“How!” saluted the guide as he drove the canoe to shore. “Much trouble. Bad Indian steal canoe. Me hunt long time, find ’nother. Stop camp. Put things quick. Think mebbe some come camp. Mebbe Missy Ruth go back get rest. She know how paddle good. Me no find. Nobody there. Paddle here quick.” His piercing glance ranging over the group, he demanded: “Where Missy Ruth? Where other one?”
“They—they are lost somewhere—in the woods!” Miss Drexal’s tones were unsteady. The strain of that despairing night watch was beginning to tell on her. “We didn’t go clear across the island. We were coming back when—they—disappeared. It was about four o’clock. We couldn’t have been much more than a mile from here. We hunted them for another hour. We didn’t dare stay in the woods longer. It had begun to get dark there. Wherever they are, or whatever has happened to them, we depend on you to find out. You must start at daybreak to look for them, Blue Wolf.”
“Start now,” declared the guide laconically. From his tone, it was impossible to discern how much effect the dire news had had upon him. “We make torch now.” With this, he brushed past the bevy of white-faced women, and cantered off toward the edge of the woods. He was soon back bearing an armful of thick dry branches, which his trained eyes and fingers had enabled him to gather in the dark.
Helpless to aid him, the party could only watch with strained attention as he flung down his burden beside the fire, and, squatting before it, began a selection of such branches as would best serve his purpose. Choosing six, he fished a piece of thin tough string from his pocket. Five he bound together, leaving one for immediate use. With the free end of the string, he lashed the little bundle across one shoulder. Catching up the lone branch, he thrust one end of it into the fire, holding it there until it blazed.
“Now,” he said, speaking for the first time since he had begun his work, “you tell about place. Where you when Missy Ruth an’ other one get lost. You tell everything.”
“It was near a lot of rocks, Blue Wolf,” volunteered Frances impulsively. “Ruth found an arrow-head there. Then Jane and I went there to see if we couldn’t find another. The rocks went straight out over a little hollow below. There was a dead tree hung away across them. I stepped on it, and it began to shake. Then it went smashing down. It loosened a lot of rock and that went, too. I just missed going with the tree. If I hadn’t jumped—”
A wild yell from the Indian cut short Frances’ narrative. Without a word of explanation, Blue Wolf jerked the blazing branch from the fire, swung it about his head, and loped off toward the dark mass behind them with the speed of a hunted deer. In utter stupefaction, the watchers followed his course for a moment by the swaying, flickering light that danced among the trees.
As it disappeared, Betty found speech. It was merely a husky whisper. “What—if the girls were underneath that ledge when the rocks fell? Why didn’t we think and go there first of all?”
“If we had and—” Unable to finish, Emmy threw herself down by the fire and buried her head in her hands.
“It’s all my fault,” moaned Frances. “If I hadn’t walked along that tree—Oh, it can’t, it mustn’t be like that!” Completely unnerved, she burst into tears. Breaking away from the group, she ran distractedly along the shore for a little way, and dropped to the earth in a disconsolate heap. Hysterically sobbing, she lay there, huddled on the sand.