“Whom do you mean—­William or one of the mules?” asked Helen.

“I am sure William was helpless,” said Ruth.  “He was just as much scared as we were.  But Wonota was just splendid!”

“I am willing to pass her a vote of thanks,” groaned Jennie.  “But we can’t expect her to be always on hand to save us from disaster.  You don’t catch me in any such jam again.”

“Oh, nothing like this is likely to happen to us again,” Ruth said.  “We’re just as safe taking this picture as we would be at home—­at the Red Mill, for instance.”

“I don’t know about that,” grumbled Helen.  “I feel that more trouble is hanging over us.  I feel it in my bones.”

“You’d better get a new set of bones,” said Ruth cheerfully.  “Yours seem to be worse, even, than poor Aunt Alvira’s.”

“Nell believes that life is just one thing after another,” chuckled Jennie Stone.  “Having struck a streak of bad luck, it must keep up.”

“You wait and see,” proclaimed Helen Cameron, decisively nodding her head.

“That’s the easiest thing in the world to do—­wait,” gibed Ruth.

“No, it isn’t, either.  It’s the hardest thing to do,” declared Jennie, and Ruth thought she could detect a shade of sadness in the light tone the plump girl adopted.  “And especially when—­as Nell predicts—­we are waiting for some awful disaster.  Huh—­” and the girl shuddered as realistically as perfect health and unshaken nerves and good nature would permit—­“are we to pass our lives under the shadow of impending peril?”

It did seem, however, as though Helen had come under the mantle of some seeress of old.  Jennie flatly declared that “Nell must be a descendant of the Witch of Endor.”

The company managed to make several scenes that day without further disaster.  Although in taking a close-up of the charging Indian chief one of the camera men was knocked down by the rearing pony the chief rode, and a perfectly good two hundred dollar camera was smashed beyond hope of repair.

“It’s begun,” said Helen, ruefully.  “You see!”

“If you have brought a hoodoo into this outfit, woe be it to you!” cried Ruth.

“It is not me,” proclaimed her chum.  “But I tell you something is going to happen.”

They worked so late that it was night before the company took the trail for Clearwater Station.  There was no moon, and the stars were veiled by a haze that perhaps foreboded a storm.

This coming storm probably was what caused the excitement in a horse herd that they passed when half way to the railroad line.  Or it might have been because the motor-cars, of which there were four, were strange to the half-wild horses that the bunch became frightened.

“There’s something doing with them critters, boys!” William, who was riding ahead, called back to the other pony riders, who were rear guard to the automobiles.  “Keep yer eyes peeled!”