Tom and Jim became still harder to find. The three hunted everywhere. They hunted an hour. They hunted two hours, and there was not a sign of their two comrades. They asked many about them and nobody could tell a word. It was nearly midnight when they stopped and looked at one another in dismay.
"They are not in the camp—that is sure," said Henry.
"And they've got too much sense to go out in the woods," said Sol.
"Which means that they've been took," said Tom Ross.
Tom's words carried conviction, sudden and appalling, to all three. Paul and Jim Hart, going about the burning town, had been seized by some lurking party and carried off, or—they would not admit to themselves the dreadful alternative—but they hoped they had been merely taken away, which they deemed likely, as hostages would be of great value to the Indians now. The three sat down on a log at the northern edge of the town. They saw little now but the river, and the clouds of smoke rising from it.
"We'll never desert Paul and Jim," said Shif'less Sol. "Now what is the fust thing fur us to do?"
"We've got to find this trail, and the trail of those who took them," replied Henry. "The army, of course, cannot follow all through the northern woods in order to rescue two persons, and it's not fitted for such a task anyhow. We three will do it, won't we?"
"Ez shore ez the sun rises an' sets," said Shif'less Sol.
"I reckon we will," said Tom Ross.
"And we must start upon the road this minute," said Henry. "Come, we'll see Colonel Clark and tell him that we have to go."