el on the fire, so that the glow might serve as a
guide. He knew that there would be no use in going out in search of
Rube. They might so easily miss each other in these trackless wilds;
unless indeed, Rube was hurt and unable to move about. Climbing in the
fog among rocks slippery with rain and wet moss, he was likely enough
to have missed his footing and injured a limb in his fall.

This thought that Rube was possibly lying helpless on the crags began
to worry Kiddie as the night grew late. He blamed himself for having
allowed the boy to go forth alone on such a hazardous adventure.

"It's the kind of thing I'd have done myself when I was his age," he
reflected. "I can't blame Rube. But I ought to have stopped him from
going when I saw that there was rain coming on and saw the mist
gathering on the hills. Pity we didn't bring the hound with us after
all. Sheila would sure have found him."

Fearing that he might yet have to go out in search of the boy, he
cooked his own supper. He had already packed all his stores under the
shelter of the wigwam and the canoe, covering the latter with the
ground-sheet. He had also lighted the hurricane lamp and suspended it
from the top of the totem pole.

He ate his supper in the teepee, but more than once got up from the
solitary meal to open the door-flap and look out searchingly in the
darkness for signs of Rube.

Towards midnight the light of the moon behind the clouds lessened the
surrounding darkness. He could dimly distinguish the mountain ridges,
outlined against the sky. The rain had ceased. The mist had lifted
from the heights; but it still hung in fantastic layers between the
walls of Lone Wolf Canyon.

"If it's only the fog that's kept him, he ought to be back in camp
within another hour," he told himself, as the moon broke through a rack
of drifting clouds.

He waited for a while, and then renewed his whistling, sending messages
in the Morse code, which Rube very well understood.

But no answer came; only the repeated echoes of his own shrill whistle.

An hour went by, and yet another hour.

"Rube's wise in his way," Kiddie meditated. "I guess he's having a
sleep up there rather than risk his neck by climbing down that
precipice in the dark. There's no moonlight deep down in the canyon.
Quite right of him to wait until sunrise."

Thus arguing, Kiddie entered the teepee, dropped the door-flap, and
turned into his sleeping-bag.

But he did not