Ignoring trails, they struck straight across country. The land had been washed clean. Beneath the brown grasses the earth lay dark and moist. A hundred fresh, elusive odours struck the nostrils, called forth from the soil by the rare moisture, a silent token of its latent fertility. On the way there were no houses, no fences, no cleared fields. The land lay in the dawn as empty as when the keels of restless white men first split the Western ocean; and more lifeless, for the great buffalo herds that of old gave the men of the plains and foothills food and raiment were gone forever.
The sun was up when they reached Talapus. Mrs. McCrae had just discovered her daughter's absence; and her husband was cursing the leg that held him helpless. Casey told them the events of the night, and Donald McCrae was proud of his daughter, and but little worried about his son.
"Show me another girl would have ridden in that storm!" he exclaimed. "She's the old stock—the old frontier stock! And Sandy, locking the detective in the harness room!" He chuckled. "Go down and let them out, Casey, and give them breakfast. A fine pair of children we've got, mother."
"Sandy can take care of himself," said Mrs. McCrae practically. "He always did, since he could walk, and he took his own ways, asking nobody. And Sheila, for a girl, is the same. They take after you, Donald, not me. But now, Casey, Mrs. Wade is at Chakchak, isn't she?"
"Mrs. Wade and Miss Burnaby," Casey replied. "It's all right, Mrs. McCrae."
"Sheila needs no chaperon," said her father.
"Not with Casey," said her mother. "But there's the gossip, Donald, and the dirty tongues. It's not like the old days."
"True enough, maybe," McCrae admitted. And he added, when his wife had left the room: "What have they got hold of to arrest the boy, Casey?"
"I don't know," Casey replied. "But we'll face the music, Donald."
When Casey entered the harness room Glass and another man, a stranger, lay in one corner on a heap of sacks. Sandy had done a most workmanlike job, and he had put a neat finish to it by strapping each man to a stanchion with a pair of driving reins.