Chip and Andy were not yet up the bluff when the Old Man climbed painfully into the covered buggy, took the lines and the whip and cut a circle with the wheels on the hard-packed earth as clean and as small as Chip himself could have done, and went whirling through the big gate and across the creek and up the long slope beyond.

He shouted to the boys and they rode slowly until he overtook them--though their nerves were all on edge and haste seemed to them the most important thing in the world.

But habit is strong--it was their Old Man who called to them to wait.
"You boys wait to git out after that Owens," he shouted when he passed them.

"If they've got the Kid, killing's too good for 'em!" The brown team went trotting up the grade with back straightened to the pull of the lurching buggy, and nostrils flaring wide with excitement.

The Old Man leaned sidewise and called back to the two loping after him in the obscuring dust-cloud he left behind.
"I'll have that woman arrested on suspicion uh setting prairie fires!" he called.