_ It is well past midnight. But there is no sleep this night for Chaddie McKail. I am too happy to sleep. I am too happy to act sane. For my boy is safe.
Peter has found my Dinkie! I was called to the telephone, a little after eleven, but couldn't hear well on the up-stairs extension, so I went to the instrument down-stairs, where the operator told me it was long-distance, from Buckhorn. So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But all I could get was a buzz and crackle and an occasional ghostly word. It was the storm, I suppose. Then I heard Peter's voice, thin and faint and far away, but most unmistakably Peter's voice.
"Can you hear me now?" he said, like a man speaking from the bottom of the sea.
"Yes," I called back. "What is it?"
"Get ready for good news," said that thin but valorous voice that seemed to be speaking from the tip-top mountains of Mars. But the crackling and burring cut us off again. Then something must have happened to the line, or we must have been switched to a better circuit. For, the next moment, Peter's voice seemed almost in the next room. It seemed to come closer at a bound, like a shore-line when you look at it through a telescope.
"Is that any better?" he asked through his miles and miles of rain-swept blackness.
"Yes, I can hear you plainly now," I told him.
"Ah, yes, that
is better," he acknowledged. "And everything else is, too, my dear. For I've found your Dinkie and----"
"You've found Dinkie?" I gasped.
"I have, thank God. And he's safe and sound!"
"Where?" I demanded.
"Fast asleep at Alabama Ranch."
"Is he all right?"
"As fit as a fiddle--all he wants is sleep."
"
Oh, Peter!" It was foolish. But it was all I could say for a full minute. For my boy was alive, and safe. My laddie had been found by Peter--by good old Peter, who never, in the time of need, was known to fail me.
"Where are you now?" I asked, when reason was once more on her throne.
"At Buckhorn," answered Peter.
"And you went all that way through the mud and rain, just to tell me?" I said.
"I had to, or I'd blow up!" acknowledged Peter. "And now I'd like to know what you want me to do."
"I want you to come and get me, Peter," I said slowly and distinctly over the wire.
There was a silence of several seconds.
"Do you understand what that means?" he finally demanded. His voice, I noticed, had become suddenly solemn.
"Yes, Peter, I understand," I told him. "Please come and get me!" And again the silence was so prolonged that I had to cut in and ask: "Are you there?"
And Peter's voice answered "Yes."
"Then you'll come?" I exacted, determined to burn all my bridges behind me.
"I'll be there on Monday," said Peter, with quiet decision. "I'll be there with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed and the old prairie-schooner. And we'll all trek home together!"
"
Skookum!" I said with altogether unbecoming levity.
I patted the telephone instrument as I hung up the receiver. Then I sat staring at it in a brown study.
Then I went careening up-stairs and woke Poppsy out of a sound sleep and hugged her until her bones were ready to crack and told her that our Dinkie had been found again. And Poppsy, not being quite able to get it through her sleepy little head, promptly began to bawl. But there was little to bawl over, once she was thoroughly awake. And then I went careening down to the telephone again, and called up Lossie's boarding-house, and had her landlady root the poor girl out of bed, and heard
her break down and have a little cry when I told her our Dinkie had been found. And the first thing she asked me, when she was able to talk again, was if Gershom Binks had been told of the good news. And I had to acknowledge that I hadn't even
thought of poor old Gershom, but that Peter Ketley would surely have passed the good word on to Casa Grande, for Peter always seemed to think of the right thing.
And then I remembered about Duncan. For Duncan, whatever he may have been, was still the boy's father. And he must be told. It was my duty to tell him. So once more I climbed the stairs, but this time more slowly. I had to wait a full minute before I found the courage, I don't know why, to knock on Duncan's bedroom door.
I knocked twice before any answer came.
"What is it?" asked the familiar sleepy
bass--and I realized what gulfs yawned between us when my husband on one side of that closed door could be lying lost in slumber and I on the other side of it could find life doing such unparalleled things to me. I felt for him as a girl home, tired from her first dance, feels for a young brother asleep beside a Noah's Ark.
"What is it?" I heard Duncan's voice repeating from the bed.
"It's me," I rather weakly proclaimed.
"What has happened?" was the question that came after a moment's silence.
I leaned with my face against the painted door-panel. It was smooth and cool and pleasant to press one's skin against.
"They've found Dinkie," I said. I could hear the squeak of springs as my husband sat up in bed.
"Is he all right?"
"Yes, he's all right," I said with a great sigh. And I listened for an answering sigh from the other side of the door.
But instead of that Duncan's voice asked: "Where is he?"
"At Alabama Ranch," I said, without realizing what that acknowledgment meant. And again a brief period of silence intervened.
"Who found him?" asked my husband, in a hardened voice.
"Peter Ketley," I said, in as collected a voice as I could manage. And this time the significance of the silence did not escape me.
"Then your cup of happiness ought to be full," I heard the voice on the other side of the door remark with heavy deliberateness. I stood there with my face leaning against the cool panel.
"It is," I said with a quiet audacity which surprised me almost as much as it must have surprised the man on the bed a million miles away from me. _