proved that his slumber was only a pretended one. At a particularly rough spot in the road and a particularly shrill scream from Miss Milliken, the angry ranchman faced about and rudely ordered: “Shut up!” Then his lips closed with a click and nothing further escaped them during all that drive.
Alfaretta giggled; then strained her eyes again to pierce the distance which she had been studying for some time. Then she laid a hand on Monty’s head and shook it vigorously:
“Wake up, boy! Look ahead and see if either wagon is in sight! ’Tisn’t so awful dark yet but I wish – I wish I could get a glimpse of Dolly and Jim. That fool driver might have taken the wrong road where it branched off a ways back.”
Silent Pete heard and guessed this was the truth, but he ventured no reply. His business was to drive his own horses and let the tenderfoot look out for himself. But Monty roused himself enough to assure Alfy:
“He wouldn’t do that! Why, that road is nothing but a trail through the woods. Dark as midnight. Don’t worry.” Then he settled himself to sleep again.
Now the fact was that “T. Sorrel,” as his fellow ranchmen called him, had more conceit than common sense. He had heard that the branch road was a short cut to “Roderick’s,” but not that it was impassable for a team. A man on horseback might pass safely over it, by daylight and with a trustworthy mount. Not otherwise; and though the opening was fairly clear the trail entered a hopeless tangle of underbrush and fallen timber but a short way further on. To go forward then became impossible, and equally so the turning back. The lively blacks resented the scratching of briers and broken branches upon their tender limbs and pranced and fretted wildly. A molly cottontail scurried across the track before them and with a mutual, frenzied impulse they shied and sprang into the air.
The buckboard flew upward, turned turtle, scattered its load in all directions, then settled into a broken heap, while the light traces yielded to the strength of the horses, and they rushed madly forward out of sight.
At that very moment it had been, that Silent Pete and his wagon had passed the entrance of that trail; and even in that dusk his trained eye had noted fresh wheel and hoof prints. But it was not his business to stop and investigate. He had been set to bring his party to “Roderick’s”, not to take care of a tenderfoot who ought to have a nurse, the fool!
CHAPTER III
THE MIDNIGHT SEARCHING PARTY
The night was growing late and there were anxious hearts at “Roderick’s.” The four-in-hand had arrived hours before, and Silent Pete had also brought his party safely in – to the mutual relief of himself and Miss Milliken, the latter really surprised to find she had arrived sound in body and limb. She had promptly retired to the little chamber assigned herself and Helena, only to reappear in fresh distress.
“My suit-case with my night-things! I can’t find it anywhere. The one they gave me has a lot of boys’ things in it-all jumbled together. I’d like my suit-case, please. I’m worn out with that awful ride and if I’ve got to repeat it to-morrow, I must get to rest;” but as the buxom maid to whom she appealed paid her scant attention, she turned to Helena with her wail: “Oh, Miss Helena! Won’t you make them give me the right case?”
The emphasis put on the “won’t” suggested a desperate need, but merely annoyed her young mistress, who requested:
“Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, Milly. The loss of a suit-case is nothing compared to – Oh! if Dolly were only safely here!”
“She will be, of course. Haven’t I, with my nerves, lived through that ride? But, you don’t understand, dear, I want my things. I can’t wear a boy’s pajamas – all mussed up, at that. I want, I want to go to bed.”
“Then, for goodness’ sake – go!” cried Monty Stark, who had come up to the pair. “That’ll give us a rest, too.”
“I shall have to sit up all night, then,” still moaned the lady, “for your case isn’t to be found either, Miss Helena.”
Then finding no greater sympathy from her mistress than from that saucy boy, the governess betook herself out of the way. She was the only one of the party which had so gaily left Denver that now cared for anything except the appearance down the road of the missing buckboard.
Molly and Leslie, congenial spirits, had tried to laugh off their anxiety and to convince the others that everything was “all right, of course.”
“Likely Dolly Doodles has discovered some new sort of flowers somewhere and has wandered off to get them. She’s always doing that kind of thing,” Molly assured her hostess, who had gently answered:
“We’ll hope it’s only that. But she’d scarcely look for wild flowers at night, nor do anything to make us anxious by her delay. Our Dorothy is a very considerate girl and I wish – they would come.”
Linking her arm within Helena’s, the lady set her steps to suit the girl’s and resumed the pacing up and down the long piazza. The house was a one-storied building, stretching along the roadway to a size that was unusual for such a locality. It had been added to at different periods, as need arose; each addition being either a little lower or higher than its neighbor, according to the cash in hand, but invariably with the continuance of the comfortable piazza. This now afforded a long promenade, and all the people gathered at the wayside inn that night, were using it to walk off their impatience at the delay of “Tenderfoot Sorrel” to bring in his team.
Supper had been put back till it was spoiled, and having been telegraphed for beforehand, good Mrs. Roderick had wasted her best efforts upon it. But, at last, seeing Monty and Molly peering through the kitchen windows in a hungry sort of way, Mr. Ford ordered it served and all repaired to the dining room, feeling that the meal would be a farce, yet something with which to kill time.
However, the long ride in the keen air had given all a fine appetite and despite the landlady’s laments over the “dried-up stuff,” the table was nearly cleared of its food when they left it. Moreover, everyone felt better and brighter for the refreshment and so hopeful now for the speedy arrival of the laggards, that Mr. Ford suggested to the waitress:
“Just have a few things kept warm for the others. There’ll be four of them. If they aren’t here within a half-hour, now, I’ll go back in search of them. Something may have happened to the wagon and they left to come on a-foot.”
“Dear, did you ask the man you call Silent Pete if he passed them anywhere along the road?”
“Surely, I did that the first thing. He had neither passed nor seen them, he said.”
“Well, I’m going to interview him again. Come on, Miss Molly, to the stable with me,” cried Leslie.
“‘Molly,’ without the ‘Miss,’ please, and I’m ready enough! It seems as if I must be doing something, for everybody is looking so worried,” she answered, catching his outstretched hand and racing with him down the long porch and around to the stables in the rear.
Silent Pete had not gone to the loft where the workmen slept. He had wrapped himself in a blanket and, with another for a pillow, had settled himself in a corner of the loose box next the stalls where his team stood. He was so devoted to them that he couldn’t leave them alone in a strange stable, though from the snores which already came from him he didn’t seem a great protection to anything.
But Silent Pete was wily. He had heard the voices of the pair without the building, asking a groom to tell where Pete could be found, and had resented being disturbed. He had done his day’s work, he had no intention of joining in any search that might be made for the delinquents, and he promptly pretended slumber. But he hadn’t reckoned upon Leslie’s persistence nor his own uneasy conscience.
“Wake up there, Peter, if that’s your name! I’m your boss’s son, and I want a word with you. Wake up, man!”
The snores deepened. Rarely had the nose of mortal man emitted such ear-splitting sounds as now issued from the nostrils of the ranchman, as Leslie shoved aside the sliding door of the loose box and stepped within.
“Here, Molly-without-the-Miss,