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.”

Barnett at last acquiesced in the relinquishment of his desire of rescue.  Some losses must needs occur in a great trade, and considering the stress of the weather, the long distances traversed, the dangers of the lonely wildernesses in the territory of savages, the incident would doubtless be leniently overlooked.  And then he bethought himself of the horse,—­a good horse, stout, swift, kindly disposed; a hard fate the animal had encountered,—­abandoned here to starve in these bleak winter woods.  Perhaps he might be lying there at the foot of the cliffs with a broken leg, suffering the immeasurable agonies of a dumb beast, for the lack of a merciful pistol-ball to put him at peace.  Barnett could not resist the mute appeal of his fancy.

Presently he was trudging alone along the icy path.  The flare of the red fire grew dim behind him; the last flicker faded.  The woods were all unillumined, ghastly white, with a hovering gray shadow.  The song of the bivouac fainted in the distance and failed; the echo grew doubtful and dull; and now in absolute silence that somehow set his nerves aquiver he was coming in with the dreary dusk and the driving snow to the old “waste town,” Nilaque Great.