unter through the cities and
towns and country requires.

But my reader will observe the vast difference between a case such as
occurs every day, and that which confronted the young Indian. Two boys
had gone into the woods more than a week before, on a long hunt, and
were now missing; it was his task to find them. Could it be done?

Had Deerfoot taken up the pursuit shortly after the departure of the
boys, he could have sped over their trail like a bloodhound. There could
have been no escaping him; but since they left home, rain had fallen,
and even that marvel of canine sagacity could not have trailed them
through the wilderness. It was idle, therefore, for Deerfoot to seek for
that which did not exist; no trail was to be found; at least, none in
that neighborhood. In all his calculations, he did not build the
slightest hope on that foundation. Had he done so, he would have sought
to take up the shadowy footprints from where the boys left the
settlement; but the utmost he did was to learn the general direction
taken by them, when they entered upon one of the wildest expeditions
that can be imagined.

Hundreds and thousands of square miles of mountain and forest were
spread out before him. The vast territory of Louisiana, as it was then
called, stretched away to the Gulf of Mexico, and spread toward the
setting sun until stopped by the walls of the Rocky Mountains. The youth
could spend his life in wandering over that prodigious area, without
coming upon or gaining the slightest traces of a thousand people whom he
might wish to find. The conclusion was inevitable that he must pursue
some intelligent course, or he never could succeed.

It should be said that Deerfoot had not the slightest doubt of a grave
misfortune having befallen his friends. Jack Carleton never would
willingly remain from home for so long a period; he was too affectionate
a son to grieve his mother by such a course. He and Otto Relstaub,
therefore, were either prisoners in the hands of Indians, or they had
been put to death.

Just the faintest possible fear troubled the young Shawanoe. He recalled
the incidents which had marked the journey of himself and the boys from
Kentucky, only a short time before. The Shawanoes, the fiercest and most
cunning of all the Indian tribes, had not only pursued them to the
river's edge, but had followed them across the Mississippi, coming
within a hair's breadth of destroying the two boys who were making such
has