by B. M. Bower
The third day, Miss Allen put up a lunch, told her three claim partners that she should not come back until night unless that poor child was found, and that they need not look for her before dark and set out with the twinkle all gone from her humorous brown eyes and her mouth very determined.
She met Pink and the Native Son and was struck with the change which two days of killing anxiety had made in them. True, they had not slept for forty-eight hours, except an hour or two after they had been forced to stop and eat. True, they had not eaten except in snatches. But it was not that alone which made their faces look haggard and old and haunted. They, too, were thinking of Lost Child Creek and How it had gotten its name.
Miss Allen gleaned a little information from them regarding the general whereabouts of the various searching parties. And then, having learned that the foothills of the mountains were being searched minutely because the Kid might have taken a notion to visit Meeker’s; and that the country around Wolf Butte was being searched, because he had once told Big Medicine that when he got bigger and his dad would let him, he was going over there and kill wolves to make Doctor Dell some rugs: and that the country toward the river was being searched because the Kid always wanted to see where the Happy Family drove the sheep to, that time when Happy Jack got shot under the arm; that all the places the Kid had seemed most interested in were being searched minutely—if it could be possible to; search minutely a country the size of that! Having learned all that, Miss Allen struck off by herself, straight down into the Badlands where nobody seemed to have done much searching.
The reason for that was, that the Happy Family had come out of the breaks on the day that the Kid was lost. They had not ridden together, but in twos and threes because they drove out several small bunches of cattle that they had gleaned, to a common centre in One Man Coulee. They had traveled by the most feasible routes through that rough country, and they had seen no sign of the Kid or any other rider.
They did not believe that he had come over that far, or even in that direction; because a horseman would almost certainly have been sighted by some of them in crossing a ridge somewhere.
It never occurred to anyone that the Kid might go down Flying U Creek and so into the breaks and the Badlands. Flying U Creek was fenced, and the wire gate was in its place—Chip had looked down along there, the first night, and had found the gate up just as it always was kept. Why should he suspect that the Kid had managed to open that gate and to close it after him? A little fellow like that?
So the searching parties, having no clue to that one incident which would at least have sent them in the right direction, kept to the outlying fringe of gulches which led into the broken edge of the benchland, and to the country west and north and south of these gulches. At that, there was enough broken country to keep them busy for several days, even when you consider the number of searchers.
Miss Allen did not want to go tagging along with some party. She did not feel as if she could do any good that way, and she wanted to do some good. She wanted to find that poor little fellow and take him to his mother. She had met his mother, just the day before, and had ridden with her for several miles. The look in the Little Doctor’s eyes haunted Miss Allen until she felt sometimes as if she must scream curses to the heavens for so torturing a mother. And that was not all; she had looked into Chip’s face, last night—and she had gone home and cried until she could cry no more, just with the pity of it.
She left the more open valley and rode down a long, twisting canyon that was lined with cliffs so that it was impossible to climb out with a horse. She was sure she could not get lost or turned around, in a place like that, and it seemed to her as hopeful a place to search as any. When you came to that, they all had to ride at random and trust to luck, for there was not the faintest clue to guide them. So Miss Allen considered that she could do no better than search all the patches of brush in the canyon, and keep on going.
The canyon ended abruptly in a little flat, which she crossed. She had not seen the tracks of any horse going down, but when she was almost across the flat she discovered tracks of cattle, and now and then the print of a shod hoof. Miss Allen began to pride herself on her astuteness in reading these signs. They meant that some of the Happy Family had driven cattle this way; which meant that they would have seen little Claude Bennett—that was the Kid’s real name, which no one except perfect strangers ever used—they would have seen the Kid or his tracks, if he had ridden down here.
Miss Allen, then, must look farther than this. She hesitated before three or four feasible outlets to the little flat, and chose the one farthest to the right. That carried her farther south, and deeper into a maze of gulches and gorges and small, hidden valleys. She did not stop, but she began to see that it was going to be pure chance, or the guiding hand of a tender Providence, if one ever did find anybody in this horrible jumble. She had never seen such a mess. She believed that poor little tot had come down in here, after all; she could not see why, but then you seldom did know why children took a notion to do certain unbelievable things. Miss Allen had taught the primary grade in a city school, and she knew a little about small boys and girls and the big ideas they sometimes harbored.
She rode and rode, trying to put herself mentally in the Kid’s place. Trying to pick up the thread of logical thought—children were logical sometimes—startlingly so.
“I wonder,” she thought suddenly, “if he started out with the idea of hunting cattle! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he did—living on a cattle ranch, and probably knowing that the men were down here somewhere.” Miss Allen, you see, came pretty close to the truth with her guess.
Still, that did not help her find the Kid. She saw a high, bald peak standing up at the mouth of the gorge down which she was at that time picking her way, and she made up her mind to climb that peak and see if she might not find him by looking from that point of vantage. So she rode to the foot of the pinnacle, tied her horse to a bush and began to climb.
Peaks like that are very deceptive in their height Miss Allen was slim and her lungs were perfect, and she climbed steadily and as fast as she dared. For all that it took her a long while to reach the top—much longer than she expected. When she reached the black rock that looked, from the bottom, like the highest point of the hill, she found that she had not gone much more than two-thirds of the way up, and that the real peak sloped back so that it could not be seen from below at all.
