Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/43

Rh "I wouldn't let that red-headed thing beat me every time I rode to school," had been the taunt of Martha’s sister Annie.

"Don't care if she does," Martha had replied. "I don't like racing, and don't let Kittie out. If it does 'Renie any good let her beat. I can spell her down, anyway."

"But she gloats over it so when she rides past you," persisted Annie. "I'd get a long switch and give Kit a good cut when she tried to get by."

That was precisely what Martha had done, but Serena's light-footed buckskin had glided past her slower horse so easily that the dark girl had almost given up the idea of ever beating in the school race. It was deeply mortifying to her to see the buckskin pass so swiftly and to hear Serena's challenge, "Why don't you come on? Your horse is a little slow, ain't she?" But Martha hid all her disconcerting thoughts under a placid little face that showed nothing of self-distrust.

"Oh, I don't care to race," she always said; "it's kind of dangerous on these high cañon roads."

"That's right, Marthy," her father would say. "The roads is too narrer, an' you might git throwed down a thousand feet there at Clift Pint."

At Gliff Point, the very next day, Serena would probably dash past Martha, both horses at their top speed. But Martha kept all knowledge of such matters from her father and mother.

"I don't care," she would say. "Maybe some day we'll have a horse that will beat that dirty little buckskin all hollow. And, anyway, Serena Hazlitt got two marks for bad deportment last month, and I didn't get any."

But when they sat on the bank by the flume, looking down into the gliding water, all thoughts of rivalry between the two girls were put aside. They placed pine-cone men on big chip boats and sent them down to the bay, or listened to the swish of the water as their hazel wands bent in the fleeting stream. Then a great piece of pine lumber would whisk by, making a long yellow flash in the bright sunlight. Sometimes, when a mill-man had an errand down at Red Cañon, he would sit on a box on two of these large timbers, nailed side by side, and go gliding past Martha and Serena, shouting, "Hello, girls! Want a ride?" But he would