“I don’t know,” answered Wiley, and sat staring straight ahead as she ran on with her arguments and entreaties. After all, what did he have to base his belief upon, except the babblings of brain-cracked Charley? They had found the Colonel’s riding-burro, and his saddle-bags and papers, besides his rifle and canteen; and the Shoshone trailers had followed the tracks of a man until they were lost in the drifting sand-hills. And yet Charley’s remarks, and his repeated attempts to get across the valley with some whiskey; there was something there, certainly, upon which to build hope–and Virginia was very insistent.
“Yes, I think it was another man,” he said at length. “Either that or your father escaped. He might have lost one canteen and still have had another, or he might have found his way to some water-hole. But from the way Charley talks, and tries to cover up his breaks, I feel sure that your father is alive.”
228“Oh, goodie!” she cried and before he could stop her she had stooped over and kissed his bruised head. “Now you know I’m sorry,” she burst out impulsively, “and will you go out and look for him at once?”
“Pretty soon,” said Wiley, putting her gently away. “After I make my payment on the mine. They’d be sure to jump me, now.”
“Oh, but why not now?” she pleaded. “They wouldn’t jump your mine.”
“Yes, they would,” he replied. “They’d jump me in a minute! I don’t dare to go off the grounds.”
“But what’s the mine,” she demanded insistently, “compared to finding father?”
“Well, not very much,” he conceded frankly, “but this is the way I’m fixed. I’ve got the whole world against me, including you and your mother, and I’ve got to play out my hand. There’s nobody I can trust–even my father has turned against me–and I’ve got to fight this out myself.”
“What? Just for the money? Do you think more of that than you do of finding my father?”
“No, I don’t,” he said, “but I can’t go now, and so there’s no use talking.”