The Kid looked down at her triumphantly. He frowned a little and flushed guiltily when he remembered something. “'Scuse me,” he said. “I guess you better ride my horse. I guess I better walk. It ain't p'lite for ladies to walk and men ride.”
“No, no!” Miss Allen reached up with both hands and held the Kid from dismounting. “I'll walk, Buck. I'd rather. I—why, I wouldn't dare ride that horse of yours. I'd be afraid he might buck me off.” She pinched her eyebrows together and pursed up her lips in a most convincing manner.
“Hunh!” Scorn of her cowardice was in his tone. “Well, a course I ain't scared to ride him.”
So with Miss Allen walking close to the Kid's stirrup and trying her best to keep up and to be cheerful and to remember that she must not treat him like a little, lost boy but like a real old cowpuncher, they started up the canyon toward the sun which hung low above a dark, pine-covered hill.
CHAPTER 19. HER NAME WAS ROSEMARY
Andy Green came in from a twenty-hour ride through the Wolf Butte country and learned that another disaster had followed on the heels of the first; that miss Allen had been missing for thirty-six hours. While he bolted what food was handiest in the camp where old Patsy cooked for the searchers, and the horse wrangler brought up the saddle-bunch just as though it was a roundup that held here its headquarters, he heard all that Slim and Cal Emmett could tell him about the disappearance of Miss Allen.
One fact stood significantly in the foreground, and that was that Pink and the Native Son had been the last to speak with her, so far as anyone knew. That was it—so far as anyone knew. Andy's lips tightened. There were many strangers riding through the country, and where there are many strangers there is also a certain element of danger. That Miss Allen was lost was not the greatest fear that drove Andy Green forth without sleep and with food enough to last him a day or two.
First he meant to hunt up Pink and Miguel—which was easy enough, since they rode into camp exhausted and disheartened while he was saddling a fresh horse. From them he learned the direction which Miss Allen had taken when she left them, and he rode that way and never stopped until he had gone down off the benchland and had left the fringe of coulees and canyons behind. Pink and the Native Son had just come from down in here, and they had seen no sign of either her or the Kid. Andy intended to begin where they had left off, and comb the breaks as carefully as it is possible for one man to do. He was beginning to think that the Badlands held the secret of the Kid disappearance, even though they had seen nothing of him when they came out four days ago. Had he seen Chip he would have urged him to send all the searchers—and there were two or three hundred by now—into the Badlands and keep them there until the Kid was found. But he did not see Chip and had no time to hunt him up. And having managed to evade the supervision of any captain, and to keep clear of all parties, he meant to go alone and see if he could find a clue, at least.
It was down in the long canyon which Miss Allen had followed, that Andy found hoof-prints which he recognized. The horse Miss Allen had ridden whenever he saw her—one which she had bought somewhere north of town—had one front foot which turned in toward the other. “Pigeon-toed,” he would have called it. The track it left in soft soil was unmistakable. Andy's face brightened when he saw it and knew that he was on her trail. The rest of the way down the canyon he rode alertly, for though he knew she might be miles from there by now, to find the route she had taken into the Badlands was something gained.