“No, sir. I believe she has been here–your niece.”
“And where’d she go? What you done with her?” he demanded, his overhanging reddish eyebrows coming together in a threatening scowl.
“Hadn’t you better sit down, Mr. Hicks, and let me tell you all about it?” suggested Miss Kate.
“Say, Miss!” he ejaculated. “I’m anxious, I be. When Jane Ann first run away from Silver Ranch, I thought she was just a-playin’ off some of her tricks on me. I never supposed she was in earnest ’bout it–no, ma’am!
“I rid into Bullhide arter two days. And instead of findin’ her knockin’ around there, I finds her pony at the greaser’s corral, and learns that she’s took the train East. That did beat me. I didn’t know she had any money, but she’d bought a ticket to Denver, and it took a right smart of money to do it.
“I went to Colonel Penhampton, I did,” went on Hicks, “and told him about it. He heated up the wires some ’twixt Bullhide and Denver; but she’d fell out o’ sight there the minute she’d landed. Denver’s some city, ma’am. I finds that out when I lit out arter Jane Ann and struck that place myself.
“Wal! ’twould be teejious to you, ma’am, if I told whar I have chased arter that gal these endurin’ two months. Had to let the ranch an’ ev’rythin’ else go to loose ends while I follered news of her all over. My gosh, ma’am! how many gals there is runs away from their homes! Ye wouldn’t believe the number ’nless ye was huntin’ for a pertic’lar one an’ got yer rope on so many that warn’t her!”
“You have had many disappointments, sir?” said Miss Kate, beginning to feel a great sympathy for this uncouth man.
He nodded his great, bald, shining head. “I hope you ain’t going to tell me thar’s another in store for me right yere,” he said, in a much milder voice.
“I cannot tell you where Nita–if she is your niece–is now,” said Miss Kate, firmly.