Part 22 (2/2)
Mrs. Horton nodded her head approvingly.
”That was a good thought; you can't be too careful. I declare, I wish you had brought Ralph over here--the precious! I've been feeling as lonesome as an owl this morning. Generally I don't mind being left alone, not a bit; I'm used to it; but I was feeling disappointed to-day, and so everything goes against the grain, I s'pose.”
I must have looked sympathetic, for she presently broke out:
”I don't feel, Leslie, as if I was an unreasonable or exacting kind of woman, in general, but Jake talked last night as if he thought I was.
You see, I had set my heart on going to town when it came time for you girls to prove up. I'd thought of lots of little things that I was going to mention to the Land Agent, to influence him in your favor, and I guess there aren't many folks that know better than I do how you've tried and tried to fill all the requirements. But Jake--”
She paused, her mouth, with its gentle-looking curves, closing as if she would say no more. But her grievance was too fresh and too bitter to admit of her keeping silence. In answer to my respectful inquiry as to why she didn't go, she burst out impatiently:
”Jake wouldn't let me. Said if I did I'd be interfering with what was none of my business--as if I ever interfered with any one else's business--and, besides, he said it wasn't convenient to take me. He went on horseback himself.”
”Oh, he's gone, then?”
”Gracious, yes! Gone! He's been in town nearly all night. He was out somewhere last evening, looking up cattle, he said, and he didn't get in till almost nine o'clock; then he ate supper and started right off.
I thought it was a rather dark time to be starting for town, but he said the moon would be rising before he got out on to the plains, and he didn't care for the dark.”
”Why was he so anxious to get to town early this morning?” I asked, with what I inwardly felt to be almost insolent persistency. Mr.
Horton's good wife suspected nothing, however.
”Why, I suppose, to help you folks, if help was needed,” she replied, readily. ”I've felt awfully cut up, Leslie, about the way our cattle destroyed your crops. It just went to my heart to think that it was our cattle that did it”--and the tears in her honest blue eyes attested the sincerity of her words--”I've talked to Jake a good deal about it. He hasn't said straight out that he'd pay damages, but I've been thinking maybe he intended to do it in his own way, and his way was to get to town and help you all he could with the Land Agent. As he's been known to the claim so long, his word ought to have weight.
Don't you think so?”
”I am afraid--I mean yes, certainly,” I stammered. It was not re-a.s.suring to think of the weight that his word might have.
”When do you look for Mr. Horton to return?” I asked, rising from my chair as I spoke.
”Oh, not until your business is all settled; he said he'd stay and see it all through. He said that he'd have a surprise for me when he got back; but I guess he won't. I imagine that he thought I'd feel surprised to learn that you'd received your papers, but I'd be surprised if you didn't, after the way you've kept the faith, so to speak. Oh, now, sit down! You're not going yet, are you? And after such a walk as it is from your house here, too!”
”I came down by the trail, Mrs. Horton.” And then I told her about Guard, thus accounting for the gun, which I had caught her glancing at, once or twice, rather curiously.
”Young dogs are foolish,” was her comment, when she had heard the story. ”If he was older, I should tell you not to be a mite worried, but as he's a young one, it's different. I've known a young dog to get on a hot trail, and follow it until he was completely lost. My father lost a fine deerhound that way once. The dog got on the trail of a buck, and last we ever heard of him he was twenty miles away, and still going. I do hope you won't have such bad luck with your dog.”
I bade good-by to Mrs. Horton, and started homeward, again taking the trail through the ravine. I was not much cheered by her words in regard to Guard, and heavily depressed by the knowledge that Mr.
Horton had, after all, beaten Mr. Wilson and Jessie in his start for town--though what difference it could make, either way, until the Land Office was open in the morning no one could have told. Being troubled, I walked slowly, this time, with my eyes on the ground. Half-way through the ravine I came to a point where a break in the walls let in the sunlight. Through this low, ragged depression the light was streaming in in a long, brilliant shaft as I approached the spot. The warm, bright column of golden light had so strange an effect, lighting up the gray rocks and the moist, reeking pathway, that I paused to admire it. ”If it were only a rainbow, now,” I thought, ”I should look under the end of it, there, for a bag of gold.” My eyes absently followed the column of light to the point where it seemed suddenly to end in the darkness of the ravine, and I uttered a startled cry. Under the warm, bright light I saw the distinct impression of a dog's foot.
It was as clearly defined in the oozy reek as it would have been had some one purposely taken a cast of it, but after the first start, I reflected that it did not necessarily follow that the print was made by Guard. Still, examination showed that it might well be his.
Searching farther, I found more tracks--above the break in the wall, but none in the ravine below it. The footprints had been a good deal marred by my own as I came down the ravine, and, what I thought most singular, supposing the tracks to have been made by Guard, there were also the hoof-marks of a horse--not a range-horse, for this one wore shoes, and, developing Indian lore as I studied the trail, I presently made the important discovery that, while the dog's tracks occasionally overlaid those of the horse, the horse's tracks never covered the dog's. Clearly, then, if those footprints belonged to Guard, as I had a quite unaccountable conviction that they did, he was quietly following some horseman. For an indignant instant I suspected some reckless cowboy of having la.s.soed and stolen him, but a little further study of the footprints spoiled that theory. Guard would have resisted such a seizure, and the footprints would have been blurred and dragging. The clean impressions left by this canine were not those of an unwilling captive. I followed the tracks along the trail to the upper end of the ravine for some time, but learning nothing further in that way, returned again to the break in the wall. Looking attentively at that, I at length discovered a long, fresh mark on the slippery rock. Such a mark as might have been made by the iron-shod hoof of a horse, scrambling up the wall in haste, and slipping dangerously on the insecure foothold. With the recognition of this, I was scrambling up the bank myself. Scarcely had my head reached the level of the bank when a loud, eager whinny broke the silence. Startled, I slipped into a thicket of scrub-oaks, and, from their friendly shelter, made a cautious reconnoissance. Not far away, and standing in clear view, a bay horse was tethered to the over-hanging limb of a pine tree. It did not need a second glance for me to recognize Don, Mr. Horton's favorite saddle-horse. That the poor creature had had a long and tedious wait, his eager whinnying, and the pawing of his impatient hoof, as he looked over in my direction, plainly told.
I watched him for awhile, breathlessly, and in silence, but he was far too anxious to keep silent himself. His distress was so apparent that I felt sorry for him, and finally decided that I might, at least, venture to approach and speak to him. Leaving my place of concealment I started toward him, but stopped abruptly with my heart in my mouth, before I had taken a dozen steps, as a new sound broke the silence. A new sound, but familiar, and doubly welcome in that wild place. It was the sharp, excited yelping that Guard was wont to make when he had treed game and needed help.
CHAPTER XXV
GUARD'S PRISONER
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