say A did! A had
left the Company an' was building railway bridges in the Rockies when
your father left Canada."

She felt the hot flush mount.

"Such an absurd thing, Eleanor," Mrs. Williams was explaining. "Mr.
Matthews came by the Holy Cross last night. Mr. Wayland told Calamity
to show him which way to turn; and she sent him the wrong way, to the
cow-boy camp, you know! He had to sleep out all night at our very
door. Such a shame! That put him so late that he missed Mr. Williams.
You know they have gone to the Upper Pass and can't possibly be back
for weeks--excuse me, some of my school people seem to want me," and
she flitted from the room. To Eleanor, her life seemed a constant
flitting at the beck of bootless duties, nagging duties that only an
expert time keeper of Heaven could credit.

"Yes! Sent me a mile along the road in the wrong direction--into a
nest of mid-night birds. A nice bunch o' beauties, too, hatching some
Devil plot to ruin the poor sheepmen! A man in a white vest was there,
who by the same token didn't belong; tho' A'm no so sure he was any
better than his company. They didn't see _me_! A didna' just speak to
_them_, but A heard them plain enough,--'leave for the South at once;'
and 'crowd 'em to beat Hell,' and 'send 'em over without a push' an'
'see that no harm comes to the boy'--Eh, why, what is the matter?"

Eleanor had sprung forward with white lips.

"It's Fordie! He's taking the sheep to the Rim Rocks with the Mexican
herders. Don't frighten his mother! It may not be too late! He may
not have reached the Rim--"

"Let's telephone that Ranger fellow?"

Then, it all dawned on her, the deadly, suave, incredibly malicious
pre-planned thing!

"The wires had been cut since morning," she said.

CHAPTER VII

WHILE LAW MARKS TIME, CRIME SCORES

They did not tell the boy's mother.

The German cook hitched the fastest bronchos to the yellow buckboard
with the front wheel brake; and, the old frontiersman flourishing the
reins, they had whisked off for the Ridge trail before Mrs. Williams
could return to the Mission Parlor.

"The Ranger will be able to tell whether the sheep have passed down the
Ridge," she explained.

The old man caught the light on her face as she spoke the name. It was
like the flash in the dark that betrays a diamond, or the scintilla of
light through the leaves that tells of an Alpine lake; but he made no
comment except to the ponies.