“Now, tell me the truth,” she said.
He was a bashful man, with a long, sheepish nose 197 and the bluest of harmless eyes. He started a little when she made that demand, and blushed.
“That’s what the boss told me to say,” he demurred.
“I know he did; but what’s happening?”
“Well, we ain’t heard hide nor hair of her”—he looked round cautiously, lest Mrs. Chadron surprise him in the truth—“and them rustlers they’re clean gone and took everything but their houses and fences along—beds and teams and stock, and everything.”
“Gone!” she repeated, staring at him blankly; “where have they gone?”
“Macdonald’s doin’ it; that man’s got brainds,” the cowboy yielded, with what he knew to be unlawful admiration of the enemy’s parts. “He’s herdin’ ’em back in the hills where they’ve built a regular fort, they say. Some of us fellers caught up to a few of the stragglers last night, and that’s when I got this arm put on me.”
“Have any of the rustlers been killed?”
“No,” he admitted, disgustedly, “they ain’t! We’ve burnt all the shacks we come to, and cut their fences, but they all got slick and clean away, down to the littlest kid. But the boss’s after ’em,” he added, with brisk hopefulness, “and you’ll have better news by mornin’.”
Chadron himself was the next rider to arrive at that anxious house, and he came as the messenger of disaster. He arrived between midnight and morning, his horse spur-gashed, driven to the limit, himself 198 sunken-eyed from his anxiety and hard pursuit of his elusive enemy.