They turned sharp to the left, through the thicket, where the birds were already hushing their songs, and the early dew was quite dried away. The Kid pushed ahead with almost feverish rapidity. Here and there in the brush Peter scurried, head down, hind legs well drawn together beneath his flanks. He snuffled eagerly into the holes and forms, doing his dramatic best to create some game, if necessary. Every once in awhile his bristly head, all alert, peered, cock-eared, over a bush, searching the hunter's face for directions, and then plunging away suddenly as his own judgment advised. It was most scienceless and unsportsman-like. The Kid peered eagerly to right and left, holding the muzzle of the little rifle conscientiously at an angle of forty-five degrees, as he had been taught, and vainly striving to avoid dry twigs, although Peter was making enough noise for a circus parade. The girl followed a step or so in the rear. It was breath-taking, this excitement. Every stir of the bushes needed examination, every flutter of wings was a possibility, every plunge of Peter might send a covey whirring into the pine tops, or rouse a squirrel to angry expostulation. As they went on up the side hills, still without result, but therefore with expectation the more sharpened, and as Molly's cheeks became redder and redder under her brown skin and her eyes brighter and brighter, and as she bit her under lip more and more, and as the straight level line of her brows grew straighter and straighter with the concentration of her thoughts, it is to be doubted if the most enthusiastic lover of scenery could have torn his eyes from the pretty picture even for the sake of the magnificent sweep of country below. So at least thought Cheyenne Harry, on his way across the ridge to his claim.
He surveyed the eager three with some slight amusement.
"Hullo!" he called suddenly.
The boy and girl started.
"Hullo!" answered Molly after a moment, when her intent hunting expression had quite fled before her cheerful look of recognition. "That you?"
The Kid too paused, but evidently under protest, and with the idea of moving on again at the earliest polite moment.
"How's hunting?" inquired Harry facetiously. "Killed all the game down below there?"
"All we've seen," replied Molly promptly; "and the hunting's very good." She put ever so slight a stress on the word "hunting." "We're going over the ridge now. Want to come along and help carry the game?"
Harry looked speculatively at the Kid, who was standing first on one bare foot, then on the other. "Naw, guess not," he replied. The Kid brightened at once. "I'm going over to the Gold King for a while. You'd better come along with me."
"Haven't had any breakfast," objected Molly.