"Land! If I hadn't forgotten about Willie! Come--hurry! You'll have
to go for the cows. I'll wash the dishes."

Anna felt quite in the mood to go for the cows. It meant an hour or
so of patting barefooted and bare headed along the soft dust of the
road, or over the slippery brown grass of the mountain pastures,
with tall pines on every hand and a gold-blue sky above.

She mused about the missing Willie. Had he carried out his
occasional threat to run away?

"The road is open, go when you like," was her father's one reply to
such futile outbursts. But they well knew the road was not open to
Willie. The six mountain miles intervening between their ranch and
the station formed an impassable barrier to his timorous soul.

"I guess he's afraid of the bigness of things," Anna concluded.
"And he's got no call to run away. Papa threatens him, but he's
never laid hand on him yet. I s'pose it's on account of the bath he
ran away."

There was no Willie at the bathing-pool. The checked gingham shirt
fluttered lonesomely where she had that morning placed it.

Some minutes later, shuffling deliciously among the dappled leaves
of a hill trail, she sprang aside in quick dismay.

"Goodness!" What had seemed to be a bunch of dry leaves and grass
coiled swiftly, with the rattling whir that goes straight to the
fear center of the human heart. In a flash Anna's hands were full