CHAPTER XIX.
NO NEWS.
WEEKS passed and there was no word from Olive. The ranch girls had almost ceased to talk of her return. They had begun to lose hope.
Immediately after Frank Kent and Jack left him, on the day of the round-up, Jim Colter had gone to the Indian village, but he could find no trace of Olive there. Curiously enough old Laska had disappeared from her hut several days before, so she could scarcely be held responsible for the lost girl. She had said nothing of where she was going nor when she expected to return. In Indian fashion, she had departed silently, carrying only a bundle strapped across her back.
Josef would give no information. Jim tried him with threats and bribes, but the boy insisted he knew nothing of Olive. He had not seen her in many weeks. It was useless to try to make an Indian betray a secret he meant to keep and Jim Colter knew better than to waste his time. The Indian is as suspicious and reticent to-day as he was in the old days, when no kind of torture ever wrung a sound from him.
Advertisements were inserted in the papers in the nearby towns, but no girl answering to the description of Olive was ever reported. She had vanished as completely as though she were dead. By and by Jim Colter gave up the search. He did not believe that they would ever see the Indian girl again.
Frank Kent kept quietly at work. He was very rich, and without a word to anyone, offered a reward for Olive's return, so large that had Laska seen it and had she had Olive in her possession, she must surely have given her up. Frank came often to Rainbow Lodge. The girls no longer thought of him as the guest and relative of their bitterest enemy, and the name of the Nortons was never mentioned between them. He used to take Jean and Frieda and Cousin Ruth off on long excursions to keep them amused, but Jack would rarely go with them. She seldom left the ranch and spent the greater part of the time alone, refusing to talk either of Olive or the prospect of losing Rainbow Ranch, which loomed nearer with each passing day. Jack was polite to Cousin Ruth, but she never expressed any penitence to her or to Jim for her wilfulness, which seemed to be responsible for Olive's loss. But daily Jack grew paler and thinner. She seemed much older and quieter than the radiant beautiful girl who had been the ruling spirit of the entire ranch. Everyone who knew her worried over the change in her, and most of all Ruth, who wondered if she were not somehow to blame for the whole disaster. If she had not opposed Jack's going to the round-up, Jim would have taken Jack with him and Olive would not have left the Lodge.
Jean and Frieda bore their troubles differently. Sometimes they would talk of Olive and again of the loss of their home and Jean would weep passionately for a few minutes and Frieda would cry softly. But they would soon cheer up and be convinced of Olive's immediate return and the discovery of the lost deed to the ranch. Jean even suggested that they need not perish if the ranch were taken away from them. She was quite sure she would be able to work and support herself and possibly Frieda. And for once Jack laughed, for, as she explained to her cousin, she and Jean knew nothing in the world except how to ride horseback, and ranch girls though they were, they could hardly be expected to join a circus.