considerable distance from the water, so that in case of one of those
sudden rises that sometimes took place, it would not be carried away by
the freshet. The boat was quickly launched, and a few strokes of the
paddle carried the two to the opposite bank of the stream.

"I wonder whether there is any danger of a rise," remarked Fred, as he
carried the rope to a tree twenty feet distant and made it fast to a
limb; "there was a good deal of thunder and lightning last night off to
the east."

"But the creek doesn't come from that way," said the surprised Terry;
"so what is the odds, as me father said he used to ask when the Injins
was on all sides of him, and a panther in the tree he wanted to climb,
and he found himself standing on the head of a rattlesnake."

"The creek winds through every point of the compass, so it doesn't make
much difference, as you say, where it rains, since it is sure to make a
rise; the only question is whether the rain was enough to affect the
creek so that it will trouble us."

"If it was goin' to do that, wouldn't it have done so before this?" was
the natural question of his companion.

"That depends on how far away the rain was."

The boys were not idle while talking. The canoe was soon made fast, and
then they resumed their hunt for the estray. They were not skillful
enough in woodcraft to trace the animal through the forest by the means
that an Indian would have used, but they were hopeful that by taking a
general direction they would soon find her. If she still had the bell
tied around her neck, there was no reason why they should not be
successful.

But while walking forward, Fred Linden asked a question of himself that
he did not repeat aloud.

"Has she been stolen?"

This query was naturally followed by others. It certainly was
unreasonable to think that a cow would leave her companions and
deliberately wander off, at the time she was milked twice daily. She
would speedily suffer such distress that she would come bellowing
homeward for relief. If she really was an estray, she had missed two
milkings--that of the previous night and the morning that succeeded.

It was certain, therefore, that if she was stolen, the thief had
attended to her milking. But who could the thief be? That was the
important question that Fred confessed himself unable to answer.

There had been occasional instances of white men who had stolen horses
from the frontier settlements, but the lad could rec