Henry shook his head.
“It isn't that,” he said. “Jim is too good a woodsman for such a mistake. I don't want to look on the black side, boys, but I think something has happened to Jim.”
“Suppose you an' me go an' look for him,” said Shif'less Sol, “while Paul and Tom stay here an' keep house.”
“We'd better do it,” said Henry. “Come, Sol.”
The two, rifles in the hollows of their arms, disappeared in the darkness, while Tom and Paul withdrew into the deepest shadow of the trees and waited.
Henry and the shiftless one pursued an anxious quest, going about the camp in a great circle and then in another yet greater. They did not find Jim, and the dusk was so great that they saw no evidences of his trail. Long Jim had disappeared as completely as if he had left the earth for another planet. When they felt that they must abandon the search for the time, Henry and Shif'less Sol looked at each other in a dismay that the dusk could not hide.
“Mebbe be saw some kind uv a sign, an' has followed it,” said the shiftless one hopefully. “If anything looked mysterious an' troublesome, Jim would want to hunt it down.”
“I hope so,” said Henry, “but we've got to go back to the camp now and report failure. Perhaps he'll show up to-morrow, but I don't like it, Sol, I don't like it!”
“No more do I,” said Shif'less Sol. “'Tain't like Jim not to come back, ef he could. Mebbe he'll drop in afore day, anyhow.”
They returned to the camp, and two inquiring figures rose up out of the darkness.