Miss Allen was a persistent young woman. She kept climbing until she did finally reach the highest point, and could look down into gorges and flats and tiny basins and canyons and upon peaks and ridges and worm-like windings, and patches of timber and patches of grass and patches of barren earth and patches of rocks all jumbled up together—. Miss Allen gasped from something more than the climb, and sat down upon a rock, stricken with a sudden, overpowering weakness. “God in heaven!” she whispered, appalled. “What a place to get lost in!”
She sat there a while and stared dejectedly down upon that wild orgy of the earth’s upheaval which is the Badlands. She felt as though it was sheer madness even to think of finding anybody in there. It was worse than a mountain country, because in the mountains there is a certain semblance of some system in the canyons and high ridges and peaks. Here every thing—peaks, gorges, tiny valleys and all—seemed to be just dumped down together. Peaks rose from the middle of canyons; canyons were half the time blind pockets that ended abruptly against a cliff.
“Oh!” she cried aloud, jumpin up and gesticulating wildly. “Baby! Little Claude! Here! Look up this way!” She saw him, down below, on the opposite side from where she had left her horse.
The Kid was riding slowly up a gorge. Silver was picking his way carefully over the rocks—they looked tiny, down there! And they were not going toward home, by any means. They were headed directly away from home.
The cheeks of Miss Allen were wet while she shouted and called and waved her hands. He was alive, anyway. Oh, if his mother could only
be told that he was alive! Oh, why weren’t there telephones or something where they were needed! If his poor mother could see him!
Miss Allen called again, and the Kid heard her. She was sure that he heard her, because he stopped—that pitiful, tiny speck down there on the horse!—and she thought he looked up at her. Yes, she was sure he heard her, and that finally he saw her; because he took off his hat and waved it over his head—just like a man, the poor baby!
Miss Allen considered going straight down to him, and then walking around to where her horse was tied. She was afraid to leave him while she went for the horse and rode around to where he was. She was afraid she might miss him somehow the Badlands had stamped that fear deep into her soul.
“Wait!” she shouted, her hands cupped around her trembling lips, tears rolling down her cheeks “Wait baby! I’m coming for you.” She hoped that the Kid heard what she said, but she could not be sure, for she did not hear him reply. But he did not go on at once, and she thought he would wait.
Miss Allen picked up her skirts away from her ankles and started running down the steep slope. The Kid, away down below, stared up at her. She went down a third of the way, and stopped just in time to save herself from going over a sheer wall of rocks—stopped because a rock which she dislodged with her foot rolled down the slope a few feet, gave a leap into space and disappeared.
A step at a time Miss Allen crept down to where the rock had bounced off into nothingness, and gave one look and crouched close to the earth. A hundred feet, it must be, straight down. After the first shock she looked to the right and the left and saw that she must go back, and down upon the other side.
Away down there at the bottom, the Kid sat still on his horse and stared up at her. And Miss Allen calling to him that she would come, started back up to the peak.
CHAPTER 18
THE LONG WAY ROUND
Miss Allen turned to yell encouragingly to the Kid, and she saw that he was going on slowly, his head turned to watch her. She told him to wait where he was, and she would come around the mountain and get him and take him home. “Do you hear me, baby?” she asked imploringly after she had told him just what she meant to do. “Answer me, baby!”
“I ain’t a baby!” his voice came faintly shrill after a minute. “I’m a rell ole cowpuncher.”
Miss Allen thought that was what he said, but at the time she did not quite understand, except his denial of being a baby; that was clear enough. She turned to the climb, feeling that she must hurry if she expected to get him and take him home before dark. She knew that every minute was precious and must not be wasted. It was well after noon—she had forgotten to eat her lunch, but her watch said it was nearly one o’clock already. She had no idea how far she had ridden, but she thought it must be twelve miles at least.
She had no idea, either, how far she had run down the butte to the cliff—until she began to climb back. Every rod or so she stopped to rest and to look back and to call to the Kid who seemed such a tiny mite of humanity among these huge peaks and fearsome gorges. He seemed to be watching her very closely always when she looked she could see the pink blur of his little upturned face. She must hurry. Oh, if she could only send a wireless to his mother! Human inventions fell far short of the big needs, after all, she thought as she toiled upward.
From the top of the peak she could see the hazy outline of the Bear Paws, and she knew just about where the Flying U Coulee lay. She imagined that she could distinguish the line of its bluff in the far distance. It was not so very far—but she could not get any word of cheer across the quivering air lanes. She turned and looked wishfully down at the Kid, a tinier speck now than before—for she had climbed quite a distance She waved her hand to him, and her warm brown eyes held a maternal tenderness. He waved his hat—just like a man; he must be brave! she thought. She turned reluctantly and went hurrying down the other side, her blood racing with the joy of having found him, and of knowing that he was safe.
It seemed to take a long time to climb down that peak; much longer than she thought it would take. She looked at her watch nervously—two o’clock, almost! She must hurry, or they would be in the dark getting home. That did not worry her very much, However, for there would be searching parties—she would be sure to strike one somewhere in the hills before dark.
