Molly’s pinto was willing enough to be led back to its home, so she removed the little creature’s reins, hanging over the horn of her saddle, and, linking her arm through them, set off downstream in quest of Lightning and the farm.
CHAPTER XXIX
Lightning’s Despair
LIGHTNING had never made the trip into Hartspool at such a speed. His horse had understood the thing expected of it at the moment of setting out. The savage Mexican spurs on the old man’s heels had told the willing creature all and more than it wanted to know, and Lightning had raced into the busy township. He had ignored every familiar stopping-place. He wanted none of them. He rode straight on to Doc Blanchard’s house.
The doctor was away—gone for a prolonged holiday to the east. Lightning blasphemed, as was inevitable. But the hired man who informed him could give not a glimmer of hope. The Doc, he assured him, wouldn’t return in weeks, maybe months. It was a medical conference of very great importance. And in the end the old man was forced to return home, disappointed, hopeless, helpless.
His journey home was no less rapid. His outward journey had been inspired by his desire to obtain help. His homeward journey was inspired by his desire that Molly should lack no help that he could render. And as a consequence Barney Lake never even obtained a glimpse of his faithful customer.
But Lightning’s return home afforded him one of the worst moments of his old life. Within half an hour of his arrival, at an hour when supper should have been preparing, and everything should have been snugged down for the night, he learned something of the extent of the disaster that had befallen. Molly had disappeared. She had completely vanished, and, apparently, with her had gone her pinto mare.
For a brief while the old man thought she had possibly ridden out for some form of pastime, perhaps feeling that the evening air and a good gallop would help to restore her after that which had happened at noon. But a close scrutiny of the state of things generally quickly convinced him that something desperate was wrong. The team had not been fed. The cows were standing at the corral fence waiting to be admitted and fed. And in the house there was not a sign of any preparation of supper. It was this, to him, amazing state of things that stirred within him the full sense of disaster.
He set to work feverishly to repair the neglect. He fed his team and the rest of the horses; he saw to the cows and hayed them. He raced through his round of chores, even to hauling water for the house. Then he bestowed such food as his pockets would contain, saddled a fresh horse, and set out, determined to ride till darkness defeated his search.
It was long after darkness when he turned. And as he came to the farm again he looked eagerly for a light shining in the window of the living-room. There was none. The house was as empty as he had left it, and the pinto’s stall at the barn was still waiting the return of its occupant.
After a long, wakeful night Lightning set out again. This time he prepared for all eventualities. He turned the horses out into the fifty-acre pasture, which, in Molly’s dreams of the future, had been ultimately intended to come under the plough. The cows, too, were turned loose. Fortunately they were no longer in milk, and their need could be easily satisfied with the grass feed, and the waters of the creek. Then, with a mind at rest so far as the farm was concerned, and with his guns slung about his lean body, he set out to scour the countryside, determined to continue his search until the worst was known.