Lorraine heard them as she rode old Yellowjacket puffing up the grade,
following the wagon marks, and knew that she was nearing the end of her
journey,--for which Yellowjacket, she supposed, would be thankful. She
had started not more than an hour later than her father, but the team
had trotted along more briskly than her poor old nag would travel, so
that she did not overtake her dad as she had hoped.
She was topping the last climb when she saw the team tied to the trees,
and at the same moment she caught a glimpse of a man who crawled out
from under the load of posts and climbed the slope farther on. She was
on the point of calling out to him, thinking that he was her dad, when
he disappeared into the brush. At the same moment she heard the stroke
of an axe over to the right of where the man was climbing.
She was riding past the team when Caroline humped her back and kicked
viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail
without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into a
juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very permanently
placed there.
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