"Djuh find 'im?" The Old Man had limped down to the big gate and stood there bare headed under the stars, waiting, hoping--fearing to hear the answer.
"Hasn't he showed up yet?" Chip and the Little Doctor rode out of the gloom and stopped before the gate. Chip did not wait for an answer. One question answered the other and there was no need for more. "I brought Dell home," he said. "She's about all in--and he's just as likely to come back himself as we are to run across him. Silver'll bring him home, all right. He can't be--yuh can't lose a horse. You go up to the house and lie down, Dell. I--the Kid's all right."
His voice held all the tenderness of the lover, and all the protectiveness of the husband and all the agony of a father--but Chip managed to keep it firm and even for all that. He lifted the Little Doctor bodily from the saddle, held her very close in his arms for a minute, kissed her twice and pushed her gently through the gate.
"You better stay right here," he said authoritatively, "and rest and look after J.G. You can't do any good riding--and you don't want to be gone when he comes." He reached over the gate, got hold of her arm and pulled her towards him. "Buck up, old girl," he whispered, and kissed her lingeringly.
"Now's the time to show the stuff you're made of. You needn't worry one minute about that kid. He's the goods, all right.
Yuh couldn't lose him if you tried. Go up and go to bed."
"Go to bed!" echoed the Little Doctor and sardonically. J.G., are you sure he didn't say anything about going anywhere?"
"No. He was settin' there on the porch tormenting the cat."
The Old Man swallowed a lump. "I told him to quit. He set there a while after that--I was talkin'' to Blake. I dunno where he went to. I was--"
"'S that you, Dell? Did yuh find 'im?" The Countess came flapping down the path in a faded, red kimono. "What under the shinin' sun's went with him, do yuh s'pose? Yuh never know what a day's got up its sleeve--'n I always said it. Man plans and God displans--the poor little tad'll be scairt plumb to death, out all alone in the dark--"
"Oh, for heaven's sake shut up!" cried the tortured Little Doctor, and fled past her up the path as though she had some hope of running away from the tormenting thoughts also. "Poor little tad, all alone in the dark,"--the words followed her and were like sword thrusts through the mother heart of her.
Then Chip overtook her, knowing too well the hurt which the Countess had given with her blundering anxiety. Just at the porch he caught up with her, and she clung to him, sobbing wildly.
"You don't want to mind what that old hen says," he told her brusquely. "She's got to do just so much cackling or she'd choke, I reckon. The Kid's all right. Some of the boys have run across him by this time, most likely, and are bringing him in. He'll be good and hungry, and the scare will do him good." He forced himself to speak as though the Kid had merely fallen on the corral fence, or something like that.
"You've got to make up your mind to these things," he argued, "if you tackle raising a boy, Dell. Why, I'll bet I ran off and scared my folks into fits fifty times when I was a kid."
"But--he's--just a baby!" sobbed the Little Doctor with her face pressed hard against Chip's strong, comforting shoulder.
"He's a little devil!" amended Chip fiercely. "He ought to be walloped for scaring you like this. He's just as capable of looking after himself as most kids twice his size. He'll get hungry and head for home--and if he don't know the way, Silver does; so he can't--"
"But he may have fallen and--"
"Come, now! Haven't you got any more sense than the Countess?
If you insist of thinking up horrors to scare yourself with, I don't know as anybody can stop you. Dell! Brace up and quit worrying. I tell you--he's--all right!"
That did well enough--seeing the Little Doctor did not get a look at Chip's face, which was white and drawn, with sunken, haggard eyes staring into the dark over her head. He kissed her hastily and told her he must go, and that he'd hurry back as soon as he could. So he went half running down the path and passed the Countess and the Old Man without a word; piled onto his horse and went off up the hill road again.
They could not get it out of their minds that the Kid must have ridden up on the bluff to meet his mother, had been too early to meet her--for the Little Doctor had come home rather later than she expected to do--and had wandered off to visit the boys, perhaps, or to meet his Daddy Chip who was over there some where on the bench trying to figure out a system of ditches that might logically be expected to water the desert claims of the Happy Family--if they could get the water.
They firmly believed that the kid had gone up on the hill, and so they hunted for him up there. The Honorable Blake had gone to Dry Lake and taken the train for Great Falls, before ever the Kid had been really missed. The Old Man had not seen the Kid ride up the hill--but he had been sitting with his chair turned away from the road, and he was worried about other things and so might easily have missed seeing him. The Countess had been taking a nap, and she was not expected to know anything about his departure. And she had not looked into the doughnut jar--indeed, she was so upset by supper time that, had she looked, she would not have missed the doughnuts. For the same reason Ole did not miss his blanket.
Ole had not been near his bed; he was out riding and searching and calling through the coulee and up toward the old Denson place.
No one dreamed that the :Kid had started out with a camp-outfit--if one might call it that--and with the intention of joining the Happy Family in the breaks, and of helping them gather their cattle. How could they dream that? How could they realize that a child who still liked to be told bedtime stories and to be rocked to sleep, should harbor such man-size thoughts and ambitions? How could they know that the Kid was being "a rell ole cowpuncher"?