“I—I wasn’t roused, sir,” stammered Humphrey. “It was Carteret’s place to do that.”
“How could I do it when I wasn’t wakened myself?” exclaimed Carteret. “Naturally I slept sound, thinking I would be called in time.”
“Just my case,” added Humphrey in an aggrieved tone.
“Then Captain Rudstone is the man!” cried Arnold. “Where is he?”
Where indeed? We suddenly became aware that the captain was not among us. We shouted and called his name, but no answer came back. We looked into all the tepees, and found them empty. It was a deep mystery, and our alarm and wonder increased. We glanced at one another with startled and anxious faces. None could throw light on the matter; we had all slept soundly through the night. I questioned Flora, but she was no wiser than the rest of us.
“It’s the queerest thing I ever heard of,” said Arnold. “The man can’t have been spirited away.”
“Perhaps an Indian crept up and tomahawked him,” suggested Malcolm Cameron, “and he’s lying yonder under the snow.”
“No; that is out of the question,” said I. “Captain Rudstone could not have been caught off his guard.”
“It’s my opinion,” declared Arnold, “that he heard some noise in the forest and went to see what it was. He wandered farther from camp than he intended, and got lost in the storm—you can see by the depth of the snow that the blizzard didn’t hold up till near morning—and ten to one he’s lying stiff and dead under a drift. We’ll search for him till the middle of the morning, and if we don’t find him by then, we must be off to the fort while the weather permits.”
Arnold’s reasoning was not very sound, but no one could offer a more plausible solution to the mystery. While breakfast was preparing some of us fruitlessly explored the vicinity of the camp, and a little later, having fortified ourselves with food and hot coffee, we set off on a more extended search. Christopher Burley and three other men stayed behind with Flora; the rest, divided into four parties, went in as many different directions.