Part 18

But that half-breed, of course, couldn't tell me. And a wave of sick fear swept over me. My Dinkie was not there. He was nowhere to be found. He was lost--lost on the prairie. And I was shouting all this at Ikkie, without being quite conscious of what I was doing.

"And remember," I hissed out at her, in a voice that didn't sound like my own as I swung her about by her suddenly parting waist, "if anything has happened to that child, I'll kill you! Do you understand, I'll kill you as surely as you're standing in those shoes!"

I went over the shack, room by room, for still the third time. Then I went over the bunk-house and the other buildings, and every corner of the truck-garden, calling as I went.

But still there was no answer to my calls. And I had to face the steel-cold knowledge that my child was lost. That little toddler, scarcely more than a baby, had wandered away on the open prairie.

For one moment of warming relief I thought of Bobs. I remembered what a dog is sometimes able to do in such predicaments. But I also remembered that Bobs was still out on the trail with Whinnie. So I circled off on the undulating floor of the prairie, calling "Dinkie" every minute or two and staring into the distance until my eyes ached, hoping to see some moving dot in the midst of all that silence and stillness.

"My boy is lost," I kept saying to myself, in sobbing little whimpers, with my heart getting more and more like a ball of lead. And there could only be an hour or two of daylight left. If he wasn't found before night came on--I shut the thought out of my heart, and started back for the shack, in a white heat of desperation.

"If you want to live," I said to the now craven and shrinking Ikkie, "you get in that buckboard and make for Casa Grande. Drive there as fast as you can. Tell my husband that our boy, that my boy, is lost on the prairie. Tell him to get help, and come, come quick. And stop at the Teetzel ranch on your way. Tell them to send men on horses, and lanterns! But move, woman, move!"

Ikkie went, with Slip-Along making the buckboard skid on the uneven trail as though he were playing a game of crack-the-whip with that frightened Indian. And I just as promptly took up my search again, forgetting about the Twins, forgetting about being tired, forgetting everything.

Half-way between the fenced-in hay-stacks and the corral-gate I found a battered decoy-duck with a string tied to its neck. It was one of a set that Francois and Whinstane Sandy had whittled out over a year ago. It was at least a clue. Dinkie must have dropped it there.

It sent me scuttling back among the hay-stacks, going over the ground there, foot by foot and calling as I went, until my voice had an eerie sound in the cold air that took on more and more of a razor-edge as the sun and the last of its warmth went over the rim of the world. It seemed an empty world, a plain of ugly desolation, unfriendly and pitiless in its vastness. Even the soft green of the wheatlands took on a look like verdigris, as though it were something malignant and poisonous. And farther out there were muskegs, and beyond the three-wire fence, which would stand no bar to a wandering child, there were range-cattle, half-wild cattle that resented the approach of anything but a man on horseback. And somewhere in those darkening regions of peril my Dinky-Dink was lost.

I took up the search again, with the barometer of hope falling lower and lower. But I told myself that I must be systematic, that I must not keep covering the same ground, that I must make the most of what was left of the daylight. So I blocked out imaginary squares and kept running and calling until I was out of breath, then resting with my hand against my heart, and running on again. But I could find no trace of him.

He was such a little tot, I kept telling myself. He was not warmly dressed, and night was coming on. It would be a cold night, with several degrees of frost. He would be alone, on that wide and empty prairie, with terror in his heart, chilled to the bone, wailing for his mother, wailing until he was able to wail no more. Already the light was going, I realized with mounting waves of desperation, and no child, dressed as Dinkie was dressed, could live through the night. Even the coyotes would realize his helplessness and come and pick his bones clean.

I kept thinking of Bobs, more than of anything else, and wondering why Whinnie was so slow in getting back with his broken wagon, and worrying over when the men would come. I told myself to be calm, to be brave, and the next moment was busy picturing a little dead body with a tear-washed face. But I went on, calling as I went. Then suddenly I thought of praying.

"O God, it wouldn't be fair, to take that little mite away from me," I kept saying aloud. "O God, be good to me in this, be merciful, and lead me to him! Bring him back before it is too late! Bring him back, and do with me what You wish, but have pity on that poor little toddler! What You want of me, I will do, but don't, O God, don't take my boy away from me!"

I made promises to God, foolish, desperate, infantile promises; trying to placate Him in His might with my resolutions for better things, trying to strike bargains, at the last moment, with the Master of Life and Death--even protesting that I'd forgive Dinky-Dunk for anything and everything he might have done, and that it was the Evil One speaking through my lips when I said I'd surely kill Iroquois Annie.

Then I heard the signal-shots of a gun, and turned back toward the shack, which looked small and squat on the floor of the paling prairie. I couldn't run, for running was beyond me now. I heard Bobs barking, and the Twins crying, and I saw Whinnie. I thought for one fond and foolish moment, as I hurried toward the house, that they'd found my Dinkie. But it was a false hope. Whinnie had been frightened at the empty shack and the wailing babies, and had thought something might have happened to me. So he had taken my duck-gun and fired those signal-shots.

He leaned against the muddy wagon-wheel and said "Guid God! Guid God!" over and over again, when I told him Dinkie was lost. Then he flung down the gun and drew his twisted old body up, peering through the twilight at my face.

I suppose it frightened him a little.

"Dinna fear, lassie, dinna fear," he said. He said it in such a deep and placid voice that it carried consolation to my spirit, and brought a shadow of conviction trailing along behind it. "We'll find him. I say it before the livin' God, we'll find him!"

But that little candle of hope went out in the cold air, for I could see that night was coming closer, cold and dark and silent. I forgot about Whinnie, and didn't even notice which direction he took when he strode off on his lame foot. But I called Bobs to me, and tried to quiet his whimpering, and talked to him, and told him Dinkie was lost, the little Dinkie we all loved, and implored him to go and find my boy for me.

But the poor dumb creature didn't seem to understand me, for he cringed and trembled and showed a tendency to creep off to the stable and hide there, as though the weight of this great evil which had befallen his house lay on him and him alone. And I was trying to coax the whimpering Bobs back to the shack-steps when Dinky-Dunk himself came galloping up through the uncertain light, with Lady Alicia a few hundred yards behind him.

"Have you found him?" my husband asked, quick and curt. But there was a pale greenish-yellow tint to his face that made me think of Rocquefort cheese.

"No," I told him. I tried to speak calmly, determined not to break down and make a scene there before Lady Alicia, who'd reined up, stock-still, and sat staring in front of her, without a spoken word.

I could see Dinky-Dunk's mouth harden.

"Have you any clue--any hint?" he asked, and I could catch the quaver in his voice as he spoke.

"Not a thing," I told him, remembering that we were losing time. "He simply wandered off, when that Indian girl wasn't looking. He didn't even have a cap or a coat on."

I heard Lady Alicia, who had slipped down out of the saddle, make a little sound as I said this. It was half a gasp and half a groan of protest. For one brief moment Dinky-Dunk stared at her, almost accusingly, I thought. Then he swung his horse savagely about, and called out over our heads. Other horsemen, I found, had come loping up in the ghostly twilight where we stood. I could see the breath from their mounts' nostrils, white in the frosty air.

"You, Teetzel, and you, O'Malley," called my husband, in an oddly authoritative and barking voice, "and you on the roan there, swing twenty paces out from one another and circle the shack. Then widen the circle, each turn. There's no use calling, for the boy'll be down. He'll be done out. But don't speak until you see something. And for the love of God, watch close. He's not three yet, remember. He couldn't have got far away!"