The three men bowed their heads. Brian Oakley said softly, "Myra, you've
got more heart and more sense than all of us put together." To Conrad
Lagrange, he added, "You will stay here with Miss Willard?"
"Yes," answered the novelist, "I would be little good in the hills, at
such work as you are doing, Brian. I will do what I can, here."
When the Ranger and the artist were riding down the canyon to the ranch,
the officer said, "There's a big chance that Myra is right, Aaron. After
all, she knows Sibyl better than any of us, and I can see that she's got a
fairly clear idea of what sent the child off like this. As it stands now,
the girl may be just wandering around. If she _is_, the boys will pick her
up before many hours. She may have met with some accident. If _that's_ it,
we'll know before long. She may have been--I tell you, Aaron, it's that
automobile acting the way it did that I can't get around."
The searchers were all at the ranch when the two men arrived. No one had a
word of encouragement to report. A messenger from the Sheriff brought no
light on the mystery of the automobile. The two men who had followed the
pipe-line trail had found nothing. A few times, they thought they had
signs that a horse had been over the trail the night before, but there was
no certainty; and after the pipe-line reached the floor of the canyon
there was absolutely nothing. Jack Carleton was back from the Galena
Valley neighborhood, and, with him, was the horseman who had gone down the
canyon the evening before. The man was known to all. He had been hunting,
and was on his way home when Henry Carleton and the Ranger had seen him.
He had come, now, to help in the search.
Picking a half dozen men from the party, Brian Oakley sent them to spend
the night riding the higher trails and fire-breaks, watching for
camp-fire lights. The others, he ordered to rest, in readiness to take up
the search at daylight, should the night riders come in without results.
Aaron King, exhausted, physically and mentally, sank into a stupor that
could scarcely be called sleep.
At daybreak, the riders who had been all night on the higher trails and
fire-breaks, searching the darkness for the possible gleam of a
camp-fire's light, came in.
All that day--Wednesday--the mountain horsemen rode, widening the area of
their search under the direction of the Ranger. From sundown until long
after dark, they came straggling wearily back; their horses nearly
exhausted, the riders beginning to fear that Sibyl would never be found
alive. There was no further word from the Sheriff at Fairlands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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