She landed in the saddle, found the stirrups and cried, “You, Jake!” in a not altogether convincing tone.  Jake was walking on his hind feet by way of intimating that he objected to so tight a rein.  After that he danced sidewise, fought for his head, munched the strange bit angrily, snorted and made what the boys called Jake’s chain-lightnin’ gitaway.

Mary V knew that Jake was running away with her, but since he was running along the trail to Sinkhole camp she did not mind so much as you might think.  At the worst he would fall down and she would get a “spill.”  She knew the sensation, having been spilled several times.  So she gripped him tightly with her strong young knees and let him run.  And after the first shock of dismay, she thrilled to the swift flight, with a guilty exultation in what she had done.

Jake ran a couple of miles before he showed any symptom of slowing.  After that he straightened out in a long, easy lope that was a sheer delight to Mary V, though she knew it must not be permitted for very long, because Jake had a good many miles to cover before daylight.  She brought him down gradually to a swinging, “running walk” that would have kept any ordinary saddle horse trotting to match for speed, and although he still mouthed the strange bit pettishly, he carried Mary V over the trail with a kingly graciousness that instilled a deep respect into that arrogant young lady.

Tango, I think, would have been amazed to see how Mary V refrained from bullying her mount that night.  There was no mane-pulling, no little, nipping pinches of the neck to imitate the bite of a fly, no scolding—­nothing that Tango had come to take for granted when Mary V bestrode him.

It was only a little after one o’clock when Mary V, holding Jake down to a walk, nervously passed the empty corral at Sinkhole Camp.  She paused awhile in the shadows, wondering what she had better do next.  After all, it would be awkward to investigate the interior of the little cabin that squatted there so silently under the moon.  She hesitated to dismount.  Frankly, Mary V felt much safer with a fleet horse under her, and she was afraid that she might not be so lucky next time in mounting.  So she began to reconnoiter warily on horseback.

She rode up to the window of the little shed, and saw that it was empty.  She rode inside the corral and made a complete circuit of the fence, and saw nothing whatever of Johnny’s saddle and bridle.  They would be somewhere around, surely, if he were here.  She avoided the cabin, but rode down to the pasture in the creek bottom where Johnny’s extra horse would be feeding.  The horse was there, and came trotting lonesomely up to the fence when he saw Jake.  But there was only the one horse, which seemed to prove that the other horse was with the saddle and bridle—­wherever they were.

Mary V returned to the corral, still keeping far enough away from the cabin to hide the sound of Jake’s hoof beats from any one within.  She tied the horse to a corral post and went on foot to the cabin.  She carried her six-shooter in her hand, and she carried in her throat a nervous fluttering.