Under Handicap Part 36

"Miss Crawford--" He saw that she hesitated, saw a nervous uneasiness in her manner as she plucked with quick fingers at the hem of her ap.r.o.n. "She ain't come in yet!"

"What!" cried Conniston, sharply. "What do you mean? Where is she?"

"I--I don't know, sir. She ain't come back yet."

"You mean that Miss Crawford left yesterday morning and that she has not returned since that time? That she has been gone twenty-four hours--all night?"

"Yes, sir." The old woman was eying him with eyes into which a positive fear was creeping, her lips trembling as she spoke. "You don't think anything has happened--"

"I don't know!" he cried, sternly. "Why didn't you let me know last night?"

"I didn't know what to do." The tears had actually sprung into her eyes. "I thought she must be all right. I thought mebbe she'd gone to Crawfordsville or to the Half Moon."

Conniston left her abruptly and hastened to the office.

"Tommy," he called, from the doorway, "do you know where Miss Crawford is? Where she went yesterday?"

"No. Why?" Garton, sensing from the other's tones that something was wrong, swept up his crutches and hurried forward.

"She left yesterday morning," Conniston told him, as he went to the desk and picked up the telephone. "She hasn't come back yet. Mrs.

Ridley doesn't know anything about her." And to the operator:

"Give me the Crawford house. Quick, please! Yes, in Crawfordsville."

Upon the face of each man there were lines of uneasiness. Garton propped himself up against the desk and lighted a cigarette, his eyes never leaving Conniston's face.

"Can't you get anybody?" he asked, after a moment.

"No. What's that, Central? They don't answer? Then get me the bunk-house at the Half Moon. Yes, please! I'm in a hurry."

It was Lonesome Pete who answered.

"No, Con," he answered. "Miss Argyl ain't here. Anything the matter?"

Conniston clicked up the receiver and swung upon Garton.

"It is just possible," he said, slowly, "that she is in Crawfordsville, after all. May have left the house already. I can call up the store as soon as it opens up and ask if she has been there."

Billy Jordan had entered at the last words.

"Who are you talking about?" he asked, quickly. "Not Miss Crawford?"

"Yes." Conniston whirled upon him abruptly. "Do you know where she went yesterday?"

"No, I don't know where she went. But as I was coming to the office I met her, just getting on her horse in front of her house, and she gave me a message for you."

"Well, what was it?"

"'If you see Mr. Conniston,' she said, 'tell him that I have gone to investigate the value of the Secret.' I don't know what she meant--"

"She said that!" cried Conniston, his face going white.

"But she's all right," Billy Jordan hastened to add. "She's back now."

"You saw her?"

"No." He shook his head. "But I saw the horse she was riding. Just noticed him tied to the back fence as I came in."

Again Conniston hurried to the cottage. Mrs. Ridley was upon the porch.

"Miss Crawford is back?" he called to her from the street.

She shook her head.

"Not yet. Ain't you--"

He did not wait to listen. Running now, he came to the little back yard, and to a tall bay horse, saddled and bridled, standing quietly at the fence. At first glance he thought, as Billy Jordan had thought, that the animal was tied there. And then he saw that the bridle-reins were upon the ground, that they had been trampled upon and broken, that the two stirrups were hanging upside down in the stirrup leathers as stirrups are likely to do when a saddled horse has been running riderless.

She had been to investigate the Secret! She had been gone all day, all night! And now her horse had come home without her! He dared not try to think what had happened to her; he knew that she must have dismounted while at the spring to examine the ground; he knew that there were sections of the desert alive with rattlesnakes.

The Great Work which had walked and slept with him for weeks, which had never in a single waking hour been absent from his thoughts, was forgotten as though it had never been. The Great Work was suddenly a trifle, a nothing. It did not matter; nothing in the wide world but one thing mattered. Failure of the Great Work was nothing if only a slender, gray-eyed, frank-souled girl were safe. Success, unless she were there to look into his eyes and see that he had done well, was nothing.

Unheeding Mrs. Ridley's shrill cries, he swung about and ran back to the office.

"Tommy," he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, "her horse is back--without her! She rode away into the desert yesterday morning. She is out there yet. Billy, my horse is in the shed. Don't stop to saddle, but ride like the very devil out to Brayley's camp. Tell him what has happened. Tell him to rush fifty men on horseback to me. Tell him to see that each man takes two canteens full of water. And, for Heaven's sake, Billy, hurry!"

CHAPTER XXIII

Billy Jordan, terror springing up into his own eyes, sped through the door. And Conniston and Garton turned grave faces upon each other.

"Have you any idea," Garton was asking, and to Conniston his voice seemed to come faintly from a great distance, "which way she rode?"

"North. I don't know how far. Tommy, have you a horse here I can ride?"

"You are going to look for her?"

"Yes."

He was already at the door, and turned impatiently as Garton called to him:

"It's up to you, Greek. But--do you think that you could do any more to help her than the men you are sending out?"

"No. But, man, I can't sit here without knowing--"

"Greek!" There was a note in Tommy's voice, a look in his eyes which held Conniston. "I know how you feel, old man. And don't you know that another man might be fool enough to--to love her as much as you do?"