“Oh, they ain't gone far, marm,” reassured Zene. “You'll find out they'll come back to the tavern all right; mebby before we get there.”
But every such hopeful return to base disheartened the searchers more. At last the grandmother was obliged to lie down.
Early in the morning the Virginian came, full of concern. His party was breaking camp, but he would stay behind and help search for the children.
“That I won't allow,” said Grandma Padgett. “You're on a long road, and you don't want to risk separating from the colony. Besides no one can do more than we can—unless it was Son Tip. As I laid awake, I wished in my heart Son Tip was here.”
“Can't you send him a lightnin' message?” said the Virginian. “By the telegraphic wire,” he explained, quoting a line of a popular song.
“I wish I could,” said Grandma Padgett, “but there's no telegraph office in miles of where he's located. I thought of it last night. There's no way to reach him that I can see, but by letter, and sometimes they lay over on the road. And I don't allow to stop at this place. I'm goin' to set out and hunt in all directions till I find the children.”
The Virginian agreed that her plan was best. He also made arrangements to ride back and tell her if the caravan overtook them on the 'pike during that day's journey. Then he and Grandma Padgett shook hands with each other and reluctantly separated.
She made inquiries about all the other roads leading out of Richmond. Zene drove the carriage out of the barnyard, and Grandma Padgett, having closed her account with the tavern, took the lines, an object of interest and solicitude to all who saw her depart, and turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only gravity, but real concern. Boswell, on the other hand, was in a state of nerves. If he saw a bank at the roadside he ran ahead and mounted it, looking back into the carriage, demanding to know, with a yelping howl, where Bobaday and Corinne were. When his feelings became too strong for him he jumped at the step, and Grandma Padgett shook her head at him.
“Use your nose, you silly little fice, and track them, why don't you?”
As soon as Boswell understood this reproach he jumped a fence and smelt every stump or tuft of grass, every bush and hummock, until the carriage dwindled in the distance. Then he made the dust smoke under his feet as a sudden June shower will do for a few seconds, and usually overtook the carriage with all of his tongue unfurled and his lungs working like a furnace. Johnson reproved him with a glance, and he at once dropped his tail and trotted beside Johnson, as if throwing himself on that superior dog for support in the hour of affliction.