was fenced, and
the wire gate was in its place--Chip had looked down along there, the
first night, and had found the gate up just as it always was kept. Why
should he suspect that the Kid had managed to open that gate and to
close it after him? A little fellow like that?

So the searching parties, having no clue to that one incident which
would at least have sent them in the right direction, kept to the
outlying fringe of gulches which led into the broken edge of the
benchland, and to the country west and north and south of these gulches.
At that, there was enough broken country to keep them busy for several
days, even when you consider the number of searchers.

Miss Allen did not want to go tagging along with some party. She did
not feel as if she could do any good that way, and she wanted to do some
good. She wanted to find that poor little fellow and take him to his
mother. She had met his mother, just the day before, and had ridden with
her for several miles. The look in the Little Doctor's eyes haunted
Miss Allen until she felt sometimes as if she must scream curses to the
heavens for so torturing a mother. And that was not all; she had looked
into Chip's face, last night--and she had gone home and cried until she
could cry no more, just with the pity of it.

She left the more open valley and rode down a long, twisting canyon
that was lined with cliffs so that it was impossible to climb out with a
horse. She was sure she could not get lost or turned around, in a place
like that, and it seemed to her as hopeful a place to search as any.
When you came to that, they all had to ride at random and trust to
luck, for there was not the faintest clue to guide them. So Miss Allen
considered that she could do no better than search all the patches of
brush in the canyon, and keep on going.

The canyon ended abruptly in a little flat, which she crossed. She had
not seen the tracks of any horse going down, but when she was almost
across the flat she discovered tracks of cattle, and now and then
the print of a shod hoof. Miss Allen began to pride herself on her
astuteness in reading these signs. They meant that some of the Happy
Family had driven cattle this way; which meant that they would have seen
little Claude Bennett--that was the Kid's real name, which no one except
perfect strangers ever used--they would have seen the Kid or his tracks,
if he had ridden down here.

Miss Allen, then, must look farther than this. She h