Angel Island

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.