"How is that?" asked Burt, while the others listened with interest. The young Shawanoe told, in his characteristic manner, the story which is already well known to the reader. While doing so he watched each countenance closely, hoping (though he could give no reason for such hope) to catch some sign of a shadowy knowledge of that for which he was seeking, but he was disappointed.
"One thing is sartin," remarked Burt Hawkins, when the story was fully told, "them boys ain't dead."
"I agree with you," said Kellogg, with an emphatic nod of the head, in which even the surly Crumpet joined. Deerfoot was surprised at this unanimity, and inquired of Hawkins his reason for his belief.
"'Cause it's agin common sense; when two young men go out in the woods to hunt game, both of 'em ain't going to get killed: that isn't the fashion now-a-days. One of 'em might be hurt, but if that was so, and the other couldn't get away, the Injins would take him off and keep him. More than likely the varmints carried away both, and if you make a good hunt for three or four thousand miles around, you'll get track of 'em."
"I think I know a better plan than that," said Kellogg, and, as the others looked inquiringly toward him, he said, "both of them chaps have been took by Injins who'll keep them awhile. One of these days the boys will find a chance to give 'em the slip, and they'll leave on some dark night and strike for home."
"It isn't likely both 'll have a show to do that at the same time," said Crumpet, speaking with more courtesy than he had yet shown, and manifesting much interest in the matter.
"No; one will have to leave a good while before the other, and then the one that is left will be watched that much sharper, but all he's got to do is to bide his time."
"When one of my brothers comes through the woods to his home, the other will come with him," said Deerfoot, confident as he was that neither Jack Carleton nor Otto Relstaub would desert the other, when placed in any kind of danger.
Deerfoot was confirmed in his theory of the disappearance of his young friends, for it agreed with what he had formed after leaving the settlement that morning. But, admitting it was the correct theory, the vast difficulty of locating the boys still confronted him. They might be journeying far southward in the land of the Creeks and Chickasaws, or to the homes of the Dacotah in the frozen north, or westward toward the Rocky Mountains.
Kellogg and Crumpet now fell into an earnest discussion of the question, for, though agreeing in the main, they differed on minor points, in which each was persistent in his views. Deerfoot listened to every word, for, like a wise man, he was anxious to gain all the knowledge he could from others.