A perfect yell in answer to the request of Landlord Larry told him that Bernard Brandon would be found if he was in or near Last Chance, and so it was agreed that all would start at dawn the following morning, many mounted, many on foot, and report the result, if good or bad, at the hotel at night.
So the miners' meeting broke up, and with the first gray in the east the following morning, four-fifths of Last Chance were off, searching for the missing man.
As they wore themselves out, or completed the search over the circuit assigned them, the men came in and reported at the hotel. Each had the same story to tell, that the search had been a fruitless one.
Many of the mounted men did not come in until after dark, but theirs was the same story, that no trace of the missing stranger could be found.
At last every man who had been on the search had returned, and not the slightest trace of the missing Brandon had been discovered by a single one who had gone out to look for him.
No one remembered to have seen him very lately, and so his fate was unsolved, and the miners put it down as unknown, with the belief that he had either been kidnaped by road-agents or had fallen into some stream, or from a cliff, and thus met his death.
The belief of Landlord Larry and Harding was that Bernard Brandon had been captured, for some reason, by road-agents, and this convinced them that there were spies of the outlaws then dwelling in their midst; but what the motive for kidnaping the man was, they could only conjecture, believing it to be ransom that they thought the miners would pay, and, if they did not, that Celeste Seldon would.
This belief, of spies in their midst, caused a very unpleasant and uneasy feeling among all, for hardly any man knew whether he could trust his own comrade or not.
Doctor Dick came in late from his search and rounds to visit his patients, and listened in silence to the report that Bernard Brandon could not be found.
He, however, would not believe that road-agents had kidnaped the crazed man, but said that he might have sprung from the cliff and taken his own life, have fallen over a precipice, or been devoured by the fierce mountain-wolves that hung in packs about the camps.