She threw her hands to her head with a despairing gesture. He moved toward her, filled with the yearning to take her in his arms and comfort her. But he remembered that she was to be married to Albert Wellesly and his hands dropped to his sides. He turned to examine the ground about the stone and saw in the sand many little holes and scratches. He noticed, too, some pebbles in front of the coyote tracks.
“Look!” he exclaimed. “The brave little man! He threw stones at the coyotes and kept them off! He must have had a stick, too, for see these little holes in the sand. He probably stood up and thrust the stick toward them.”
“Could he keep them off so that they would not attack him?”
“Yes, I think he could. As long as—as he kept moving they would only follow him.”
A little farther on they found many deep impressions of the child’s feet close together, as if he had been jumping, and after that the coyote tracks disappeared.
“He must have jumped at them and shouted and thrust out his stick,” said Mead, “and frightened them away. He might have done that after he found he could drive them back. And this was probably after daybreak, when they would be less likely to follow him. We can’t be so very far behind him now, for he would be tired and could not walk fast.”
“Come, hurry! Let us go on!” urged Marguerite,
He looked at her doubtfully. Her face was drawn and white under her sunbonnet, notwithstanding her long walk in the hot sun, and dark rings circled her eyes.