Just then, and before Mun Bun could change his mind if he wanted to, somebody came along and slammed down the lid of that box!
Poor little Mun Bun was much frightened then. At first he did not cry out or try to make himself heard. But he heard the person outside lock the box and then go away. After that he heard nothing at all for a long time.
Perhaps Mun Bun sobbed himself to sleep. At least, it seemed to him when he next aroused that he had been in the box a long, long time. He knew he was hungry, and being hungry is not at all a pleasant experience.
Meanwhile the search for the smallest Bunker was carried on all about the Oxbow Bend. In the brush and along the river's edge where the cottonwoods stood, and in every little coulee, or hollow, back of the camps.
"I don't see," complained Rose, "why we Bunkers have to be losing things all the time. There was my wrist-watch and Laddie's pin. Next came Vi and Laddie. Then Mun Bun was lost in the tumble-weed. Then I got lost myself. Now it's Mun Bun again. Somehow, Russ, it does seem as though we must be awful careless."
"You speak for yourself, Rose Bunker!" returned her brother quite sharply. "I know I wasn't careless about Mun Bun. I didn't even know he needed watching—not when daddy and mother were around."
Nobody seemed more disturbed over Mun Bun's disappearance than Cowboy Jack. The ranchman had set everybody about the place to work hunting for the little boy, and privately he had begun to offer a reward for the discovery of the lost one.
To Cowboy Jack came one of the older Indian men. He was not a modern, up-to-date Indian, like Chief Black Bear. He still tied his hair in a scalp-lock, and if he was not actually a "blanket Indian" (that is, one of the old kind that wore blankets instead of regular shirts and jackets), this Indian was one that had not been to school. Russ and Rose were standing with Cowboy Jack when the old Indian came to the ranchman.
"Wuh! Heap trouble in camp," said the old Indian in his deep voice.
"And there's going to be more trouble if we don't find that little fellow pretty soon," declared the ranchman vigorously.