But it was not that alone which made their faces look haggard and old and haunted.
They, too, were thinking of Lost Child Creek and How it had gotten its name.
Miss Allen gleaned a little information from them regarding the general whereabouts of the various searching parties.

And then, having learned that the foothills of the mountains were being searched minutely because the Kid might have taken a notion to visit Meeker's; and that the country around Wolf Butte was being searched, because he had once told Big Medicine that when he got bigger and his dad would let him, he was going over there and kill wolves to make Doctor Dell some rugs: and that the country toward the river was being searched because the Kid always wanted to see where the Happy Family drove the sheep to, that time when Happy Jack got shot under the arm; that all the places the Kid had seemed most interested in were being searched minutely--if it could be possible to; search minutely a country the size of that! Having learned all that, Miss Allen struck off by herself, straight down into the Badlands where nobody seemed to have done much searching.
The reason for that was, that the Happy Family had come out of the breaks on the day that the Kid was lost.

They had not ridden together, but in twos and threes because they drove out several small bunches of cattle that they had gleaned, to a common centre in One Man Coulee.

They had traveled by the most feasible routes through that rough country, and they had seen no sign of the Kid or any other rider.
They did not believe that he had come over that far, or even in that direction; because a horseman would almost certainly have been sighted by some of them in crossing a ridge somewhere.
It never occurred to anyone that the Kid might go down Flying U Creek and so into the breaks and the Badlands.

Flying U Creek was fenced, and the wire gate was in its place--Chip had looked down along there, the first night, and had found the gate up just as it always was kept.