“Very well,” she said coldly; “I shall go. But if I get my neuralgia again from wading through the creek bottom don’t blame me!”
She put on her overshoes and, taking a tin bucket for milk and her trusty rifle, she started while Mr. Muldoon was showing Aggie a new game of solitaire. I went to the cave mouth with her and listened to the crackling of twigs as she slid down into the valley. She came into view at the bottom much sooner than I had expected, having, as I learned later, slipped on a loose stone and rolled fully half the way down.
The next two hours seemed endless. Mr. Muldoon, tiring of solitaire, had rolled himself up in a corner and was peacefully sleeping, with his injured foot on Aggie’s hop pillow. Aggie and I sat on guard, one on each side of the cave mouth, and stared down at the valley, which was darkening rapidly.
Tish had been gone two hours and a half and no sign of her, when Aggie began to cry softly.
“She’ll never come back!” she whimpered. “The outlaws have got her and killed her. Oh, Tish, Tish!”
“Why would they kill her?” I demanded. “Because she’s trying to buy milk and eggs?”
“B-because she knows too much,” Aggie wailed. “We’ve found their lair, that’s why—don’t tell me this isn’t an outlaw’s cave. It’s just b-built for it. They’ll do away with her and then they’ll come after us.”
Aggie never carries a secret weight in her bosom. She always opens up her heart to the nearest listener. This probably relieves Aggie, but it does not make her a cheerful companion. Eight o’clock and darkness came, and still no Tish. I went into the cave and brought out my gun, and Aggie roused Mr. Muldoon and explained the situation to him. He grew quite white.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “What possessed her anyhow? To the farmhouse! Why, they’ll——”
His face more than his words convinced us that the matter was really serious. He examined Aggie’s revolver, which he mostly carried in his hip pocket, and, going to the mouth of the cave, listened carefully. Everything was quiet. The cave and both sides of the valley were in deep shadow, but over the ridge of the Camel’s Back across from us there was still a streak of red sunset light. Mr. Muldoon looked and pointed.