Chapter 18. The Long Way Round - Page 2

straight up the side of a hill and straight down again in the very same place. This was the gorge where her horse was tied, only it might be that she was a little below the exact spot; that could happen, of course. So Miss Allen went up the gorge until it petered out against the face of the mountain--one might as well call it a mountain and be done with it, for it certainly was more than a mere hill.

It was some time before Miss Allen would admit to herself that she had missed the gorge where she had left her horse, and that she did not know where the gorge was, and that she did not know where she was herself. She had gone down the mouth of the gulch before she made any admissions, and she had seen not one solitary thing that she could remember having ever seen before.

Not even the peak she had climbed looked familiar from where she was. She was not perfectly sure that it was the same peak when she looked at it.

Were you ever lost? It is a very peculiar sensation--the feeling that you are adrift in a world that is strange. Miss Allen had never been lost before in her life. If she had been, she would have been more careful, and would have made sure that she was descending that peak by the exact route she had followed up it, instead of just taking it for granted that all she need do was get to the bottom.

After an hour or two she decided to climb the peak again, get her bearings from the top and come down more carefully. She was wild with apprehension--though I must say it was not for her own plight but on account of the Kid. So she climbed. And then everything looked so different that she believed she had climbed another hill entirely. So she went down again and turned into a gorge which seemed to lead in the direction where she had seen the little lost boy. She followed that quite a long way--and that one petered out like the first.

Miss Allen found the gorges filling up with shadow, and she looked up and saw the sky crimson and gold, and she knew then without any doubts that she was lost. Miss Allen was a brave young woman, or she would not have been down in that country in the first place; but just the same she sat down with her back against a clay bank and cried because of the eeriness and the silence, and because she was hungry and she knew she was going to be cold before morning--but mostly because she could not find that poor, brave little baby boy who had waved his hat when she left him, and shouted that he was not a baby.

In a few minutes she pulled herself together and went on; there was nothing to be gained by sitting in one place and worrying. She walked until it was too dark to see, and then, because she had come upon a little, level canyon bottom-- though one that was perfectly strange--she stopped there where a high bank sheltered her from the wind that was too cool for comfort. She called, a few times, until she was sure that the child was not within hearing. After that