CHAPTER 12IT WAS well along in the afternoon now and Charley still rode alone along the base of the foothills on Dapple Gray.
Dapple held his head high. The alert look in his eyes and the way he flicked his ears back and forth showed that he sensed the possibility of danger ahead. Charley was watchful, too, because the great piles of huge boulders looming ahead here and there were natural hiding places for creatures of the wild. The bushes growing near the rock piles gave added cover.
One of these bushes rose just ahead of Dapple, but fortunately he had learned never to pass too near a single bush on the open ground because of rattlesnakes. He stepped aside about six feet and just as he was passing the bush, a big rattlesnake coiled under it gave a warning buzz from the end of its tail.
