Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/47

Rh "Wal, I s'pose it's too late now," said her father.

"No, it isn't; he's gone to Red Cañon. He must be nearly there by this time. It's two o'clock. We could telephone."

"All right—we'll do it."

"Come on, then." Martha flew ahead of her father to the store where the telephone was, full of excitement and trepidation. She feared the man might have left the main road at Brooks's and not gone to Red Cañon after all.

Serena saw Martha go to the store, and she tripped after her. She heard Mr. Capp talking to the telephone girl at Red Cañon, and heard him say:

"All right—tell him when he gits there that I'll take the horse. What's that? Yes, me—I'm Silas Capp, you know. Tell him I'll take him. Yes, the horse. I'll pay him his price—one hundred. Jest tell him to call me up when he gits there. Good-bye."

Serena ran to her father and told him the news.

"We can get him yet," she said. "It isn't too late. They haven't talked with the man over the 'phone. He's to call them up when he gets to Red Cañon. We can get him yet."

"How?" asked her father, to whom the telephone was something vague.

"Why, come with me, if you don't want the Capps to get him. Come on, Pa." And Serena fairly bundled her father out of the house, while her mother said, "Oh, you impetuous little thing!"

When Serena and her father reached the store, Martha was sitting on a cracker box awaiting the tinkle of the telephone bell and the call from the horse trainer. Serena whispered to her father:

"They haven't heard from that horseman yet. Our chance is as good as theirs."

Great was Martha's surprise and indignation when Serena called up Red Cañon and asked if the horse trainer had arrived there yet. She saw Serena's satisfied smile when the answer came, and could have bitten her when she heard her say:

"All right. Tell him Mr. Hazlitt will take the horse he was looking at here at the price he named—one hundred dollars. Tell him to call us up as soon as he comes. I'll wait."