"Have you heard anything from dad?" she cried through the open door. "Nope," he answered, hammering down a rivet. Kate called up the hotel where Maloney was staying at Saguache, but could not get him. She tried the Del Mar, where her father and his friends always put up when in town. She asked in turn for Mackenzie, for Yesler, for Alec Flandrau. While she waited for an answer, the girl moved nervously about the room. She could not sit down or settle herself at anything. For some instinct told her that Fendrick's taunt was not a lie cut out of whole cloth. The bell rang. Instantly she was at the telephone. Mackenzie was at the other end of the line. "Oh, Uncle Mac." She had called him uncle ever since she could remember. "What is it they are saying about dad? Tell me it isn't true," she begged. "A pack of lees, lassie." His Scotch idiom and accent had succumbed to thirty years on the plains, but when he became excited it rose triumphant through the acquired speech of the Southwest. "Then is he there--in Saguache, I mean." "No-o. He's not in town." "Where is he?" "Hoots! He'll just have gone somewhere on business." He did not bluff well. Through the hearty assurance she pierced to the note of trouble in his voice. "You're hiding something from me, Uncle Mac. I won't have it. You tell me the truth--the whole truth." In three sentences he sketched it for her, and when he had finished he knew by the sound of her voice that she was greatly frightened. "Something has happened to him. I'm coming to town." "If you feel you'd rather. Take the stage in to-morrow." "No. I'm coming to-night. I'll bring Bob. Save us two rooms at the hotel." "Better wait till to-morrow. Forty miles is a long ride, lass." "No, I can't wait. Have Curly Flandrau come to the Del Mar if he's in town--and Dick Maloney, too. That's all. Good-by." She turned to her cousin, who was standing big-eyed at her elbow. "What is it, Kate? Has anything happened to Uncle Luck?" She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Dad's gone, Bob. Nobody knows where. They say--the liars--that he robbed the W. & S. Express Company." Suddenly her face went down into her forearm on the table and sobs began to rack her body. The boy, staggered at this preposterous charge, could only lay his hand on her shoulder and beg her not to cry. "It'll be all right, Kate. Wait till Uncle Luck comes back. He'll make 'em sick for talking about him." "But suppose he--suppose he----" She dared not complete what was in her mind, that perhaps he had been ambushed by some of his enemies and killed. "You bet they'll drop into a hole and pull it in after them when Uncle Luck shows up," the boy bragged with supreme confidence. His cousin nodded, choking down her sobs. "Of course. It--it'll come out all right--as soon as he finds out what they're saying. Saddle two horses right away, Bob." "Sure. We'll soon find where he is, I bet you."