blaze. Then he lay down near it—and went to sleep as quickly as if he had been chloroformed.
It may have been an hour after that—it may have been more. He sat up suddenly and listened. Through the stupor of his sleep he had heard Miss Allen call. At least, he believed he had heard her call, though he knew he might easily have dreamed it. He knew he had been asleep, because the fire had eaten part of the way to the branches of the bush and had died down to smoking embers. He kicked the branch upon the coals and a blaze shot up into the night. He stood up and walked a little distance away from the fire so that he could see better, and stood staring down into the canyon.
From below he heard a faint call—he was sure of it. The wonder to him was that he had heard it at all in his sleep. His anxiety must have been strong enough even then to send the signal to his brain and rouse him.
He shouted, and again he heard a faint call. It seemed to be far down the canyon. He started running that way.
The next time he shouted, she answered him more clearly. And farther along he distinctly heard and recognized her voice. You may be sure he ran, after that!
After all, it was not so very far, to a man who is running recklessly down hill. Before he realized how close he was he saw her standing before him in the starlight. Andy did not stop. He kept right on running until he could catch her in his arms; and when he had her there he held her close and then he kissed her. That was not proper, of course—but a man does sometimes do terribly improper things under the stress of big emotions; Andy had been haunted by the fear that she was dead.
Well, Miss Allen was just as improper as he was, for that matter. She did say “Oh!” in a breathless kind of way, and then she must have known who he was. There surely could be no other excuse for the way she clung to him and without the faintest resistance let him kiss her.
“Oh, I’ve found him!” she whispered after the first terribly unconventional greetings were over. “I’ve found him, Mr. Green. I couldn’t come up to the fire, because he’s asleep and I couldn’t carry him, and I wouldn’t wake him unless I had to. He’s just down here—I was afraid to go very far, for fear of losing him again. Oh, Mr. Green! I—”
“My name is Andy,” he told her. “What’s your name?”
“Mine? It’s—well, it’s Rosemary. Never mind now. I should think you’d be just wild to see that poor little fellow—he’s a brick, though.”
“I’ve been wild,” said Andy, “over a good many things—you, for one. Where’s the Kid?”
They went together, hand in hand—terribly silly, wasn’t it?—to where the Kid lay wrapped in the gray blanket in the shelter of a bank. Andy struck a match and held it so that he could see the Kid face—and Miss Allen, looking at the man whose wooing had been so abrupt, saw his mouth tremble and his lashes glisten as he stared down while the match-blaze lasted.
“Poor little tad—he’s sure a great Kid,” he said huskily when the match went out. He stood up and put his arm around Miss Allen just as though that was his habit. “And it was you that found him!” he murmured with his face against hers. “And I’ve found you both, thank God.”
Chapter 20. The Rell Ole Cowpuncher Goes Home
I don’t suppose anything can equal the aplomb of a child that has always had his own way and has developed normally. The Kid, for instance, had been wandering in the wild places—this was the morning of the sixth day. The whole of Northern Montana waited anxiously for news of him. The ranch had been turned into a rendezvous for searchers. Men rode as long as they could sit in the saddle. Women were hysterical in the affection they lavished upon their own young. And yet, the Kid himself opened his eyes to the sun and his mind was untroubled save where his immediate needs were concerned. He sat up thinking of breakfast, and he spied Andy Green humped on his knees over a heap of camp-fire coals, toasting rabbit-hams—the joy of it—on a forked stick. Opposite him Miss Allen crouched and held another rabbit-leg on a forked stick. The Kid sat up as if a spring had been suddenly released, and threw off the gray blanket.
“Say, I want to do that too!” he cried. “Get me a stick, Andy, so I can do it. I never did and I want to!”
Andy grabbed him as he came up and kissed him—and the Kid wondered at the tremble of Andy’s arms. He wondered also at the unusual caress; but it was very nice to have Andy’s arms around him and Andy’s cheek against his, and of a sudden the baby of him came to the surface.
“I want my Daddy Chip!” he whimpered, and laid his head down on Andy’s shoulder. “And I want my Doctor Dell and my—cat! She’s lonesome for me. And I forgot to take the string off her tail and maybe it ain’t comfortable any more!”
“We’re going to hit the trail, old-timer, just as soon as we get outside of a little grub.” Andy’s voice was so tender that Miss Allen gulped back a sob of sympathy. “You take this stick and finish roasting the meat, and then see what you think of rabbit-hams. I hear you’ve been a real old cowpuncher, Buck. The way you took care of Miss Allen proves you’re the goods, all right. Not quite so close, or you’ll burn it, Buck. That’s better. I’ll go get another stick and roast the back.”
The Kid, squatting on his heels by the fire, watched gravely the rabbit-leg on the two prongs of the willow stick he held. He glanced across at Miss Allen and smiled his Little Doctor smile.
“He’s my pal,” he announced. “I bet if I stayed we could round up all them cattle our own selves. And I bet he can find your horse, too. He—he’s ‘customed to this country. I’d a found your horse today, all right—but I guess Andy could find him quicker. Us punchers’ll take care of you, all right.” The rabbit-leg sagged to the coals and began to scorch, and the Kid lifted it startled and was grateful when Miss Allen did not seem to have seen the accident.
“I’d a killed a rabbit for you,” he explained, “only I didn’t have no gun or no matches so I couldn’t. When I’m ten my Daddy Chip is going to give me a gun. And then if you get lost I can take care of you like Andy can. I’ll be ten next week, I guess.” He turned as Andy came back slicing off the branches of a willow the size of his thumb.
“Say, old-timer, where’s the rest of the bunch?” he inquired casually. “Did you git your cattle rounded up?”
“Not yet.” Andy sharpened the prongs of his stick and carefully impaled the back of the rabbit.
“Well, I’ll help you out. But I guess I better go home first—I guess Doctor Dell might need me, maybe.”
“I know she does, Buck.” Andy’s voice had a peculiar, shaky sound that the Kid did not understand. “She needs you right bad. We’ll hit the high places right away quick.”
Since Andy had gone at daybreak and brought the horses over into this canyon, his statement was a literal one. They ate hurriedly and started—and Miss Allen insisted that Andy was all turned around, and that they were going in exactly the wrong direction, and blushed and was silent when Andy, turning his face full toward her, made a kissing motion with his lips.
“You quit that!” the Kid commanded him sharply. “She’s my girl I guess I found her first ‘fore you did, and you ain’t goin’ to kiss her.”
After that there was no lovemaking but the most decorous conversation between these two.
Flying U Coulee lay deserted under the warm sunlight of early forenoon. Deserted, and silent with the silence that tells where Death has stopped with his sickle. Even the Kid seemed to feel a strangeness in the atmosphere—a stillness that made his face sober while he looked around the little pasture and up at the hill trail. In all the way home they had not met anyone—but that may have been because Andy chose the way up Flying U Creek as being shorter and therefore more desirable.
At the lower line fence of the little pasture Andy refused to believe