“And the poor fellow suffers so.  Some lasting harm may be done if we don’t get a surgeon quickly.  Where does Dr. Pevy live?” demanded Betty urgently.

The fact that the injured hostler was really in great pain and possibly in some danger, caused Mrs. Candace finally to agree to the girl’s demand.  Betty ran out with Ida to get the mare and saddle her.  Betty was not dressed properly for such a venture as this; but she wore warm undergarments, and stout shoes.

The black mare was so gentle with all her spirit and fire that Betty did not feel any fear.  She and Ida led the beautiful creature out upon the barn floor and found saddle and bridle for her.  In ten minutes Betty was astride the mare and Ida led her out of the stable.

Mrs. Candace had already given Betty clear directions regarding the way to Dr. Pevy’s; but she now stood on the door-stone and called repetitions of these directions after her.

Bobby waved her fur piece and shouted encouragement too.  But Ida Bellethorne ran into the house to attend the injured Hunchie and did not watch Betty and the black mare out of sight as the others did.

CHAPTER XX

BETTY’S RIDE

When Betty Gordon and her young friends had set out from Mountain Camp on their snowshoe hike the sun shone brilliantly and every ice-covered branch and fence-rail sparkled as though bedewed with diamond dust.  Now that it was drawing toward noon the sky was overcast again and the wind, had Betty stopped to listen to it, might be heard mourning in the tops of the pines.

But Ida Bellethorne, the black mare, gave Betty no opportunity of stopping to listen to the wind mourn.  No, indeed!  The girl had all she could do for the first mile or two to keep her saddle and cling to the reins.

When first they set forth from the Candace stables the mare went gingerly enough for a few rods.  She seemed to know that the frozen crust of the old drifts just beneath the loose snow was perilous.

But her sharpened calks gave her a grip on the frozen snow that the wise mare quickly understood.  She lengthened her stride.  She gathered speed.  And once getting her usual swift gait, with expanded nostrils and erect ears, she skimmed over the frozen way as a swallow skims the air.  Betty had never traveled so fast in her life except in a speeding automobile.

She could easily believe that Ida Bellethorne had broken most of the track records of the English turf.  She might make track history here in the United States, if nothing happened to her!

Betty was wise enough to know that, had Mr. Candace been at home, even in this earnest need for a surgeon he would never have allowed the beautiful and valuable mare to have been used in this way.  But there was no other horse on the place that could be trusted to travel at any gait.

Ida Bellethorne certainly was traveling!  The speed, the keen rush of the wind past her, the need for haste and her own personal peril, all served to give Betty a veritable thrill.