Bo's tones indicated that she was ready to cry. Helen, realizing Bo had not been hurt, began to laugh. Her sister was the funniest-looking object that had ever come before her eyes.
"Nell Rayner--are you--laughing--at me?" demanded Bo, in most righteous amaze and anger.
"Me laugh-ing? N-never, Bo," replied Helen. "Can't you see I'm just--just--"
"See? You idiot! my eyes are full of mud!" flashed Bo. "But I hear you. I'll--I'll get even."
Dale was laughing, too, but noiselessly, and Bo, being blind for the moment, could not be aware of that. By this time they had reached camp. Helen fell flat and laughed as she had never laughed before. When Helen forgot herself so far as to roll on the ground it was indeed a laughing matter. Dale's big frame shook as he possessed himself of a towel and, wetting it at the spring, began to wipe the mud off Bo's face. But that did not serve. Bo asked to be led to the water, where she knelt and, with splashing, washed out her eyes, and then her face, and then the bedraggled strands of hair.
"That mustang didn't break my neck, but he rooted my face in the mud. I'll fix him," she muttered, as she got up. "Please let me have the towel, now.... Well! Milt Dale, you're laughing!"
"Ex-cuse me, Bo. I--Haw! haw! haw!" Then Dale lurched off, holding his sides.
Bo gazed after him and then back at Helen.
"I suppose if I'd been kicked and smashed and killed you'd laugh," she said. And then she melted. "Oh, my pretty riding-suit! What a mess! I must be a sight.... Nell, I rode that wild pony--the sun-of-a-gun! I rode him! That's enough for me. YOU try it. Laugh all you want. It was funny. But if you want to square yourself with me, help me clean my clothes."
Late in the night Helen heard Dale sternly calling Pedro. She felt some little alarm. However, nothing happened, and she soon went to sleep again. At the morning meal Dale explained.
"Pedro an' Tom were uneasy last night. I think there are lions workin' over the ridge somewhere. I heard one scream."
"Scream?" inquired Bo, with interest.
"Yes, an' if you ever hear a lion scream you will think it a woman in mortal agony. The cougar cry, as Roy calls it, is the wildest to be heard in the woods. A wolf howls. He is sad, hungry, and wild. But a cougar seems human an' dyin' an' wild. We'll saddle up an' ride over there. Maybe Pedro will tree a lion. Bo, if he does will you shoot it?"