“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.”