no
use to try to find him.

"The girl quieted down after a spell, but her mind never come
back. She wasn't just to say plumb crazy, but she seemed kind o'
dazed and lost like, and wouldn't take no notice of nobody. Acted
all the time like she was expectin' him to come. And she'd stand
out there by the gate for hours at a time, watchin' the Old Trail
and talkin' low to herself.

"Pete is her boy, Mr. Howitt, and as you've seen he ain't just
right. Seems like he was marked some way in his mind like you've
seen other folks marked in their bodies. We've done our best by
the boy, sir, but I don't guess he'll ever be any better. Once for
a spell we tried keepin' him to home, but he got right sick and
would o' died sure, if we hadn't let him go; it was pitiful to see
him. Everybody 'lows there won't nothin' in the woods hurt him
nohow; so we let him come and go, as he likes; and he just stops
with the neighbors wherever he happens in. Folks are all as good
to him as they can be, 'cause everybody knows how it is. You see,
sir, people here don't think nothin' of a wood's colt, nohow, but
we was raised different. As wife says, we've most forgot civilized
ways, but I guess there's some things a man that's been raised
right can't never forget.

"She died when Pete was born, and the last thing she said was,
'He'll come, Daddy, he'll sure come.' Pete says the wind singin'
in that big pine over her grave is her a callin' for him yet. It's
mighty queer how the boy got that notion, but you see that's the
way it is with him.

"And that ain't all, sir." The big man moved his chair nearer the
other, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper; "Folks say she's
come back. There's them that swears they've seen her 'round the
old cabin where they used to meet when he painted her picture, the
big one, you know. Just before I bought the ranch, it was first;
and that's why we can't get no one to stay with the sheep.

"I don't know, Mr. Howitt; I don't know. I've thought a heap about
it, I ain't never seen it myself, and it 'pears to me that if she
COULD come back at all, she'd sure come to her old Daddy. Then
again I figure it that bein' took the way she was, part of her
dead, so to speak, from the time she got that letter, and her mind
so set on his comin' back, that maybe somehow--you see--that maybe
she is sort a waitin' for him there. Many's the time I have prayed
all night that God would let me meet him again just once, or that
prou