“Pacer!  Racer!” shouted Ben.  There was a pause, and then the quick bark of a revolver.  A puff of dust arose before the nose of the leading dog.

Again no response, only the steadily lessening distance.

For a second Ben Blair hesitated; but it was for a second only.  Florence watched him, too surprised to speak, and saw what for a moment made her doubt her own eyes.  The hand that held the big revolver was raised, there was a report, then another, and the two dead hounds went tumbling over and over with their own momentum upon the brown prairie.  Beyond them the rabbit bounded away into distance and safety.

Without a word Ben Blair drew rein, returned the revolver to its holster, and came back to where the girl had stopped.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.  “I’ll pay you for the dogs, if you like.”  A pause and a straight glance from out the blue eyes.  “I couldn’t help doing what I did.”

Having in mind the look he had last seen upon the girl’s face, he expected an explosion of wrath; but he was destined to surprise.  There was silence, instead, while two great tears gathered slowly in her soft eyes, and brimmed over upon the brown cheeks.

“I don’t want you to pay for the dogs; I’m glad they’re gone.”  She brushed back a straggling lock of hair.  “It’s a horrid sport, and I’ll never have anything to do with it again.”  A look that set the youth’s heart bounding shot out sideways from beneath the long lashes.  “I’m very glad you did—­what you did.”

Just then the noisy old buckboard, with Rankin and Scotty clinging to the seat, drove up and stopped short, with a protest from every joint of the ancient vehicle.

CHAPTER X

THE DOMINANT ANIMAL

The chance to sell his stock, ostensibly his reason for delaying departure, came to Scotty Baker much more quickly than he had anticipated.  Within a week after the hunt—­in the very first mail he received, in fact—­came an offer from a Minneapolis firm to take every scrap of horse-flesh he could spare.  With much compunction and a doleful face he read the letter aloud in the family council.

“That means ‘go’ for sure, I suppose,” he commented at its conclusion.

Involuntarily Florence laughed.  “You look as though you’d just got word that the whole herd had stampeded over a ravine, instead of having had a wave of good fortune,” she bantered.  “I believe you’d still back out if you could.”

Scotty’s face did not lighten.  “I know I would,” he admitted.

“We’ll not give you the chance, though,” broke in Mollie, with the first indication of enthusiasm she had shown in many a day.  “Florence and I will begin packing right away, and you can carry the things along with you when you drive the horses to town.”

Scotty looked at his wife steadily and caught the trace of excitement in her manner.