“Well, if you wish it,” he said reluctantly; “but it’s hard to hold down my feelings.”
“Thank you, I’ll see you again. God bless you for being so good to me. But take care of yourself, Fred.”
She touched her reins as she spoke and Eagle carried her on gently toward home. Fred watched until she passed through the ranch gate, then with a strange feeling tugging at his heart, he turned to gallop back and gather up his herd.
Why didn’t she want him to tell? What could it all mean? were the tormenting questions that kept buzzing through his brain as he scouted about the brush to round up his scattered herd. For several hours he hunted and worried and worried and hunted. The sun wheeled far down the west before he had his herd together; and then to his dismay, when he counted up, one of his best cows was missing. Heading the rest toward the ranch, he took one more look up the creek. Half a mile away he found the poor beast shot dead.
It was the work of that dastardly white Indian, Fred felt sure of that. But the coward had no weapon. How could he do it? The boy examined the ground about the animal. Several moccasin tracks and the print of pony hoofs told him that Nixon was not alone.
His first impulse was to strike for the ranch and rouse the valley. But his promise to Alta held him from doing anything. He would keep his eyes open and find out for himself what was wrong. The time might come when he could strike. “And if it ever does come,” he said to himself, “I’ll strike hard.”
Chapter XIV
AT THE OLD SHACK
CRISP autumn time had come. With lavish yet artistic touch the season had painted all the craggy mountain land. The hills, splashed with scarlet, yellow, purple, and other gorgeous hues, seemed to have put on Joseph’s coat of many colors. The sunburnt meadows, patterned with golden willow patches, made a pretty carpet for the valley floor, while over all the pink-tinted mist of the Indian summer sun threw a veil of mystic beauty.
Poets are prone to sing of the autumn as the melancholy time of the year. Rather is it nature’s social season, the time when all wild things gather to celebrate with gorgeous pageantry, and to feast on the good things Mother Nature spreads before them.
Wild ducks and geese and cranes and swans filled the air or swam on pond and rivers. Partridges whirred through the groves; sage hens flocked upon the flats. Deer and elk gathered out of their retreats far up among the snowy peaks to come down into the less frosty canyons. Herds of antelope fed and frolicked over the rolling hills. It was the time of peace and plenty that precedes the gloomy days when “all wild things lie down to sleep.”