Neale wheeled fiercely upon him. “You’re only saying those things! You don’t believe them! Tell me what you do really think.”
“Lord, pard, it couldn’t be no wuss,” replied Larry, his lean face working. “I figger only one way. This heah. Slingerland had left Allie alone... Then—she was made away with an’ the cabin burned.”
“Indians?”
“Mebbe. But I lean more to the idee of an outfit like thet one what was heah.”
Neale groaned in his torture. “Not that, Reddy—not that!... The Indians would kill her—scalp her—or take her captive into their tribe... But a gang of cutthroat ruffians like these... My God! if I KNEW that had happened it’d kill me.”
Larry swore at his friend. “It can’t do no good to go to pieces,” he expostulated. “Let’s do somethin’.”
“What—in Heaven’s name!” cried Neale, in despair.
“Wal, we can rustle up every trail in these heah Black Hills. Mebbe we
can find Slingerland.”
Then began a search—frantic, desperate, and forlorn on the part of
Neale; faithful and dogged and keen on the part of King. Neale was like
a wild man. He heeded no advice or caution. Only the cowboy’s iron arm
saved Neale and his horse. It was imperative to find water and grass,
and to eat, necessary things which Neale seemed to have forgotten. He
seldom slept or rested or ate. They risked meeting the Sioux in every
valley and on every ridge. Neale would have welcomed the sight of
Indians; he would have rushed into peril in the madness of his grief.
Still, there was hope! He lived all the hours in utter agony of mind,
but his heart did not give up.
They coursed far and near, always keeping to the stream beds, for if Slingerland had made another camp it would be near water. More than one trail led nowhere; more than one horse track roused hopes that were futile. The Wyoming hills country was surely a lonely and a wild one, singularly baffling to the searchers, for in two weeks of wide travel it did not yield a sign or track of man. Neale and King used up all their scant supply of food, threw away all their outfit except a bag of salt, and went on, living on the meat they shot.
Then one day, unexpectedly, they came upon two trappers by a beaver-dam. Neale was overcome by his emotion; he sensed that from these men he would learn something. The first look from them told him that his errand was known.