“And—and we’d shoot at them from the rushes.”
I know not why Joey’s words should have irked me, but the day seemed long, and I was glad when I heard the soft thud of Buttons’ hoofs on the turf outside the cabin promptly at the accustomed hour. I was building the kitchen fire, but I straightened up, stepped to the door, and threw it wide.
Buttons stood with his bridle over his head, his nose sniffing the ground, but no Joey sprang from the saddle into my eager arms. The horse was riderless.
All Roselake joined in the search for Joey, after I had ascertained that the lad was not with Haidee, and the search was prolonged far into the night. The school-master had seen Joey ride away at the close of school, and I argued that Buttons must have come straight home. At dawn the search was resumed. For miles in each direction the searching party spread out, but at night, totally disheartened, the kindly neighbors disbanded, and Joey’s case was left in the hands of the police.
CHAPTER XX
“PERHAPS I SHALL GO AWAY”
ALONE the next day I took up the search for Joey, beating back and forth between Roselake and Cedar Dale, and penetrating to Wallace and Wardner. It was to Wanza that I spoke my conviction at last, sitting my cayuse on the river road, while she sat stiff and tearful-eyed in her cart, pale even beneath the pink-lined umbrella.
“It looks to me, Wanza girl,” I said wearily, “like a plain case of kidnapping.”
“But who would kidnap him, Mr. Dale?” Wanza queried pitifully.
“Why—that’s the question,” I returned. “Have you ever seen him talking to any one—any stranger—when you have met him going and returning from school?”
She shook her head. “Once,” she replied, “Joey was with me, and Mr. Batterly stopped us. He asked me all about Joey—seeming so keen! And I told him—thinking it no harm—just how a dying woman gave him to you, saying he was a waif that had been picked up after a storm over on the Sound by her dead brother, who had been a fisherman.”