Only Boone and Lightfoot held back. Yet they did not expostulate. They knew how useless that would be.
CHAPTER IV.
THE OSAGE VILLAGE.
Boone seemed perplexed and ill at ease. For some minutes he watched Lightfoot as he quartered the opening like a hound searching for a lost scent; but then a signal called the Kickapoo to his side. With a few low words, Boone turned and retraced the route they had followed the night before in their flight from the Osages.
The clearing that once contained the happy and peaceful home of Mordaunt, was gained. A heap of black, unsightly ruins was all that was now left.
Making a circuit of the clearing, the scouts knew that no human being had been there since the rain ceased. Boone frowned, though he had scarcely dared hope for a different result.
Pausing beneath the shelter of a tree, the scouts consulted on their future course. Blind as the trail was, neither one dreamed of abandoning the search until they should either rescue Edith or obtain proof of her death.
A sudden recollection caused Lightfoot's eyes to glisten—his hopes to rise. He believed he possessed a clue by which the broken trail might be regained.
Several times mention has been made of Seth Grable, a mongrel renegade, also that he boasted the possession of several squaws. Lightfoot knew that one at least of these lived apart from her tribe and was frequently visited by the White Wolf at her little cabin in a snug valley beside the Osage. By mere accident Lightfoot had made this discovery, while out hunting, and now as he recalled the lone and well-hidden refuge, he believed Edith would be concealed there by the renegade until the storm blew over.