“So—soon, dear?”
“Capable operators and agents aren’t as thick as sage brush hereabouts. Especially those willing to live at—Tuttle! I owe something to the company I’ve served so long and—I mustn’t lose this chance. The traces I found—I’m sure this venture’ll pan out well—I hate to uproot you from your home, poor as it is, but I hope to give you a better. Shall I send word, ‘Yes?’ Here she comes!”
“Ye-es,” faltered the wife, hurriedly turning houseward to hide the tears which had started to her eyes. To leave the home itself was less to her than leaving the stone-covered grave beside it. However, frail as she was, she was a loyal wife and sunshiny woman, and she made the best of the matter. She would at once begin her preparations, but her heart was heavy with forebodings concerning the children so unexpectedly placed in her care.
Mr. Burnham had lost no time in carrying out the suggestions of Captain Sherman’s note. He had sat up late on the night of its arrival dispatching and receiving messages concerning them. He had even supplemented the cavalryman’s directions by inquiries of his own, for when all was summed up that officer’s facts had been meager, indeed.
As Mrs. Burnham thought, it was fortunate that the new station-master could not arrive at Tuttle till the end of two weeks; and during those fourteen days her husband made fresh efforts to trace the children’s friends, anxiously scanning every mail and listening to every wire—and all without result.
What had seemed to Captain Sherman and, at first, even to Mr. Burnham, the simplest matter in the world became impossible to accomplish; and all because of a chain of circumstances, each trivial in itself.
The letters and messages sent to Lanark, the nearest postoffice to Refugio, remained unclaimed and undelivered, because on the very night of Pablo’s arrival at the mission, Miguel had left it and had not returned. Nobody else there sent to Lanark, nor did the indolent mail-and-telegraph-agent trouble to forward any matter to Refugio, since he knew that both its master and manager were absent.
When he left home after failing to draw further information from Pablo than the agave leaf contained, Miguel set off at once on a search of his own; and by a strange chance came to that glen in the mountains where Benoni lay dead among the dead Apaches. Always hasty in judgment, the distracted fellow now leaped to the conclusion that his beloved “small ones” were also dead—or worse—were in captivity, and that thereafter life held only torment for him. He would never dare to look upon Adrian Manuel’s face again; and, though he still carried the sealed letter which was to be opened at the end of two months, he resolved to go where none could find him till that time came. Then—“what shall be will be!” he concluded, and mounting the horse which supplied Amador’s place, he rode away southward and was seen no more.
The Disbrows, also, left at once, and reached a remote little town on their homeward way, when the elder gentleman was suddenly stricken with a serious illness. Indeed he was so extremely ill that, Mr. Rupert, who would otherwise have been eager to secure and read all newspapers, had neither time nor thought for anything save nursing his father back to health, or, at least, to a physical condition fit for travel. He did, however, seize an opportunity to dispatch a message to Mrs. Sinclair; confident that her energy would be sufficient to trace her “Mary’s children,” should they still be alive.
But Mrs. Sinclair was at that time on her journey across the continent, and the servant left in charge of her home received the message and mislaid it. She had not dared to break the seal and read it, or she might have told it promptly on her mistress’s arrival. As it was, fearing the sharp rebukes which would have been given her, she kept the matter secret, trusting in her heart that “it couldn’t have amounted to anything or another would have followed.”