There were trackless forests where a fugitive could laugh at a score of hunters, rocky slopes over which he could run, leaving no sign of his passing, thickets in which he might lie in safety while a man who was looking for him went by so close that one might easily toss a stone to the other.
But for an hour Sheldon sought for Paula and her father, hoping that through some fortunate chance he might stumble upon them. He returned to the forking of the trails where the girl had directed him to the right. Now he took the other path, leading toward the northeast. But in a little while it branched and branched again, and there were no tracks in the grassy soil to help him.
He followed one trail after another, always coming back when there had been nothing to persuade him that he was not perhaps setting his back toward those he sought. And in the end he gave over his quest as hopeless and retraced his steps to Johnny’s Luck.
The back door was wide open as he had left it. He stepped inside, moving cautiously, realizing that one or both of them might have returned here before him. But there was no sign that either had done so. The other door was shut, the bar across it. The cabin’s interior had been in no way disturbed since he had been there last.
It seemed that there was nothing that he could do now. To be sure he might rifle their few belongings in an endeavor to learn who they were, so that if he was forced to go back alone to the “world outside,” he could see to give word of them to any relatives they might have. But he disliked the job; certainly he would resort to no such action until it had become evident that it was the only thing to do. He went out, closed the door after him, and turned his back upon Johnny’s Luck. For, while he had the opportunity, it would be well to look to Buck and to his pack.
His horse he found browsing leisurely in the grove where he had left him. The pack in the gulch had not been disturbed. Sheldon went to it for a fresh tin of tobacco; made into a little bundle enough food for a couple of meals, and with a thoughtful smile he slipped his one slab of chocolate into his pocket. Then, having moved Buck a little deeper into the grove, he turned again toward Johnny’s Luck. Soon or late the madman or the girl would come back to their cabin. While his patience lasted Sheldon would wait there for them.
This time, when he came again into the cabin, where still there was no sign that its owners had been there since he had left it, he closed the back door and flung the front one wide open. For if the madman and the girl came back, Sheldon preferred to have them come this way, so that he could see them in the clearing that had once been a street of Johnny’s Luck. Then, with nothing else to do, he strode back and forth in the rough room and smoked his pipe and stared about him.
So it was that at last one of the pictures upon the wall caught and held his attention. It was an old line-cut from a newspaper, held in place by little pegs through the corners. The man pictured might have been fifty or he might have been thirty; the artist had achieved a sketch of which neither he nor his subject need be proud. The thing which interested Sheldon was the printed legend under the drawing:
Charles Francis Hamilton, Professor of Entomology in Brownell University, Author of “The Lepidoptera of the Canadian Rocky Mountains,” “A Monogram upon the Basilarchia Arthemis,” etc.
In ten lines was an article “of interest to the scientific world,” announcing that Professor Hamilton, representing the interests of the newly endowed College of Entomology, an institution whose aims “are the pervestigation into the rarer varieties of the lepidoptera flying in the North American altitudes over 7,000 feet,” was preparing for an expedition into the less known regions of the Canadian northwest.