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Helen saw a splendid elk silhouetted against the sky He was a light gray over all his hindquarters, with shoulders and head black His ponderous, wide-spread antlers towered over hinificent poise as he stood there, looking down into the valley, no doubt listening for the bay of the hound When he heard Dale's horse he gave one bound, gracefully and wonderfully carrying his antlers, to disappear in the green
Again on a bare patch of ground Dale pointed down Helen saw big round tracks, toeing in a little, that gave her a chill She knew these were grizzly tracks
Hard riding was not possible on this ridge crest, a fact that gave Helen ti out upon the very summit of the mountain, Dale heard the hound Helen's eyes feasted afar upon a wild scene of rugged grandeur, before she looked down on this western slope at her feet to see bare, gradual descent, leading down to sparsely wooded bench and on to deep-green canuon
"Ride hard now!" yelled Dale "I see Bo, an' I'll have to ride to catch her"
Dale spurred down the slope Helen rode in his tracks and, though she plunged so fast that she felt her hair stand up with fright, she saw him draay from her Sometimes her horse slid on his haunches for a few yards, and at these hazardous ot her feet out of the stirrups so as to fall free froazed ahead at Dale, and then farther on, in the hope of seeing Bo At last she was rewarded Far Down the wooded bench she saw a gray flash of the little lint of Bo's hair Her heart swelled Dale would soon overhaul Bo and coh Helen was unconscious of it then, a ree ca, inco took possession of her
She let the horse run, and when he had plunged to the foot of that slope of soft ground he broke out across the open bench at a pace that made the wind bite Helen's cheeks and roar in her ears She lost sight of Dale It gave her a strange, griaze to find the tracks of his horse, and she found the and the bear and the hound Her horse, scenting game, perhaps, and afraid to be left alone, settled into a fleet and powerful stride, sailing over logs and brush That open bench had looked short, but it was long, and Helen rode down the gradual descent at breakneck speed She would not be left behind She had awakened to a heedlessness of risk Soer of joy! When she saw, far down another open, gradual descent, that Dale had passed Bo and that Bo was riding the littleas never before, then Helen flamed with a madness to catch her, to beat her in that wonderful chase, to show her and Dale what there really was in the depths of Helen Rayner