"No—but we've nothing definite. And it may make her really ill, coming on top of the other."
"I don't think Miss Norah's the sort to let herself get ill when there was need of her. It may take her poor mind off the other—she can't help that now, an' he was only a pony—"
"Only a pony! By George, Brownie—!"
"Any horse is only a pony when compared to your Pa," said Brownie, unconscious of anything peculiar in her remark. "I don't know that real anxiety mayn't help her, Master Jim. And any'ow, it don't seem to me we've the right to keep it from her, them bein', as it were, that partickler much to each other. Take my tip, an' you tell her."
"What do you think, Wally?"
"I'm with Brownie," said Wally, unexpectedly. "It's awful to see Norah lying there all day, never saying a word, and this'll rouse her up when nothing else would." So Jim had yielded to the weight of advice, and had gone slowly up to tell Norah they could not find David Linton.
"Can't find him?" she echoed, "but isn't he at Killybeg?"
"He left there yesterday morning," Jim answered. "A telegram came for him last night, and it was important—something about cattle—so I sent Burton into Cunjee with it—Killybeg's on the telephone now, you know, and Burton could ring him up from the post office. But the Darrells were astonished, and said he'd left there quite early, and meant to come straight home."
"Well?" Norah was white enough now.
"Well, I got worried, and so did Murty; because you know there isn't any stopping place between here and Killybeg when you come across the ranges. And Monarch's pretty uncertain—in rough country, especially. So I got Murty and Wally to go out at daylight this morning, taking the straight line to the Darrells, and they picked up his tracks pointing homewards about five miles from the Billabong boundary. Murty made Monarch's shoes himself, and he could swear to them anywhere. They followed them awhile, and they came to a place where the ground was beaten down a lot, as if he'd had trouble with Monarch; I expect something scared him, and he played the fool. But after that the tracks led on to some stony rises, and they lost them; the ground was too hard. They could only tell he'd gone right off the line to Billabong."