“Oh, papa,” cried Bell, “do not leave us at home! We can hunt as well as any one; we know every foot of the cañon. Let me go with Geoff, and we’ll follow the brook trail.”
“Very well. Now, mamma, Pancho and I will go down to the main road, and you wait patiently here. Make all the noise you can, children; and the one who finds him must come back to the camp and blow the horn. Hop Yet, we go now; if Dicky comes back, you blow the horn yourself, will you?”
“All light, boss. You eat um dinner now; then go bime-by; mutton heap cold; you—”
“Dinner!” shouted Jack. “Confound your impudence! If you say dinner again, I’ll cut the queue off your stupid head.”
“Good!” murmured Polly, giving a savage punch to her blue Tam o’ Shanter cap.
“Jack, Jack!” remonstrated Aunt Truth.
“I know, dear auntie; but the callous old heathen makes me so mad I can’t contain myself. Come, Margery, let’s be off. Get your shawl; and hurrah for the one who comes back to blow the horn first! I’ll wager you ten to one I’ll have Dick in auntie’s lap inside the hour!”—at which Aunt Truth’s eyes brightened, and she began to take heart again. But as he tore past the brush kitchen and out into the woods, dragging Madge after him at a breathless pace, he shut his lips together rather grimly, saying, “I’d give five hundred dollars (s’posin’ I had a cent) to see that youngster safe again.”
“Tell me one thing, Jack,” said Margery, her teeth chattering with nervousness; “are there any animals in this cañon that would attack him?”
“Oh, of course it is possible that a California lion or a wild-cat might come down to the brook to drink—they have been killed hereabouts—but I hardly believe it is likely; and neither do I believe they would be apt to hurt him, any way, for he would never attack them, you know. What I am afraid of is that he has tumbled over the rocks somewhere in climbing, or tangled himself up in the chaparral. He couldn’t have made off with a pistol, could he? He is up to all such tricks.”
Presently the cañon began to echo with strange sounds, which I have no doubt sent the owls, birds, and rabbits into fits of terror; for the boys had whistles and pistols, while Polly had taken a tin pan and a hammer. She had gone with Phil out behind the thicket of manzanita bushes, and they both stood motionless, undecided where to go.