During the following days Harry, with her mind on the mystery of her slaughtered animals, spent all her spare time looking for the recently lost scrub and keeping an eye open for suspicious-looking or stranger cowboys. She was putting up her pony one evening after a fruitless search when footsteps approaching through the twilight made her turn sharply, with every sense on guard. As she did so Joe Biane emerged from the shadows.  
"Why, Joe!" she exclaimed. "How you startled me! What do you want?"
 
Joe laughed awkwardly. "Is Rob to home?"
 
"No. Did you want anything special?"
 
"Only to ask him could we borrow the team to-morrow to pack our traps to Shoshone. We're pullin' out."
 
"Pulling out! For the winter, you mean?"
 
"No. Quittin'. For good."
 
"Why, Joe! What on earth for? Why didn't Isita tell me before? What will you do with your stock? And your hay? Where are you going?"
 
"Aw, anywheres, I guess, to get out of this country. Ain't we starved all summer? And now they tell us we're in for a hard winter. Besides, dad mortgaged everything last year, and now it's been took: the team,[Pg 272] wagon, stock everything. Dad's going back East, for all I know."
 
"Back East! And Isita never said a word of it!"
 
"She didn't know nothin' about it until yesterday."
 
"Oh! Well, I'll lend you the team of course. That is, I'll drive you in. What time did you want to start?"
 
"In the mornin', if it's all the same to you—so's we'll sure catch that night train."
 
"I see. I'll be over early."
 
"You needn't go," Joe insisted awkwardly. "I can fetch the team back next day. I ain't goin' out with the folks."
 
"I'd rather drive myself. It will give me a chance to visit with Isita."
 
For several minutes she stared after Joe when he had melted into the shadows. Was it really fear of the coming winter that was driving the Bianes away? Slowly she glanced round her. There in the cañon the darkness was deep as a sea, with only here and there, like a pale face, a gleam of rocky butte facing the west. Not a cricket chirped, not a breeze whispered. In profound silence the earth waited; for what?
 
Without warning, overwhelmingly, like a great sea risen swiftly in the night, homesickness drowned her. How safe it was back there in that New England village!
 
Suddenly she shook herself. "I'm as bad as the Bianes," she said to herself, with a shaky laugh, [Pg 273]"letting myself get scared by what people say. My job's here, snow or no snow."
 
But the cruelty of having Isita snatched away from her was not so easily ignored; the happy friendship that she had so patiently worked and waited for, torn up like a flower at the very moment of its blossoming!
 
But Harry was not the sort who, in the clutch of trouble, weeps or sulks or melts into flabby inertness. She finished her tasks for the night, rose an hour earlier than usual the next morning and went briskly about her work. After milking, she turned the calves into the pasture with the cows so that she need not milk that night, left a load of hay on the wagon in the corral so that the stock could feed out of the rack, and scattered plenty of wheat for the chickens. Her lips were set; there was a steady gaze in her eyes that meant unshaken purpose. Some time, somehow, she would have Isita back for "keeps."
 
With characteristic kindness she filled a basket with the best she had for the travelers' luncheon—a loaf of bread, some butter, a jar of jam, a cake, some home-made cheese—anything that might make the long journey easier for the two women.
 
If Isita were going back East she would need some clothes. In Harry's trunk there lay some that she had not worn since she had come to Idaho—clothes for all seasons and occasions, useless to her, yet too good to throw away. Harry selected some that she thought suitable and wrapped them in a bundle.
 
"Why couldn't I have kept her here?" she said to[Pg 274] herself almost fiercely. "I'd have clothed and fed her as long as she needed. We'd have been so happy. At least," she consoled herself, "if they're really going East, Isita will have to go to school. She can tell me everything on our drive to Shoshone."
 
But Biane had other ideas. "They can tell you not'ing. They know not'ing," he interrupted blandly the moment Harry began to ask questions. "I myself decide to quit her-re. Where do we go?" He raised his eyebrows, smiling fatuously. "Aha! Perhaps even to Sout' Amer-rica. A fine cattle country that. Mebbe you hear from us one day. Eh?" He raised a shoulder, turned to walk away, then glanced back with a wise smile that made poor Harry wish she were a man and could say what she thought.
 
It took only a short time to stow the few boxes and bundles in the wagon. When all was ready, Harry hastened to help Isita into the front seat beside her, before any other arrangement could be suggested. She was determined to have some sort of talk with her friend before they were separated. But she was soon made to realize that Biane controlled his family absolutely. At every attempt she made to talk confidently with Isita, Biane leaned across the back of the seat and broke into their talk with other subjects until she gave up in despair.
 
The conviction that this abrupt departure was caused by other reasons than those that Joe and his father had offered, grew steadily in her, and the uneasy suspense that she noticed in the whole Biane family[Pg 275] strengthened her belief. By the time they reached Shoshone she was so tired, so nervously on edge, that she drove at once to Kinney's Hotel, got out there, and left Biane to take his family on to the station.
 
"When you've finished with the team," she said to him, "bring them back here to the livery stable. I'll leave orders for feeding them. What time does your train leave?"
 
"Our train?" he repeated, darting a suspicious glance at her.
 
"Yes. I want to come down and say good-by to Isita."
 
"Sur-rely. I was forgetting. We go at ten o'clock." And with his cold smile that showed his teeth and half closed his yellow eyes, the Portuguese drove off. Isita turned to give Harry one entreating look before the dusk hid her.
 
"If I'd had the least chance to talk to her," Harry said to herself, with a sigh, "we could have fixed up a plan of escape. She could have slipped off the train at the next station, or something. I could see that her mother was nearly scared to death, or she'd have explained this journey to me."
 
Well, it was too late now to think of what might have been done. Harry could only have faith in Isita's courage and ambition to free herself from this hateful bondage.
 
In the hotel office she stopped to chat with the clerk, who was an old-time friend of hers and Rob's. "I'm going up to my room to rest now," she said, "but I[Pg 276] want to be called in plenty of time to meet that ten-o'clock train going East."
 
She was so tired that the moment her head touched the pillow she was off to sleep. When some time later there came a pounding on the door, she stumbled up, forgetting where she was.
 
"It's a girl to see you, Miss Holliday!" the clerk called. "Says its awful pertickler and to come a-hurryin'!"
 
"Coming, coming!" Harry cried, as she hunted for her shoes under the edge of the bed. "Isita, of course," she told herself. "What can have happened? Has she actually escaped?" Her heart was thumping with suspense and hope as she snatched hat and coat and ran out. Isita was waiting at the foot of the stairs.
 
Harry saw that Isita's black eyes were actually glassy with fear, and that beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.
 
"Isita, dear!" she exclaimed. "What is it? Come upstairs and——"
 
"No! no! Not a moment! Come!" the girl cried in a rasping voice and, catching Harry's arm, pulled her toward the door. "Come. I'll tell you."
 
Too much as............