Chip stared blankly at him, and turned his eyes finally to Andy's face. Andy had not mentioned the Kid to him.
"He wasn't with her," Andy replied to the look. "She sent him a kiss and word that he was to take care of Miss Allen. He must be somewhere around here."
"Well, he ain't. I was looking fer him myself," put in the Countess sharply. "Somebody shut the cat up in the flour chest and I didn't study much on what it was done it! If I'd a got my hands on 'im--"
"I saw him ride up on the hill trail just before the fire started," volunteered Rosemary Allen. "I had my opera glasses and was looking for him, because I like to meet him and hear him talk. He said yesterday that he was coming to see me today. And he rode up on the hill in sight of my claim. I saw him." She stopped and looked from one to the other with her eyebrows pinched together and her lips pursed.
"Listen," she went on hastily. "Maybe it has nothing to do with Buck--but I saw something else that was very puzzling. I was going to investigate, but the fire broke out immediately and put everything else out of my mind. A man was up on that sharp-pointed knoll off east of the trail where it leaves this coulee, and he had field glasses and was looking for something over this way. I thought he was watching the trail.
I just caught him with the glasses by accident as I swung them over the edge of the benchland to get the trail focused.
He was watching something--because I kept turning the glasses on him to see what he was doing.
"Then Buck came into sight, and I started to ride out and meet him. I hate to leave the little mite riding alone anywhere--I'm always afraid something may happen. But before I got on my horse I took another look at this man on the hill. He had a mirror or something bright in his hands. I saw it flash, just exactly as though he was signaling to someone--over that way." She pointed to the west. "He kept looking that way, and then back this way; and he covered up the, piece of mirror with his hand and then took it off and let it shine a minute, and put it in his pocket. I know he was ****** signals.
"I got my horse and started to meet little Buck. He was coming along the trail and rode into a little hollow out of sight. I kept looking and looking toward Dry Lake--because the man looked that way, I guess. And in a few minutes I saw the smoke of the fire--"
"Who was that man?" Andy took a step toward her, his eyes hard and bright in their inflamed lids.
"The man? That Mr. Owens who jumped your south eighty."
"Good Lord, what fools!" He brushed past her without a look or another word, so intent was he upon this fresh disaster.
"I'm going after the boys, Chip. You better come along and see if you can pick up the Kid's trail where he left the road. It's too bad Florence Grace Hallman ain't a man! I'd know better what to do if she was."
"Oh, do you think--?" Miss Rosemary looked at him wide-eyed.
"Doggone it, if she's tried any of her schemes with fire and--why, doggone it, being a woman ain't going to help her none!" The Old Man, also, seemed to grasp the meaning of it almost as quickly as had Andy. "Chip, you have Ole hitch up the team. I'm going to town myself, by thunder, and see if she's going to play any of her tricks on this outfit and git away with it! Burnt out half her doggoned colony tryin' to git a whack at you boys! Where's my shoes? Doggone it, what yuh all standin' round with your jaws hangin' down for? We'll see about this fire-settin' and this--where's them shoes?"
The Countess found his shoes, and his hat, and his second-best coat and his driving gloves which he had not worn for more months than anyone cared to reckon. Miss Rosemary Allen did what she could to help, and wondered at the dominant note struck by this bald old man from the moment when he rose stiffly from his big chair and took the initiative so long left to others.
While the team was being made ready the Old Man limped here and there, collecting things he did not need and trying to remember what he must have, and keeping the Countess moving at a flurried trot. Chip and Andy were not yet up the bluff when the Old Man climbed painfully into the covered buggy, took the lines and the whip and cut a circle with the wheels on the hard-packed earth as clean and as small as Chip himself could have done, and went whirling through the big gate and across the creek and up the long slope beyond. He shouted to the boys and they rode slowly until he overtook them--though their nerves were all on edge and haste seemed to them the most important thing in the world. But habit is strong--it was their Old Man who called to them to wait.
"You boys wait to git out after that Owens," he shouted when he passed them. "If they've got the Kid, killing's too good for 'em!" The brown team went trotting up the grade with back straightened to the pull of the lurching buggy, and nostrils flaring wide with excitement. The Old Man leaned sidewise and called back to the two loping after him in the obscuring dust-cloud he left behind.
"I'll have that woman arrested on suspicion uh setting prairie fires!" he called. "I'll git Blake after her. You git that Owens if you have-to haze him to hell and back! Yuh don't want to worry about the Kid, Chip--they ain't goin' to hurt him. All they want is to keep you boys huntin' high and low and combin' the breaks to find 'im. I see their scheme, all right."