e still--and he gave her plenty of time for
reply--Ford stooped and felt gropingly for her, thinking she must be
asleep. He glanced back at Rambler; unless the horse had moved, she
should have been just there, under his hands; or, he thought, she may
have moved to some other spot, and be waiting in the dark to see what he
would do. His palms touched the pressed grasses where she had been, but
he did not say a word. He would not give her that satisfaction; and he
told himself grimly that he had his opinion of a girl who would waste
time in foolery, out here in the cold--with a sprained ankle, to boot.

He pulled a handful of the long grass which grows best among bushes. It
was dead now, and dry. He twisted it into a makeshift torch, lighted and
held it high, so that its blaze made a great disk of brightness all
around him. While it burned he looked for her, and when it grew to
black cinders and was near to scorching his hand, he made another and
looked farther. He laid aside his dignity and called, and while his
voice went booming full-lunged through the whispering silence of that
empty land, he twisted the third torch, and stamped the embers of the
second into the earth that it might not fire the prairie.

There was no dodging the fact; the girl was gone. When Ford was
perfectly sure of it, he stamped the third torch to death with vicious
heels, went back to the horse, and urged him to limp up the hill. He did
not say anything then or think anything much; at least, he did not think
coherently. He was so full of a wordless rage against the girl, that he
did not at first feel the need of expression. She had made a fool of
him.

He remembered once shooting a big, beautiful, blacktail doe. She had
dropped limply in her tracks and lain there, and he had sauntered up and
stood looking at her stretched before him. He was out of meat, and the
doe meant all that hot venison steaks and rich, brown gravy can mean to
a man meat-hungry. While he unsheathed his hunting knife, he gloated
over the feast he would have, that night. And just when he had laid his
rifle against a rock and knelt to bleed her, the deer leaped from under
his hand and bounded away over the hill. He had not said a word on that
occasion, either.

This night, although the case was altogether different and the
disappearance of the girl was in no sense a disaster--rather a relief,
if anything--he felt that same wordless rage, the same sense of utter
chagrin. She