In every likely place she looked and listened for the black shoat, but it seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, like the six fat steers. She followed a small ravine for longer than she had intended, sat for a while in a sunny opening high along the breast of Mystery, and sidled back toward the west again.
And here it was that two men far above looked down and saw her with ejaculations of delight.
“Well, if this ain’t luck!” said Provine grinning, “then I’m a liar! I thought this morning when Arnold handed us that last bunch of instructions that he was due for once to come out th’ little end of th’ horn. I didn’t see how any human was goin’ to be able to carry them out. I didn’t think we’d ever get near enough to get her and do it on th’ q. t. But she’s brought herself to us!”
“If she’s armed,” said Caldwell shortly, “it’s not time yet to crow. I think she’d fight.”
“Fight, hell!” said the other, “she don’t believe in fightin’. She’s religious. We’ll pick her up too easy an’ present her to th’ Boss with our compliments.”
An hour later Nance, riding along a dim trail made by the traveling hoofs of deer, came out above a spring in a pretty glade.
She was warm and thirsty, so she dismounted and pushing back her hat from her sweated forehead, knelt on the spring’s lip and putting her face to the limpid water, drank long and eagerly a foot from Buckskin’s muzzle.
As she straightened up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she caught a sound where had been deep silence before—the sound of something moving, the rattle of accoutrements, and turning quickly, still upon her knees, she looked up into the grinning face of Sud Provine, the frowning one of the Sky Line foremen.
“By Jing!” said Provine wonderingly, “never havin’ seen you outside that there ol’ bonnet of yours I didn’t know how purty you was! Them eyes now—they’re right blue, ain’t they? An’ that wide mouth—all wet where you stopped wipin’ it——”
“You damn fool!” said Caldwell disgustedly, “shut up and mind the business entrusted to you. Miss Allison,” he said to Nance, “you’re just the person we wanted to see. We were sent this morning to fetch you to Sky Line, so you may as well go along sensibly, for we’ll take you any way.”