“Let him go, Mr. Sheriff,” he said. “His help will be valuable in the search. Better go yourself, and take as many with you as you can. I have adjourned court and told everybody to hurry out to the mesa, and I’m going myself as soon as I can get a horse.”
Emerson Mead ran at the top of his speed to the Delarue house, going there without thought of why he did it, feeling only that Marguerite was in deepest trouble, and all his mind filled with the idea that it would kill her if anything happened to the child. As he entered the gate Marguerite saw him and rushed down from the veranda.
“How did it happen?” he asked hastily.
“I took him out to walk with me on the mesa yesterday afternoon, and he slipped away from me and I could not find him.”
“Can you tell me where you saw him last?”
“Let me go with you! I can show you the very place!”
“Are you strong enough? Can you stand it? You are very pale!”
“Yes, yes! It will not be so hard as to stay here and wait! Let me go with you and help you!”
“Come, then, quick!”
She snatched her little white sunbonnet from a chair on the porch and they hurried off. Walking swiftly and silently they passed through the back streets of the town and across vacant lots and hurried over the rising plain until they came to the place in the rolling hills where the child had disappeared.