"No, he isn't well. He thought the change might do him good, but it doesn't seem to. We are going away in a few days."
But young Mackay was not interested in the painter's health, nor was he specially interested in the painter's daughter. His immediate object now that she had finished the doughnuts was to get her off his hands. And so he set a good pace toward his pony, saddled, shortened the stirrups and helped the girl up. No longer restrained by her inability to keep up with his stride, he struck a swift, swinging gait which was faster than the pony's walk. He paid little or no attention to girl or pony. It was their business to keep up with him. He led the way without hesitation, around sloughs, down coulees, through timber. When they had been traveling thus for an hour or more he stopped suddenly.
"Somebody is shouting," he said. "It will be your people looking for you, likely. We will just wait here. You had better get down, for I am going to shoot and he might not stand still."
He fired three shots close together, and after an interval three more. Soon afterward they could hear a distant whoop. Mackay answered, and in a few minutes the search party which had been strung out combing benches and coulees, began to converge upon them.
First came Kathleen French, a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl sitting astride a slashing, blaze-faced sorrel, and following her, her three brothers, Blake, Gerald and Lawrence, the latter leading the pony which had evaded Faith Winton. The pony had come in, it appeared, with the saddle twisted down under its belly and kicked to flinders, and the Frenches had united in blaming Larry, the youngest, who had given Faith the pony and saddled it for her.
"And lucky for you she wasn't hurt," Blake told him. He was a big, powerfully built man, with a heavy, florid face which was already beginning to show signs of the life he led. "If she'd been smashed up you'd have got yours."
Larry, a rangy, hawk-faced youngster, eyed his brother insolently. "I would, hey! Well, not from you, and you can make a note of that."
"Shut up!" said the sister. "Quit your scrapping. We may as well be drifting. Climb up on this pony, Faith."
Faith Winton held out her hand. "Good-by, Angus Mackay. And thank you so much for finding me, and for the ride, and for the doughnuts."
Young Mackay shook hands limply. "That is all right," he said, embarrassed. But Kathleen French was reminded of an omission.