She came finally down to the level—except that it was not level at all, but a trough-shaped gulch that looked unfamiliar. Still, it was the same one she had used as a starting point when she began to climb—of course it was the same one. How in the world could a person get turned around going straight up the side of a hill and straight down again in the very same place. This was the gorge where her horse was tied, only it might be that she was a little below the exact spot; that could happen, of course. So Miss Allen went up the gorge until it petered out against the face of the mountain—one might as well call it a mountain and be done with it, for it certainly was more than a mere hill.
It was some time before Miss Allen would admit to herself that she had missed the gorge where she had left her horse, and that she did not know where the gorge was, and that she did not know where she was herself. She had gone down the mouth of the gulch before she made any admissions, and she had seen not one solitary thing that she could remember having ever seen before.
Not even the peak she had climbed looked familiar from where she was. She was not perfectly sure that it was the same peak when she looked at it.
Were you ever lost? It is a very peculiar sensation—the feeling that you are adrift in a world that is strange. Miss Allen had never been lost before in her life. If she had been, she would have been more careful, and would have made sure that she was descending that peak by the exact route she had followed up it, instead of just taking it for granted that all she need do was get to the bottom.
After an hour or two she decided to climb the peak again, get her bearings from the top and come down more carefully. She was wild with apprehension—though I must say it was not for her own plight but on account of the Kid. So she climbed. And then everything looked so different that she believed she had climbed another hill entirely. So she went down again and turned into a gorge which seemed to lead in the direction where she had seen the little lost boy. She followed that quite a long way—and that one petered out like the first.
Miss Allen found the gorges filling up with shadow, and she looked up and saw the sky crimson and gold, and she knew then without any doubts that she was lost. Miss Allen was a brave young woman, or she would not have been down in that country in the first place; but just the same she sat down with her back against a clay bank and cried because of the eeriness and the silence, and because she was hungry and she knew she was going to be cold before morning—but mostly because she could not find that poor, brave little baby boy who had waved his hat when she left him, and shouted that he was not a baby.
In a few minutes she pulled herself together and went on; there was nothing to be gained by sitting in one place and worrying. She walked until it was too dark to see, and then, because she had come upon a little, level canyon bottom—though one that was perfectly strange—she stopped there where a high bank sheltered her from the wind that was too cool for comfort. She called, a few times, until she was sure that the child was not within hearing. After that she repeated poetry to keep her mind off the loneliness and the pity of that poor baby alone like herself. She would not think of him if she could help it.
When she began to shiver so that her teeth chattered, she would walk up and down before the bank until she felt warm again; then she would sit with her back against the clay and close her eyes and try to sleep. It was not a pleasant way in which to pass a whole night, but Miss Allen endured it as best she could. When the sun tinged the hill-tops she got up stiffly and dragged herself out of the canyon where she could get the direction straight in her mind, and then set off resolutely to find the Kid. She no longer had much thought of finding her horse, though she missed him terribly, and wished she had the
lunch that was tied to the saddle.
This, remember, was the fourth day since the Kid rode down through the little pasture and stood on a piece of fence-post so that he could fasten the gate. Men had given up hope of finding him alive and unharmed. They searched now for his body. And then the three women who lived with Miss Allen began to inquire about the girl, and so the warning went out that Miss Allen was lost; and they began looking for her also.
Miss Allen, along towards noon of that fourth day, found a small stream of water that was fit to drink. Beside the stream she found the footprints of a child, and they looked quite fresh—as if they had been made that day. She whipped up her flagging energy and went on hopefully.
It was a long while afterwards that she met him coming down a canyon on his horse. It must have been past three o’clock, and Miss Allen could scarcely drag herself along. When she saw him she turned faint, and sat down heavily on the steep-sloping bank.
The Kid rode up and stopped beside her. His face was terribly dirty and streaked with the marks of tears he would never acknowledge afterwards. He seemed to be all right, though, and because of his ignorance of the danger he had been in he did not seem to have suffered half as much as had Miss Allen.
“Howdy do,” he greeted her, and smiled his adorable little smile that was like the Little Doctor’s. “Are you the lady up on the hill? Do you know where the bunch is? I’m—lookin’ for the bunch.”
Miss Allen found strength enough to stand up and put her arms around him as he sat very straight in his little stock saddle; she hugged him tight.
“You poor baby!” she cried, and her eyes were blurred with tears. “You poor little lost baby!”
“I ain’t a baby!” The Kid pulled himself free. “I’m six years old goin’ on thirty. I’m a rell ole cowpuncher. I can slap a saddle on my string and ride like a son-a-gun. And I can put the bridle on him my own self and everything. I—I was lookin’ for the bunch. I had to make a dry-camp and my doughnuts is smashed up and the jelly glass broke but I never cried when a skink came. I shooed him away and I never cried once. I’m a rell ole cowpuncher, ain’t I? I ain’t afraid of skinks. I frowed a rock at him and I said, git outa here, you damn old skink or I’ll knock your block off!’ You oughter seen him go! I—I sure made him hard to ketch, by cripes!”
