“It’s not our way to worry till we know we have good cause to, Captain,” rejoined Ralph. “If Jack has vanished, I’m willing to swear that he is off on some sort of duty connected with the Rangers. Possibly he had not time to report back before leaving. Depend upon it, Jack will come out all right.”
“That’s my idea, too,” declared Walt stoutly.
“Well, I admire the confidence you boys have in your leader,” declared Captain Atkinson warmly, “but just the same as soon as it’s daylight I mean to start a thorough investigation, and if harm has come to him it will go hard with those that caused it.”
CHAPTER XII.
A BAFFLING PURSUIT.
But a close scrutiny of the river banks by daylight failed to reveal anything more definite than a maze of trampled footmarks and broken brush at the spot where Jack had encountered his combat with the three Mexican spies. Captain Atkinson, one of the most expert of men in the plainsman’s art of reading signs from seemingly insignificant features, confessed that he was baffled.
“It is plain enough that Jack was involved in some sort of a fight,” he said, “but beyond that I cannot say. The most puzzling thing about his disappearance, in fact, lies in the absence of pony tracks. I can’t imagine how whoever it was attacked him reached this vicinity without being heard by the sentries east and west of the trail.”
“Can it not be possible that in some manner he fell into the river and was swept away by the swift current?” inquired Ralph.