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.

To cut a long tale short, our efforts proved of no avail. One after
another the search parties returned--the last one arriving an hour
before noon--and all had the same story to tell. The ground had been
carefully gone over within a radius of several miles from camp, but
Captain Rudstone had disappeared without leaving a trace behind him.
That Arnold's theory was correct--that the unfortunate man lay dead
under one of the mighty drifts that had formed while the storm raged in
the night--we all believed. That he could have vo