"Mine's gone too," said he. "Barn's burned, and all the hay. House is there, anyhow. Lemme out, Wid."
"No, hold on," said his neighbor. "There's no hurry for me to go home, now that's sure. Your leg's bad, Sim. I'll take you down."
So they drove down Sim Gage's lane between the wire fence and the willows. Sim was looking eagerly ahead. Continually he moaned to himself low, as if in pain. But the hard-faced man on the seat beside him knew it was not in physical pain.
They fastened the team and hurried on about, searching the premises. The barn was gone, and the hay. Two or three head of slaughtered stock lay partially consumed, close to the hay stack. The house still stood, for the dirt roof had stopped the flames which were struggling up from the door frame along the heavy logs.
"The damn, murdering thieves," said Wid Gardner. "Look, Sim—your horse and mule was both killed in there." He pointed to the burned barn. "What made them? What do they gain by this? I know!"
But Sim Gage was hobbling to his half-burnt home. Gasping, he looked in. It was empty!
"Where's she gone, Wid?" said he, when he could speak. "You reckon Big Aleck—? No. No!"
"Nothing's too low down for him," said Wid Gardner.
There were footprints in the path where the neighbors had stood, but Sim's eye caught others not trampled out, in the strip of sand toward the willows—two footprints, large, and beside them two others, small. The two, old big-game hunters as they were, began to puzzle out this double trail.
"He was a-leading her out this way, Sim," said Wid, pointing. "Look a-yonder, where we come in—them wheel tracks wasn't yours nor mine. Now, look-a-here, in this little open place where the ants has ate it clean—here's her footprints, right here. No use to hunt the creek or the willers, Sim—she's went off in a wagon."