“Yes, today?” she prompted anxiously.
“I am not quite so sure. His complete disappearance perplexes me. If he were dead as I thought, then some one has carried his body away; and if he were not dead, then some one must still have helped him, for he was in no condition to help himself.”
“That is what you think? Mr. Bracknell, do you know that there was a sledge in the wood to the left of that path?”
“I saw the trail,” he answered quietly, “and I saw you following it.”
“Whose sled was it?” she asked thoughtfully. “It was none of ours, and it was not yours, and it could not be that of a miner, for any such would have come to the Lodge, as we keep open house for the men on trail.”
“I do not know whose it can have been,” answered the corporal thoughtfully. “If we knew that we should have the key to the whole of this mysterious affair, possibly. But whoever it was he was anxious as far as possible to cover his tracks. He did not follow the trail up the river. He crossed to the track on the other side, and then turned off into the wood; he lit a fire there. I found the ashes after I left you this morning. He must have halted there for a little time, for the snow was pretty well trampled, and when he resumed his journey, he marched parallel with the river, and descended to the ice again just south of the bluff. I found his tracks coming down the bank there, and I imagine that from the point he must have followed the trail up-river.”
“Whoever could he be?” asked the girl in perplexity.
“I do not know. But tomorrow I am going to find out; my dogs will be fresh then, and after the rest I shall be able to travel fast. Of one thing I am convinced: whoever the man was he was not your husband. Dick Bracknell, as I said just now, was in no condition to help himself, certainly not to take the trail.”
For a moment Joy Gargrave did not speak, and as he looked at her he wondered what her thoughts were. He was still wondering when she broke the silence.