“Hugh, he’s gone, don’t you see?” cried Gus, staring around helplessly in the dim light given by the moon that was hidden somewhere behind those heavy clouds overhead.
It chanced that the wind slackened its force for a brief spell just then, allowing, them an opportunity to exchange a few sentences, just as if the elements felt sorry for the misery of the poor fellow whose heart was full to overflowing.
“Yes, it looks like it,” Hugh admitted, “but if what Casey told us is true he must have been too weak to go far. We’ll find him, Gus, I hope.”
The other did not seem to be overconfident, even when he heard Hugh, whom he trusted as he did no other comrade, try to cheer him up in that way. A reaction was already setting in. Gus had been buoyed up much of the time by the hope that kept his heart warm, and now that this seemed gone a dreadful chill settled down upon him.
Hugh did not mean that this should be the end. He planned to bolster up the courage of his chum by prompt measures.
“Come,” he told the others, shouting aloud because the wind was rising again, with all those noises breaking forth around them once more, “what do we call ourselves scouts for if we can’t handle a little thing like this?”
“But what can we do, Hugh,” asked Gus. “Which way would we figure we’d better try and follow, when a dozen directions are open to him?”
“Stop and think,” said the other, quickly; “would a fellow who was weak, and ready to shrink from the storm, start out by facing it, or going the other way?”
Gus gave vent to a cry. New hope immediately started to tug at his heartstrings. Surely, as a scout, he should likewise have reasoned out things. But then Gus found himself the prey to contending emotions, and in no condition to figure what the answer to a conundrum might be, as under more comfortable conditions he would possibly have done.
Yes, it was certainly plausible to believe that the weak and tottering steps of Sam would carry him with the wind, and not against it. His one desire, when he moved away from the spot where Casey had left him, must have simply been to better his condition; and so he would drift along, the sport of the elements.