Both loving flowers, they gathered great bunches of the sensitive roses, anemones, and white daisies, growing everywhere in such profusion. This occupation consumed a great deal of time, for they naturally loitered, charmed by so much floral beauty around them. It was fortunate they did, as the sequel will show, and they did not arrive at the ledge of rocks until nearly ten o'clock--more than two hours after they had left home. It was intensely hot, and after gathering their buckets full of the delicious fruit, they sat down on a shelf of the ledge which projected over the creek. They dabbled their bare feet in the stream as it flowed in murmuring rhythm over the rounded white pebbles, while they ate their lunch of cake brought from the ranche, and the red berries so sweet in the wildness of their flavor. Having satisfied their hunger, Kate said to her sister: "Gert, we ought to fill up our buckets again. If we go home empty-handed, mother will think we have been making pigs of ourselves." "There's time enough for that yet," replied Gertrude. "This cool water feels so delightful to my feet that I believe I could sit here and dabble in it until dark. Don't you think it's delicious, Kate?" "Yes," answered Kate, "but I want to get home before dinner, because Joe said that he would go with me down to the village this evening. I am going to ride his pony, and he will ride Rob's." "Well," said Gertrude, "if we must, we must. Mother loves raspberries so; they are her favorite fruit, you know; and if we did not take her a bucketful back with us, I should never forgive myself, though perhaps she would not say a word." "Let us commence right now," imploringly said Kate. "I want to get back as soon as I can." Both girls rose languidly to do as they proposed, but there did not seem to be much energy in their motions. Just as Gertrude had taken her pail from its place in the rocks, their ears were greeted by a low growl, which seemed to come directly from underneath the shelf on which they had been sitting. They looked at each other, and their faces blanched as another snarl and a howl, nearer than before, came to their ears, and both recognized the familiar sound they had so often heard when lying in bed at night, as that of a wolf. Those predatory brutes frequently made their nightly rounds in the vicinity of the corral, trying to get at the young calves, and they might be heard in the timber, watching for a chance to secure some of the fowls shut up in their house of stone near the barn.