“I did too. I haven’t seen him since long before we met the old man.” Kitty ran ahead into the pine grove calling, “Billy! Billy, where are you?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kitty had never felt so conscience-stricken in her life as when she found Billy was lost.
“Maybe he went back and joined your father and Miss Dawson,” Brad suggested.
“I don’t think so. We’d come too far. He trailed us all the way, pretending to be shooting at us from behind trees. Oh, Brad, do you suppose he fell from that bluff into the water?”
“You go along the bluff and I’ll go through the thicket,” she directed.
She ran from him, darting here and there, calling frantically. If anything had happened to Billy she would never forgive herself for being so preoccupied with this strange jig-saw puzzle she and Brad were trying to work out.
Suddenly she stopped short under the towering pines, tears streaming down her eyes. “Oh, Billy darling, where are you?” she wailed. “Kitty will die if anything has happened to you.”
Suddenly she caught the queer little noise he made in his throat when pretending to fire a machine gun at her. She glanced around, startled. He was nowhere in sight. That must have been something she heard, because she so wanted to hear it.
“Billy,—where are you?” she called almost desperately.
Again there came the playful sound, and this time Kitty thought it was overhead. She must be having hallucinations surely. Hopefully she moved in the direction from which she thought the sound had come. Suddenly a cone fell almost at her feet. Then there was a burst of childish laughter from the nearest treetop. She looked up to see a mischievous face peering down at her from the high branches. Her overwhelming relief was only momentary, for it was followed by terror lest Billy break his neck.
“Why, Billy Carter, how in the world did you climb that tall pine?”
“It was easy. Come up, Kit. You can see clear across the world.”
“I’m not coming up, and you’re coming down this very instant,” she said firmly.
“It’s fun up here! Let me stay,” pleaded Billy.
Kitty saw Brad running toward them, attracted by their voices.
“Oh, look at him! In the top of that pine,” she told Brad. “How will he ever get down?”