It was high noon. The cattle had been brought by the cowboys into the open field and each ranchman had divided his own stock from the herds. The animals had been driven into the corrals, separate enclosures made of fence rails, one belonging to each of the neighboring ranches. In the afternoon the branding of the cattle took place, but most of the cowboys had now gone off to get something to eat before the real business of the day began. Only a dozen men guarded the entire stockade. "Oh, no, Olive," Jack answered lightly. "I believe, if we ride a little closer, we may get some news of Jim. I would like to see him to ask him some questions, before we start back home." Jack rode gaily ahead, forgetting her disagreeable scene with Dan Norton. The swarming hundreds of cows and calves, the bright sunshine, the brilliantly blue sky overhead, the noise and splendid action of the scene interested her tremendously. "I think Miss Olive is right, Miss Ralston," Frank insisted gravely. "We must not ride too near the stock, for fear of a stampede." "Just a few feet more," Jack begged, turning half way around in her saddle to glance back at Olive and Frank. At this moment an immense bull burst out of one of the corrals and made a wild dash across an open field. He was not headed toward Jack, or Olive, or Frank, and there did not appear to be the least danger. Two of the cowboys made a rush to cut off the bull's charge but turned back a moment later to their companions. It was more important for the men to keep the other animals from following their leader, than to recapture the one infuriated beast. Jim Colter had warned Jacqueline, when he first gave her the new pony, that "Tricks" was well named. He had told her that she would have to watch the little animal pretty closely, but Jack was a trained rider and so far the mare had not given her any trouble. She had not realized, when she came to the round-up, that "Tricks" was one of the ponies that had been formerly used by the cow-punchers at the round-ups. Tricks saw the bull break away from the stockade and make its plunge for freedom at the moment that Jack turned her head and slightly relaxed her hold on the broncho's bridle. The pony's fighting blood was up. She did not intend to see a bull escape when it was her business as a cowboy's pony, to head him off and turn him back toward the herd. She made a leap forward, running diagonally across the plain, in order to cross in front of the bull at the shortest possible distance. For the first time in her experience, Jack Ralston completely lost control of the horse she was riding; the pony's headlong rush had been too unexpected. Tricks was a good-sized broncho with a will of her own and was convinced that she was doing her duty.