"Haven't seen him, sir," he replied, "since he was here with you before."
"Well, he'll be along," said Will, quietly; but I detected a ring of anxiety in his voice. "Go into the house and make yourselves comfortable," he added. "It will be some time before a meal can be prepared for such a supper party." We entered the house, but he remained outside, and mounting the stile that served as a gate, examined the nearer hills with his glass. There was no sign of Will, Jr.; so the ranchman was directed to dispatch five or six men in as many directions to search for the boy, and as they hastened away on their mission Will remained on the stile, running his fingers every few minutes through the hair over his forehead—a characteristic action with him when worried. Thinking I might reassure him, I came out and chided him gently for what I was pleased to regard as his needless anxiety. It was impossible for Willie to lose his way very long, I explained, without knowing anything about my subject. "See how far you can look over these hills. It is not as if he were in the woods," said I.
Will looked at me steadily and pityingly for a moment. "Go back in the house, Nell," said he, with a touch of impatience; "you don't know what you are talking about."
That was true enough, but when I returned obediently to the house I repeated my opinion that worry over the absent boy was needless, for it would be difficult, I declared, for one to lose himself where the range of vision was so extensive as it was from the top of one of these foothills.
"But suppose," said one of the party, "that you were in the valley behind one of the foothills—what then?"
This led to an animated discussion as to the danger of getting lost in this long-range locality, and in the midst of it Will walked in, his equanimity quite restored.
"It's all right," said he; "I can see the youngster coming along."
We flocked to the stile, and discovered a moving speck in the distance. Looked at through the field-glasses, it proved to be the belated courier. Then we appealed to Will to settle the question that had been under discussion.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he answered, impressively, "if one of you were lost among these foothills, and a whole regiment started out in search of you, the chances are ten to one that you would starve to death, to say the least, before you could be found."
To find the way with ease and locate the trail unerringly over an endless and monotonous succession of hills identical in appearance is an ability the Indian possesses, but few are the white men that can imitate the aborigine. I learned afterward that it was accounted one of Will's great accomplishments as a scout that he was perfectly at home among the frozen waves of the prairie ocean.