It happened that they were just then in a region where the woods came down to the banks of the river; and in the open places grew the grass upon which the hobbled horses had fed during the night.
Neither of the boys thought to climb into their saddles while following the marked trail of the missing packhorse; indeed, that would have been next door to an impossibility, with all those traps piled high on the animals' backs. They walked along ahead of the horses, keeping their eyes for the most part on the trail.
"The old sinner, to think that he'd wander all this way from where the others put in the night," Roger remarked, when they had kept on for almost ten minutes.
"Still, he doesn't show up ahead, as far as I can see," Dick observed, "and, if we fail to sight him soon, we'll have to say good-by to Peter, because he's beginning to bear away from the river, and we don't want to spend a whole day looking for a poor old packhorse which we'd soon lose, I reckon, anyway, when we get in the region of the hostile Indians."
He had hardly said this when he threw up his hand.
"Stop a minute, Roger," said Dick, bending down, as though he had made a discovery that aroused his deepest interest.
"What have you found--did Peter break his hobble rope? For I notice you have picked up a piece of it, Dick."
"Look closer, and you will see that it has been cut by something sharp, which I should say must have been a knife," the other went on, hurriedly, yet with conviction in his voice; "and, Roger, we might as well make up our minds that Peter is gone for good, because here are the imprints of moccasins in the soft earth; an Indian must have run across our packhorse, and carried him off!"
"WHAT a shame!" exclaimed Roger, as soon as he could speak.
"Oh! well, it might have been a lot worse," remarked Dick.
"You mean that we didn't care very much for old Peter, after all; is that it, Dick?" demanded the other.
"Yes; and, besides, just think what a mess we would have been in if it had been a party of Indian thieves, and they'd made a clean sweep of _all_ our horses," was the way Dick consoled himself.
Of course his cousin quickly saw things in the same light, as he generally did after Dick had explained his views.