The Motor Maids Across the Continent Part 18

"I would, I would," cried Billie, instantly in a state of joyous antic.i.p.ation.

"Now, Billie, dear," interrupted her cousin, "I am desperately afraid to have you ride one of those wild untamed horses. Remember those animals we saw in Buffalo Bill's Show. They were Western horses, all of them, and they jumped around like so many contortionists."

"We'll give her the tamest beast in the stable, ma'am," Barney a.s.sured her.

"Not one of those frightful bronco creatures, Barney, I hope?"

"No, no, ma'am, a gentle little Texas horse that goes like the wind and never balks or kicks--"

"How fast a wind, Barney? A cyclone?"

Barney laughed.

"He's a first rate little horse, ma'am and any lady could ride him-who knows how to stick on," he added in a lower voice.

But Barney knew he could trust Billie on a Texas pony, having seen her take a canter on his own lean animal.

"I haven't any habit," announced Billie.

"Rosina keeps this one for the ladies who stop here," said Barney, disclosing a khaki divided skirt which had been in a bundle under his arm.

Ten minutes later, Billie was waiting at the long low shed which answered for a stable, while Barney led forth a small gray horse called Jocko. Two little impish devils peeped from the depths of Jocko's eyes, but he flicked his tail lazily and lowered his head in a deceivingly humble manner.

Rosina was to ride with them. Miss Campbell would on no account permit Billie to ride unchaperoned on the plains, even with the trustworthy Barney as a companion.

The mistress of the rancho presently emerged from the stable, leading a small sorrel horse. She also wore divided skirts, and with one bound leapt into the saddle, a feat Billie had not expected from her awkward, rather dumpy appearance. But it was very evident Rosina enjoyed the sport. With a curious cry, not unlike that given by her brother, Blackthorn Hawkes, the night before, when he danced the Indian war dance, she flew over the plains, followed by Barney and Billie.

Never had Billie enjoyed anything so much as that wild morning ride. The air was cool and crisp. The sky intensely blue, and everywhere, as far as the eye could see, were the rolling purple prairies, dotted with wild flowers.

She forgot Miss Campbell, forgot her three friends, indeed her mind was filled only with the joy of the moment.

Perhaps an Arabian horse on the desert might outstrip him, but indeed Jocko's feet seemed hardly to touch the earth as he skimmed along.

Soon he was ahead of the others. Billie looked back over her shoulder and saw Barney making wild gesticulations as the distance between them widened. But Jocko's mouth was as hard as steel, and when the young girl began presently to draw him in, she made no more impression on him than the wind along the waste.

"Whoa, Jocko," she cried. "Stop, stop, you little beast."

On went Jocko, swifter than the wind, swifter than anything Billie had ever imagined. Leaning far over, like a jockey, she pressed her knees into his sides and held to his mane for dear life.

"Perhaps he will tire out," she thought. "In the meantime, the best I can do is to stick on."

Only once, did she give an upside-down, backward glance through the crook in her elbow, but her companions were nowhere in sight. Just how long Billie gripped the pony's neck in this manner and kept her seat, she hardly knew. It might have been five minutes and it might have been thirty. She felt as a shooting star must feel as it flashes through the universe; a secret, blind exhilaration and an immense vacancy of s.p.a.ce which seemed to surround her, and withal an overpowering fear.

Then there came a sudden and utterly unexpected halt. At the same moment she unconsciously loosened her grip on the horse's mane. Head over heels she went, straight over the pony's head, and lay huddled on the ground, limp and inert.

Jocko sniffed at her an instant and then turned and trotted away. The two little imps in his eyes had retired, and he was once more a mild-mannered demure gray pony.

Imagine yourself the one small human speck in a great vast wilderness of prairie and you can form a vague idea of Billie's sensations when she opened her eyes.

Trying to collect her scattered senses, she pulled herself together and stood up. Her head swam and she had a shaky sensation in her knees.

