From this confusion, in some way never quite plain to himself, Franklin caught the girl out in his arms, and the next moment was at the head of the struggling horses.

And so good had been his training at such matters that it was not without method that he proceeded to quiet the team and to set again in partial order the wreck that had been created in the gear.

The end of the damaged singletree he re-enforced with his handkerchief.

In time he had the team again in harness, and at the bottom of the _coulee_, where the ground sloped easily down into the open valley, whence they might emerge at the lower level of the prairie round about.

He led the team for a distance down this floor of the _coulee_, until he could see the better going in the improving light which greeted them as they came out from the gully-like defile.