Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/50

44 "You mean thing!" retorted her auburn-haired adversary. "You don't race fair—but I'll beat you yet!"

A sharp cut of her whip put an exclamation point to her sentence, and her home bounded forward, ahead of Martha's raft.

Just at that point a steep pitch in the flume began, taking the raft suddenly and swiftly far below the level of the road and out of sight among the trees. The straight pine trunks seemed to fairly fly past the girl upon the scudding timbers, as telegraph poles race backward toward the traveller by railroad express, and they reeled off the miles so rapidly that the calmer water of the flume station at Red Canon soon came in sight.

Barely had Martha given the horse trainer the money for the beautiful pinto and taken a receipt when in a whirl of dust the panting and perspiring Serena rode up. The defeated girl threw her pony almost upon its haunches as she came to a stop, a glow of jealous rage upon her face. But it cleared instantly, and she said with almost her customary cordiality:

"You had to fly a flume to beat me, Martha; next time you'd better saddle a cyclone!"