The women disappeared down the trail while still the men stood staring.
"Well, can you beat it?" was the only comment for a moment - and that
came from Pete. In another instant, they had turned on Merrill, were
upbraiding him hotly for what they called his treason.
"You can't bully me," was his unvarying answer. "Remember, any time they
call on me, I'll fight for them."
"Well, you can do what you want with your own wife, of course," Ralph
said, falling into one of his black rages. "But I'm damned if you'll
encourage mine."
"Boys," he added later, after a day of steadily increasing rage, "I'm
tired of this funny business. Let's knock off work to-morrow and hunt
them. What gets me is their simplicity. They don't seem to have
calculated on our superior strength. It won't take us more than a few
hours to run them to earth. By God, I wish we had a pair of
bloodhounds."
"All right," said Billy. "I'm with you, Ralph. I'm tired of this."
"Let's go, to bed early to-night," said Pete, and start at sunrise."
"Well," said Honey philosophically, "I've hunted deer, bear, panther,
buffalo, Rocky Mountain sheep, jaguar, lion, tiger, and rhinoceros - but
this is the first time I ever hunted women."
They started at sunrise - all except Frank, who refused to have anything
to do with the expedition - and they hunted all day. At sunset they
camped where they fell exhausted. They went back to the search the next
day and the next and the next and the next.
And nowhere did they find traces of their prey.
"Where are they? Ralph said again and again in a baffled tone. "They
couldn't have flown away, could they?"
And, as often as he asked this question, his companions answered it in
the varying tones of their fatigue and their despair. "Of course they
couldn't - their wings were too short."
"Still," Frank said once. "It's now long past the half-yearly shearing
period." He added in another instant, "I don't think, though, that their
wings could more than lift them."
"Well, it's evident, wherever they are, they won't budge until we go
back to work," Billy said at the end of a week. "This is useless and
hopeless."
The next day they returned to the New Camp.
"Here they come," Billy called joyously that noon. "Thank God!" he added
under his breath.