The assembled girls laughed.  But Ann Hicks was still seriously inclined not to go into the woods, although she had no idea of telling a fib about it.  And because she was too proud to say to the teacher in charge that she feared Miss Mitchell’s tongue, the western girl joined the greens-gathering party at the very last minute.

There were two four-seated sleighs, for there was a hard-packed white track into the woods toward Triton Lake.  Old Dolliver drove one, and his helper manned the other.  The English teacher was in charge.  She hoped to find bushels of holly berries and cedar buds as well as the materials for wreaths.

One pair of the horses was western—­high-spirited, hard-bitted mustangs.  Ann Hicks recognized them before she got into the sleigh.  How they pulled and danced, and tossed the froth from their bits!

“I feel just as they do,” thought the girl.  “I’d love to break out, and kick, and bite, and act the very Old Boy!  Poor things!  How they must miss the plains and the free range.”

The other girls wondered what made her so silent.  The tang of the frosty air, and the ring of the ponies’ hoofs, and the jingle of the bells put plenty of life and fun into her mates; but Ann remained morose.

They reached the edge of the swamp and the girls alighted with merry shout and song.  They were all armed with big shears or sharp knives, but the berries grew high, and Old Dolliver’s boy had to climb for them.

Then the accident occurred—­a totally unexpected and unlooked for accident.  In stepping out on a high branch, the boy slipped, fell, and came down to the ground, hitting each intervening limb, and so saving his life, but dashing every bit of breath from his lungs, it seemed!

The girls ran together, screaming.  The teacher almost fainted.  Old Dolliver stooped over the fallen boy and wiped the blood from his lips.

“Don’t tech him!” he croaked.  “He’s broke ev’ry bone in his body, I make no doubt.  An’ he’d oughter have a doctor——­”

“I’ll get one,” said Ann Hicks, briskly, in the old man’s ear.  “Where’s the nearest—­and the best?”

“Doc Haverly at Lumberton.”

“I’ll get him.”

“It’s six miles, Miss.  You’d never walk it.  I’ll take one of the teams——­”

“You stay with him,” jerked out Ann.  “I can ride.”

“Ride?  Them ain’t ridin’ hosses, Miss,” declared Old Dolliver.

“If a horse has got four legs he can be ridden,” declared the girl from the ranch, succinctly.

“Take the off one on my team, then——­”

“That old plug?  I guess not!” exclaimed Ann, and was off.

She unharnessed one of the pitching, snapping mustangs.  “Whoa—­easy!  You wouldn’t bite me, you know,” she crooned, and the mustang thrust forward his ears and listened.

She dropped off the heavy harness.  The bridle she allowed to remain, but there was no saddle.  The English teacher came to her senses, suddenly.