"
The girl arose and shook her skirt free of the pine needles that clung
to it.
"Ever since then," she went on, eyeing Bennington saucily sideways,
"the mountain has been invisible except to a very few. The legend says
that when a maid and a warrior see it together they will be----"
"What?" asked Bennington as she paused.
"Dead within the year!" she cried gaily, and ran lightly to her pony.
"Did you like my legend?" she asked, as the ponies, foot-bunched,
minced down the steepest of the trail.
"Very much; all but the moral."
"Don't you want to die?"
"Not a bit."
"Then I'll have to."
"That would be the same thing."
And Bennington dared talk in this way, for the next day began the
Pioneer's Picnic, and lately she had been very kind.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PIONEER'S PICNIC
The Lawtons were not going to the picnic. Bennington was to take Mary
down to Rapid, where the girl was to stay with a certain Dr. McPherson
of the School of Mines.
An early start was accomplished. They rode down the gulch through the
dwarf oaks, past the farthermost point, and so out into the hard level
dirt road of Battle Creek canon.
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