They left the horses standing untethered, and she led her lover into the cool recesses of the thicket to where crystal water bubbled from out the base of the mountain. “What was that you said about Dolly’s never cutting up?” he asked, when the blood had been stanched and his nerves and pulse-beats were normal again. “I am stunned,” Lute answered. “I cannot understand it. She never did anything like it in all her life. And all animals like you so—it’s not because of that. Why, she is a child’s horse. I was only a little girl when I first rode her, and to this day—” “Well, this day she was everything but a child’s horse,” Chris broke in. “She was a devil. She tried to scrape me off against the trees, and to batter my brains out against the limbs. She tried all the lowest and narrowest places she could find. You should have seen her squeeze through. And did you see those bucks?” Lute nodded. “Regular bucking-bronco proposition.” “But what should she know about bucking?” Lute demanded. “She was never known to buck—never.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Some forgotten instinct, perhaps, long-lapsed and come to life again.” The girl rose to her feet determinedly. “I’m going to find out,” she said. They went back to the horses, where they subjected Dolly to a rigid examination that disclosed nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth, body—everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth were innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken. They searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but found nothing. “Whatever it was, it was subjective, that much is certain,” Chris said. “Obsession,” Lute suggested. They laughed together at the idea, for both were twentieth-century products, healthy-minded and normal, with souls that delighted in the butterfly-chase of ideals but that halted before the brink where superstition begins. “An evil spirit,” Chris laughed; “but what evil have I done that I should be so punished?” “You think too much of yourself, sir,” she rejoined. “It is more likely some evil, I don’t know what, that Dolly has done. You were a mere accident. I might have been on her back at the time, or Aunt Mildred, or anybody.” As she talked, she took hold of the stirrup-strap and started to shorten it. “What are you doing?” Chris demanded. “I’m going to ride Dolly in.” “No, you’re not,” he announced. “It would be bad discipline. After what has happened I am simply compelled to ride her in myself.” But it was a very weak and very sick mare he rode, stumbling and halting, afflicted with nervous jerks and recurring muscular spasms—the aftermath of the tremendous orgasm through which she had passed. “I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after all that has happened,” Lute said, as they rode into camp.