He would have swung off, but I've ridden to hounds, and I had seen hunters go over worse places; I held him to it without mercy.

He laid back his ears, then, and went over--and his hind feet caught the top wire and snapped it like thread.

I heard it hum through the air, and I heard those behind me shout as though something unlooked-for had happened.
I turned, saw them gathered on the other side looking after me blankly, and I waved my hat airily in farewell and went on about my business.
[Illustration: "His hind feet caught the top wire and snapped it like thread."] I felt that they would scarcely chase me the whole twelve or fifteen miles of the pass, and I was right; after I turned the first bend I saw them no more.
At camp I was received with much astonishment, particularly when Ballard saw that I had brought an answer to his note.
"Yuh must 'a' rode King's Highway," he said, looking at me much as Perry Potter had done the night before.
I told him I did, and the boys gathered round and wanted to know how I did it.

I told them about jumping the fence, and my conceit got a hard blow there; with one accord they made it plain that I had done a very foolish thing.

Range horses, they assured me, are not much at jumping, as a rule; and wire-fences are their special abhorrence.