“That’s how I’m figgerin’ it out, Uncle Bill. She ain’t downstream, anyhow. Some folks think she’s lost in the woods or been killed—but I don’t; I reckon she’s run away on business of her own; and as she ain’t gone downstream I guess she’s come up.”
“You don’t say! What makes you think so?”
“Well, she intended to go somewheres, because she took her suitcase packed full, and her money. She wouldn’t do that if she was just meanin’ to stop a night with Lizzy Cameron. And they ain’t found hide nor hair of her down river—but I’ve found her tracks, and more’n her tracks, up this way. Yep, I found the tracks two days back, about two miles below this, close to the edge of the stream. I knowed ’em by the sharp heels. I hunted both sides of the stream for a mile and dug into every pool, but didn’t find any more signs. But I found somethin’ else yesterday; and now I’m goin’ clear up the Prongs.”
“What did you find yesterday?”
Young Dan untied his blanket and disclosed to his uncle’s view a small frying-pan, a loaf of bread, a chunk of bacon, a book with a green cover and a cardboard box. He placed the box in the other’s hands. It was empty but had once contained chocolates.
“That’s what I found yesterday, just below the falls here,” he said. “Miss Carten was a b’ar on chocolates. She et ’em in school.”
Uncle Bill examined the box and returned it. He scratched his clean-shaven chin and regarded his nephew with a contemplative and calculating eye.
“Young Dan, you’re smart,” he said. “And you’re bold as brass. I am smart, too, though that is not the general opinion in these parts. The trouble with me is that I am shy. You are all for showing how smart you are, but I’ve always been for hiding my light under a peck-measure. You are doing something now that I couldn’t do. My natural shyness would make it impossible for me to follow a young lady who has run away of her own free will. That is how you have reasoned it out yourself—of her own free will! Yes, I am talking queer—not the way I talk at home. The truth is, Young Dan, I’m not the rube your Pa and Ma think I am; but I’ve always been too shy to let them know about it. I know more than which side to butter my pancakes on and how to pole a canoe.”
“I guess maybe you do,” admitted Young Dan.
“Your reasons for thinking Miss Carten was up here seem good to me!—good, but not conclusive,” continued Uncle Bill. “If she is the only person in this country who ever wears high-heeled shoes and eats chocolates out of a box, then you are dead right. Hullo! What’s the book?”