Even the Kid seemed to feel a strangeness in the atmosphere--a stillness that made his face sober while he looked around the little pasture and up at the hill trail.

In all the way home they had not met anyone--but that may have been because Andy chose the way up Flying U Creek as being shorter and therefore more desirable.
At the lower line fence of the little pasture Andy refused to believe the Kid's assertion of having opened and shut the gate, until the Kid got down and proved that he could open it--the shutting process being too slow for Andy's raw nerves.

He lifted the Kid into the saddle and shut the gate himself, and led the way up the creek at a fast trot.
"I guess Doctor Dell will be glad to see me," the Kid observed wistfully.

"I've been gone most a year, I guess." Neither Andy nor Miss Allen made any reply to this.

Their eyes were searching the hilltop for riders, that they might signal.