“That creature will kill you!” she cried, seeing what Ann was about.

“Then he’ll be the first horse that ever did it,” drawled Ann.  “Hi, yi, yi!  We’re off!”

To the horror of the teacher, to the surprise of Old Dolliver, and to the delight of the other girls, Ann Hicks swung herself astride of the dancing pony, dug her heels into his ribs, and the next moment had darted out of sight down the wood road.

CHAPTER XI

A NUMBER OF THINGS

There may have been good reason for the teacher to be horrified, but how else was the mustang to be ridden?  Ann was a big girl to go tearing through the roads and ’way into Lumberton astride a horse.  Without a saddle and curb, however, she could not otherwise have clung to him.

Just now haste was imperative.  She had a picture in her mind, all the way, of that boy lying in the snow, his face so pallid and the bloody foam upon his lips.

In twenty-five minutes she was at the physician’s gate.  She flung herself off the horse, and as she shouted her news to the doctor through the open office window, she unbuckled the bridle-rein and made a leading strap of it.

So, when the doctor drove out of the yard in his sleigh, she hopped in beside him and led the heaving mustang back into the woods.  Of course she did not look ladylike at all, and not another girl at Briarwood would have done it.  But even the English teacher—­who was a prude—­never scolded her for it.

Indeed, the doctor made a heroine of Ann, Old Dolliver said he never saw her beat, and the boy, who was so sadly hurt (but who pulled through all right in the end) almost worshipped the girl from Silver Ranch.

“And how she can ride!” the very girl who had treated Ann the meanest said of her.  “What does it matter if she isn’t quite up to the average yet in recitations?  She will be.”

This was after the holidays, however.  There was too short a time before Belle Tingley and her friends started for Cliff Island for Ann to particularly note the different manner in which the girls in general treated her.

The party went on the night train.  Mr. Tingley, who had some influence with the railroad, had a special sleeper side-tracked at Lumberton for their accommodation.  This sleeper was to be attached to the train that went through Lumberton at midnight.

Therefore they did not have to skip all the fun of the dance.  This was one of the occasions when the boys from the Seven Oaks Military Academy were allowed to mix freely with the girls of Briarwood.  And both parties enjoyed it.

Belle’s mother had arrived in good season, for she was to chaperone the party bound for Logwood, at the head of Tallahaska Lake.  She passed the word at ten o’clock, and the girls got their hand-baggage and ran down to the road, where Old Dolliver waited for them with his big sleigh.  The boys walked into town, so the girls were nicely settled in the car when Tom Cameron and his chums reached the siding.