Jason Locke kicked angrily at the tufts of dry grass, raising puffs of dust with each step. Pa had left before daylight to check the herd and Jason would be with him if it weren’t for that old muley cow. All cows were stupid but that milk cow was the worst. Not a lick of brains in her head.

He aimed a particularly vicious kick at a clod of dirt. Even if he had left the gate unlatched last night, that dumb cow should have had sense enough to stay in the pen. Now he’d have to walk at least three miles. He knew where she’d be, in the thicket down at the seep. Stupid cow critter. Why couldn’t the Indians run her off instead of stealing steers? A plaintive call broke into his thoughts.

"Wait for me. Jase, wait for me."

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. His little sister, Cassie, was running after him as fast as her short little legs would carry her.

"Go home, Cassie. Just you get on home."

"I wanna go wiss you."

Anger and frustration filled his chest like a balloon, then burst. He turned on her. "Well, I don’t want you. You hear? I don’t want you!" He shook his fist at her. "Jist turn around and git home. I’m sick of you pestering me all the time."

She stopped, a stunned look in her eyes that stabbed him, increasing his anger. Her tiny face screwed up and a tear trickled down her dust-coated cheek. Clutching a cornhusk doll to her breast she stared at him, then turned and trudged back across the prairie.

Jason swung away, stalking over the dry earth. A man, and at the age of ten he considered himself a man, didn’t need a five-year old girl always tagging after him. Still, his conscience smote him. He should take her back to the house. He glanced back but she was out of sight. He stopped, undecided, then shrugged. They were only a quarter of a mile from the house. Once out of the draw, she could see the barn. She couldn’t get lost. And he had that fool cow to find. He turned back to following the cow’s tracks.

It was late afternoon when Jason got back with the milk cow. She’d been in the thicket, all right, but it had taken him hours to chouse her out. The durned fool hadn’t wanted to leave the tender grass and the shade. He was hot, tired and caked with dirt and sweat.

He led the cow into the barn and got down a pail and the milking stool. When he’d finished milking, he turned her into the pen, checked that the water trough was full and pitched in hay.

Picking up the pail of milk, he carried it into the kitchen side of the dog run.

Pa was sitting at the table puffing his pipe. His mother was at the stove, taking a pan of biscuits out of the oven. She turned and smiled. "I see you found the cow. You and Cassie best get washed up. Supper’s ready."

The words hit him like a sledge hammer blow. His throat was so tight he could barely force the words out. "Ain’t Cassie here?"

He saw the blood drain from his mother’s face. "No, she went with you. Didn’t she?"

"I sent her back."

A calloused hand on his shoulder swung him around. Tom Locke was on his feet, his eyes burning, a gray pallor visible under his tan. "Tell me."

Jason could feel the heat rising in his face while a ball of ice formed in his belly. "She was follering me. I... I told her to go home."

"When?"

"This... this morning." The ball of ice had grown, squeezing his heart. "She couldn’t be lost, Pa. She couldn’t! We was just the other side of the draw."

Without further word, Tom strapped on his gun belt and taking a rifle from the wall, left the house and headed for the draw. Jason trotted at his heels. They found her tracks in the mud at the bottom of the draw. Found where she had followed the trickle of water, where she had stopped to build a small dam, then wandered on.

Where the draw branched, two tall cottonwood trees shaded a small glen. Half a dozen wilted prairie flowers were scattered amongst the churned up sand. The cornhusk doll lay broken, trampled under the hooves of unshod ponies.

Jason dropped to his knees. He stretched out a hand and touched the doll. It fell apart under his fingers. Tears stung his eyes and he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

"Let’s go, son. Saddle my horse while I tell your Ma."

Jason scrambled up. "I’m going."

His father stopped and looked down at him. "May be a long ride." Jason nodded but didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The lump in his throat was too big. His father nodded. "You’d best ride the grulla, then."

Twenty minutes later, Tom Locke picked up the ponies trail and followed it up the draw and out onto the plains. The tracks led west and they followed them towards the setting sun. As they rode, pictures flashed through Jason’s mind; of hiding in the barn while he fashioned the cornhusk doll for a Christmas present, of whittling a set of doll plates for her birthday, of her short legs pumping to keep up as he did his chores. It seemed as though he could feel again her warm little body snuggled so trustingly against him as he read aloud to her of an evening.

The words reverberated through his brain in rhythm with the beat of the grulla’s hooves on the hard ground. From the time she could walk, Cassie had followed him everywhere and he had willingly assumed responsibility for her. He should have taken her back to the house! A man didn’t shirk his responsibilities.

He cast a quick sideways glance at his father. Pa put a lot of store in the way a man accepted responsibility. And Jason didn’t need to read the stern set of his father’s face to know that he had failed.

Darkness found them a couple of miles from a C-Bar-X line shack. The line rider fixed them a meal and they bedded down for the night. In the morning, he joined them in the search.

For three days, they followed the trail west under a blazing west Texas sun. It was a tired, grim threesome that finally found the scalped and violated body.

Jason watched his father’s big hands tenderly wrap the pathetic little body in a blanket. Tom Locke carried Cassie all the way home in his arms, refusing to let Jason share the burden.

Jason carried his own burden, a terrible weight of guilt and self-loathing.