“Dad’s not back yet,” she shouted.
“Oh, hell, is that you Miss? I didn’t know it was you.”
“Never mind. Roll out and get busy. We’re goin’ to find him if we have to ride to Boston,” she cried.
Luke Jensen, being the youngest man in the outfit, both in years and point of service, was first from the bunk house, it being his duty to bring the saddle horses in from pasture. At the barn, he found that Wichita had already bridled the horse that was kept up for the purpose of bringing the others in and was on the point of swinging the heavy saddle to its back.
He greeted her cheerily, took the saddle from her, and completed its adjustment.
“You worried about your Paw, Miss?” he asked as he drew the latigo through the cinch ring.
“Something might have happened to him,” she replied. “It won’t hurt to look for him.”
“No, it won’t do no hurt, though I reckon he kin take keer o’ hisself about as good as the next man. I wouldn’t worry none, Miss,” he concluded, reassuringly, as he stepped into the stirrup and swung his leg over the horse’s rump.
Wichita stood by the corral gate watching Luke riding down into the east pasture at an easy lope. She saw him disappear among the willows that grow along the draw a mile from the corrals and two thirds of the way across the pasture; and then “Smooth” Kreff, her father’s foreman, joined her.
“Mornin’, Miss,” he greeted her. He looked at her sharply. “You-all been up all night, ain’t you?”