uh setting prairie fires!"
he called. "I'll git Blake after her. You git that Owens if you have-to
haze him to hell and back! Yuh don't want to worry about the Kid,
Chip--they ain't goin' to hurt him. All they want is to keep you boys
huntin' high and low and combin' the breaks to find 'im. I see their
scheme, all right."

CHAPTER 27. "ITS AWFUL EASY TO GET LOST"

The Kid wriggled uncomfortably in the saddle and glanced at the
narrow-browed face of H. J. Owens, who was looking this way and that at
the enfolding hills and scowling abstractedly. The Kid was only six, but
he was fairly good at reading moods and glances, having lived all his
life amongst grown-ups.

"It's a pretty far ways to them baby bear cubs," he remarked. "I bet
you're lost, old-timer. It's awful easy to get lost. I bet you don't
know where that mother-bear lives."

"You shut up!" snarled H. J. Owens. The Kid had hit uncomfortably close
to the truth.

"You shut up your own self, you darned pilgrim." the Kid flung back
instantly. That was the way he learned to say rude things; they were
said to him and he remembered and gave them back in full measure.

"Say, I'll slap you if you call me that again." H. J. Owens, because he
did not relish the task he had undertaken, and because he had lost his
bearing here in the confusion of hills and hollows and deep gullies, was
in a very bad humor.

"You darn pilgrim, you dassent slap me. If you do the bunch'll fix you,
all right. I guess they'd just about kill you. Daddy Chip would just
knock the stuffin' outa you." He considered something very briefly, and
then tilted his small chin so that he looked more than ever like the
Little Doctor. "I bet you was just lying all the time," he accused. "I
bet there ain't any baby bear cubs."

H. J. Owens laughed disagreeably, but he did not say whether or not the
Kid was right in his conjecture. The Kid pinched his lips together and
winked very fast for a minute. Never, never in all the six years of his
life had anyone played him so shabby a trick. He knew what the laugh
meant; it meant that this man had lied to him and led him away down here
in the hills where he had promised his Doctor Dell, cross-his-heart,
that he would never go again. He eyed the man resentfully.

"What made you lie about them baby bear cubs?" he demanded. "I didn't
want to come such a far ways."

"You keep quiet. I've heard about enough from you, young man. A little
more of that and you