting up merrily at all times, pretending to be cowboys coming to town on pay day, swinging their hats, giving the long yell, and doing roughriding to cut each other away from the side of Mr. D. every now and then, with a noisy laugh of good nature to hide the poisoned dagger.  Daisy Estelle Maybury is an awful good rider, too, and got next to the hero about every time she wanted to.  Poor thing, if she only knew that once she gets off a horse in ’em it makes all the difference in the world.

“The dark city stranger seemed to enjoy it fine, all this noise and cutting up and cowboy antics like they was just a lot of high-spirited young men together, but I never weakened in my faith for one minute.  ‘Laugh on, my proud beauties,’ I says, ’but a time will come, just as sure as you look and act like a passel of healthy boys.’  And you bet it did.

“We hadn’t got halfway to Stender’s Spring till Mr. D. got off to tighten his cinch, and then he sort of drifted back to where Hetty and I was.  I dropped back still farther to where a good chaperone ought to be and he rode in beside Hetty.  The trail was too narrow then for the rest to come back after their prey, so they had to carry on the rough work among themselves.

“Hetty acted perfect.  She had a pensive, withdrawn look—­’aloof,’ I guess the word is—­like she was too tender a flower, too fine for this rough stuff, and had ought to be in the home that minute telling a fairy story to the little ones gathered at her decently clad knee.  I don’t know how she done it, but she put that impression over.  And she tells Mr. D. that in spite of her quiet, studious tastes she had resolved to come on this picnic because she loves Nature oh! so dearly, the birds and the wild flowers and the great rugged trees that have their message for man if he will but listen with an understanding heart—­didn’t Mr. D. think so, or did he?  But not too much of this dear old Nature stuff, which can be easy overdone with a healthy man; just enough to show there was hidden depths in her nature that every one couldn’t find.

“Then on to silly questions about does a horse lie down when it goes to sleep each night after its hard day’s labour, and isn’t her horse’s sash too tight, and what a pretty fetlock he has, so long and thick and brown—­Oh, do you call that the mane?  How absurd of poor little me!  Mr. Daggett knows just everything, doesn’t he?  He’s perfectly terrifying.  And where in the world did he ever learn to ride so stunningly, like one of those dare-devils in a Wild West entertainment?  If her own naughty, naughty horse tries to throw her on the ground again where he can bite her she’ll just have Mr. D. ride the nassy ole sing and teach him better manners, so she will.  There now!  He must have heard that—­just see him move his funny ears—­don’t tell her that horses can’t understand things that are said.