When Smithers reached Silver City he felt sure that the people would help him to rescue her, but he was afraid to make any noise about it. Not that he had valued the oath he had taken, but he remembered the robber's threat, and was alarmed lest he might have been shot, for not keeping faith with him. What the desperado's motive was for making a prisoner of Mrs. Smithers he could not imagine. With the resignation of a self-seeking coward, he made up his mind that she was lost to him forever. "Papa," said Alice, "won't you try to get mamma away from that awful, mean man?" "I fear, my dear," he replied, "that the attempt would not only be attended with great danger, but would also be useless." "Shall we never see her again?" "Never," answered the coward, emphatically. "I don't care much," said Harold; "we can get along just as well without her as with her." "But she is our mother," exclaimed Alice, "and I am very sorry for ever being rude and naughty to her, and I don't want to lose her. If papa won't try to get her back again, I will." "You?" said her father, in astonishment. "Yes. I feel very bad about poor mamma, and I never knew how much I loved her till now." As she spoke she got out of the wagon. "Where are you going?" asked Smithers. "I'm going to ask that bold, bad man to let mamma go, and if he won't, he'll have to keep me, too, for I won't leave her." "What madness is this?" cried her father. "Oh, Alice was always a spoony, little fool," replied Harold. "I've been very wicked to mamma," said Alice, setting her lips firmly together, "and I see it all now; but I should not have been if you, papa, and Harold had not told me not to mind her." She began to walk back toward the canyon. "Come back!" shouted Smithers. "I can't allow this, Harold, go and stop her." "Go and stop her yourself," answered Harold. "I can't be bothered running after girls." Mr. Smithers bit his lip till the blood came. He had brought his son up to be undutiful and rebellious against his mother, and now he was reaping some of the crop, the seed of which he had sown. Now he realized the full force of the saying that "it is sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child." "Bring her back, I say," roared Smithers, who was nearly beside himself with vexation. Still Harold did not move. He sat on the front seat of the wagon with provoking coolness, and did not seem in the least alarmed at the display of parental wrath with which he was favored. The fact was he had never been brought up to respect either father or mother, and he had arrived at an age when it is rather late to begin to inculcate lessons of filial obedience. Hearing her father shout, Alice became alarmed lest he would follow and bring her back. In his angry state of mind, and in that wild and desolate wilderness, he might even whip her.