"Let me see," she said out loud in a puzzled voice. "Cousin Helen and the girls are-well where are they? And--Oh," she cried, pressing her hands to her head as memory came back to her and she perceived herself to be alone on the plains. Then she looked about for the treacherous Jocko, but he had disappeared over the horizon.

When Billie's blood had resumed its normal tempo and her head had ceased to throb, she began to walk in what she judged from the sun to be a Southerly direction. She walked for a long time but nowhere could she see signs of her friends.

"I might as well be a canoe in the middle of the ocean," she said at length, sitting down on the ground in despair. "I don't seem to get anywhere, and-Oh, dear, how hot and tired and thirsty and hungry I am!"

Once she tried calling, but her voice seemed to her only a small piping sound in the great emptiness.

"I declare, I feel about as large as a microscopic insect," she exclaimed with a little sobbing laugh.

Then with a sudden resolution, she began to run.

"I won't be lost," she cried. "I won't! I won't! Haloo-oo-o, Barney-Rosina-where are you?"

Perhaps you have heard of the madness of people lost in a great forest or in the desert. It is a terrible growing fear which often turns into insanity unless it is held in check. Billie had heard of this madness.

Her father had once told her of the sad case of a man lost in the Adirondacks who ran round and round in a circle, and when at last he was found, he was still running in a circle, completely out of his senses.

Checking her impulse to give way to this delirium, the young girl sat down and began to think.

"Now, Billie," she said out loud, as if she were addressing some one else, "don't go and make an idiot of yourself. Be silent and go quietly, or you'll be a raving lunatic in five minutes. Of course the whole ranch will set out to find you as soon as they know you are actually lost. And of course they will find you. There can be no doubt of that. You are not going to die yet. You are far too young and strong and fond of life and-and hungry," she added with a little quaver in her voice.

But not again did Billie give way to the delirium of the lost. With her back to the sun she hurried on, not even a village of prairie dogs attracting her absorbed attention. As the sun began his afternoon course, she became conscious of an intense, unconquerable thirst. At first she fought against it, but at last she sat down and indulged in memories of spring water. All the cool bubbling wells she had ever seen came back to her mind. Memories of a little trickling brook on Seven League Island beside which she had once knelt and taken deep long draughts; then there was Cold Spring, where she had been on a picnic.

What a spring that was! A perfect fountain of delicious clear water. She recalled a swim she had had in a mountain lake where the water was as clear as crystal and very cold. She had swallowed quite a mouthful when she dived off a rock, and she could still feel the coolness on her lips.

"But best of all," she murmured, "best of all was the water in that sunken barrel spring on Percy's place. Oh, for a drop of it now," she cried.

She lay down on the ground and pillowed her head on her arms. Through the tall gra.s.ses she could see someone still a great way off coming toward her so rapidly that the figure loomed larger and larger on the landscape. She sat up and waited.

"Here I am," she heard herself calling. Then she laughed wildly. What she had taken for a dumpy squat lady in a bonnet trimmed with two pointed velvet bows, turned out to be a great stupid jackrabbit with ears as big as a mule's, who leaped on his hind legs with incredible rapidity.

"Silly old thing," exclaimed Billie irritably. "I thought you were a nice, kind, fat old person bringing me a gla.s.s of water."

The truth is the rabbit did bear a striking resemblance to the janitress at West Haven High School.

Billie fell asleep and dreamed she was in a fiery furnace calling to her father, when suddenly a delicious wetness touched her lips and a few drops of water trickled down her parched throat. She opened her eyes.

Buckthorne Hawkes, Rosina's brother, was leaning over her with a flask of water in his hand.

Was she still dreaming or did she hear him say:

"Next time you will buy an opal of me, eh?"

She opened her eyes again and looked into the face of the peddler who, ages back, had cursed them and their ancestors.

But old Mrs. Jack Rabbit had come back. There she was, dark and black and squat.

"Good day, Mrs. Jack Rabbit," Billie called, "did you bring the water?"

and then she went to sleep with a feeling of security and peace.