Where the Trail Divides Part 32

"I remember now he was standing by the door when we left," added Parker.

"Standing by the door, was he?" took up the Irishman swiftly. "As there's a Heaven and a h.e.l.l he's not standing there now, I'll wager!"

Again face to face, as when they had first caught sight of that meaning black band, the three spectators there beneath the stars stood staring at each other. It was O'Reilly again who broke the silence.

"Don't you people understand yet what this all means, what's happened?"

he interrogated unbelievingly.

"It means there's been an incendiary here; I guess there's no doubt about that," said Mead.

"Yes," blurted O'Reilly, "and that incendiary's How Landor, and he's been here within the half hour; and Craig's been alone back there in the ranch house." He paused for breath. "Can't you see now? At last the Indian has found out!"

For the fraction of a minute, while understanding came home, not a man stirred. Then of a sudden Parker turned swiftly and started back into the night.

"By the Eternal," he corroborated, "I believe you're right. We can't get there a second too quick."

"Too quick!" caught up the Irishman for the last time. "We couldn't get there quick enough if we had wings. It's all over before this, take my word for it."

And it was. Though the men ran every step of the mile back they were too late. As O'Reilly had antic.i.p.ated, the ranch house was empty, deserted.

Similarly the stables hard by. Likewise the adjoining tool shed. Though they searched every nook, until a mouse could not have escaped detection, they found not a trace of him for whom they looked, nor a clue to his disappearance. Though they shouted his name until they were hoa.r.s.e not an answer came back from the surrounding darkness. Within the ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a struggle or of aught unusual. The living-room was precisely as it had been at that last moment when O'Reilly had left. Craig's cap and topcoat were on a chair as he had thrown them down. At the stable every horse was within its own stall: every piece of saddlery was intact. While the three men were looking, attracted by the blaze, the distant cowboys one by one began drifting in; and when they had heard the tale joined in the search. All through the night, in ever-widening circles, lanterns, like giant fireflies, played around the premises until they covered a radius of a half mile; but ever the report was the same. With the coming of morning not the home force alone but men from distant ranches appeared. The reflection of fire on the sky reaches far indeed on the prairie, and ere the sun shone again a goodly company was a.s.sembled.

Then it was that the real search began and a swarm of riders scoured the country for miles and miles. And once more, from all, the testimony was as before. There was not a clue to the disappearance, nor the semblance of a clue. As out of the darkness of night surrounding, a great horned owl swoops down upon its prey, and as mysteriously disappears, so the Indian had come and gone; and satisfied at last, irresistibly awed as well into an unwonted quiet, one by one, as they had arrived, the ranchers dispersed--and the search was over.

And to this day that disappearance remains a mystery unsurmountable. One morning a week later, after Mead and O'Reilly had gone, when the new master of the ranch arose it was to find a wicked-looking mouse-coloured cayuse standing motionless by the stable door. Upon him was neither saddle nor bridle nor mark of any kind. Somewhere out on that limitless waste he had been released, and, true to an unerring homing instinct, he had returned; but from where no man could do more than speculate. He could not speak, and his rider was seen no more. Somewhere out there amid that same solitude a thing of mystery had come to pa.s.s; but what it was only Nature and Nature's G.o.d, who alone were witness, could ever know.