Suddenly Cuddy Barnett discovered that one of the pack-horses of his own
especial charge was missing,--a good bay with a load of fine dressed
deerskins to take to Charlestown, then the great mart of all this far
region. A recollection of a sharp curve in the trading-path, running
dangerously near a bluff bank, came abruptly into his mind. Drifts had
lodged in its jagged crevices, and it might well have chanced that here
the animal had lost his footing and slipped out of the steadily trotting
file along the river bank unnoticed in the blinding snow.

This theory seemed eminently plausible to his comrades, but when they
learned that he was of the opinion that the disaster had happened at the
old "waste town," as he had there first missed the animal in the file,
not one would go back with him to search the locality,--not for the
horse, not for the peltry, not even to avert the displeasure of their
employer in Charlestown. Barnett besought their aid for a time, urging
the project of rescue as they all sat around the roaring camp-fire under
the sheltering branches of a cluster of fir trees that, acting as
wind-break, served to fend off in some degree the fury of the storm. The
ruddy flare illumined far shadowy aisles of the snowy wilderness, all
agloom with the early dusk. Despite the falling flakes, they could still
see the picketed pack-horses, now freed from their burdens, huddling
together and holding down their heads to the icy blast as they munched
their forage. The supper of the young pack-men was broiling on the
coals; their faces were florid with the keen wind, their coonskin caps
all crested with snow; and the fringes of their buckskin raiment had
tinkling pendants of icicles; but although they had found good cheer in
a chortling jug, uncorked as the first preliminary of encamping, they
had not yet imbibed sufficient fictitious courage to set at naught their
fears of the old "waste town."