and got good friends again. And there were other
times, that others of the boys could tell about, and that the Kid
thought about now with pounding pulse. It was not all childish fear of
the deepening shadows that made his eyes big and round while he rode
slowly on, farther and farther into the breaks.

He still drove the cattle before him; rather, he followed where the
cattle led. He felt very big and very proud--but he did wish he could
find the Happy Family! Somebody ought to stand guard, and he was getting
sleepy already.

Silver stopped to drink at a little creek of clear, cold water. There
was grass, and over there was a little hollow under a rock ledge. The
sky was all purple and red, like Doctor Dell painted in pictures, and up
the coulee, where he had been a little while ago, it was looking kind
of dark. The Kid thought maybe he had better camp here till morning. He
reined Silver against a bank and slid off, and stood looking around
him at the strange hills with the huge, black boulders that looked like
houses unless you knew, and the white cliffs that looked--queer--unless
you knew they were just cliffs.

For the first time since he started, the Kid wished guiltily that his
dad was here or--he did wish the bunch would happen along! He wondered
if they weren't camped, maybe, around that point. Maybe they would
hear him if he hollered as loud as he could, which he did, two or three
times; and quit because the hills hollered back at him and they wouldn't
stop for the longest time--it was just like people yelling at him from
behind these rocks.

The Kid knew, of course, who they were; they were Echo-boys, and they
wouldn't hurt, and they wouldn't let you see them. They just ran away
and hollered from some other place. There was an Echo-boy lived up on
the bluff somewhere above the house. You could go down in the little
pasture and holler, and the Echo-boy would holler back The Kid was not
afraid--but there seemed to be an awful lot of Echo-boys down in these
hills. They were quiet after a minute or so, and he did not call again.

The Kid was six, and he was big for his age; but he looked very little,
there alone in that deep coulee that was really more like a canyon--very
little and lonesome and as if he needed his Doctor Dell to take him on
her lap and rock him. It was just about the time of day when Doctor Dell
always rocked him and told him stories--about the Happy Family, maybe.
The Kid hated to be suspect