Before the mules brought up at the lean-to, Dallas was over a wheel and tottering in quest of her father. Out of the shack, as she searched it, sounded her plaintive cry: "Daddy! daddy! where are you? Oh, Daddy! daddy! come back!"
Squaw Charley, bringing Marylyn in, found the elder girl kneeling behind the partition, her arms thrown out to grasp the vacant bunk.
He put his load down gently; then, unbidden, rushed through the door for Brannon.
When Captain Oliver arrived, with Fraser, a surgeon and a detachment of mounted men, Dallas was seated in the doorway, rocking Marylyn against her breast. She looked up, dry-eyed, as he hurried to her.
"What'd they do it for?" she asked him, brokenly. "How could they hurt you, dad? Oh, the land wasn't worth it! the land wasn't worth it!"
Something to quicken life in Marylyn was the first thought. Then, food and drink were given the girls. Meanwhile, the troopers were sent out under Fraser to range the bend and beat the coulée.
Oliver stayed. But to his questions, Dallas, her reason tottering like her steps, could only return others that were heartrending:
"He'll come back, won't he? They wouldn't kill him? Oh, you don't think he's dead?"
"We'll find him," said the captain. He was pitiful in his regret. This tragedy was striking home to him as even the Jamieson failure had not. His long, sad face was more like a walrus' than ever.
"Mr. Bond said we'd have good luck here," she went on despairingly. "But there was danger by night, wasn't there? There was danger!"