“We had best start back on the homeward trail. I don’t understand my not being able to find Miss Graham. I must look more thoroughly as we go down.
Jefferson Simpson was not the kind of man who lost his nerve. He had confronted difficult situations a good many times in his rather strenuous existence. The idea of playing guide to a number of young women had struck him as an amusing departure. He had been a rancher, a miner, a cowboy, an Indian agent. Why not add another rôle to his many parts for a few months at least? It had not struck him that his new occupation might have a serious side. At present, however, it did. He did not like not having found Bettina. There was simply no accounting for her disappearance in so short a time, and along a trail where no one else had lately passed.
Fortunately Mr. Simpson’s manner never betrayed his emotions. Before Peggy and Vera he behaved as if Bettina must be comfortably awaiting them not far off. But, while he led Bettina’s riderless burro, both girls saw that he stared over the sides of the ravines every foot along the route.
And they looked, too, although the thought that any human being should ever slip in some of the places made one ill.
In a little more than an hour, when they had again reached the place where they had eaten lunch and without finding Bettina, the new guide insisted that Peggy and Vera find their way back alone to their camp.
It was a difficult situation to know what one should do; but they must take their chances of finding the route. Mrs. Burton must learn what had become of them.
And to desert the lost! Jefferson Simpson’s queer brown face twisted. “This is a sheep country, you know, and I’ve been a shepherd along with the rest of my jobs. ‘There were ninety and nine.’ Remember the rest of that old song. Tell Mrs. Burton I’ll be home with the one that is lost in a short time after you get there. Good-by.”
So Vera and Peggy, seeing that there was nothing wiser to be done than follow their guide’s advice, waved farewell to him and took the long trail alone toward camp. But they did not mind the journey if they could have known where Bettina had vanished.
CHAPTER XI
Dawn Light
It was curious that the guide had not seen the place where Bettina had fallen.