“Oh, say—­including fog, per’aps?”

“Fog! he’s got an eye ’t can plunk through it like a bullet.”

“Now, boys, honor bright, what’s he giving me?”

“It’s a fact!” they all shouted.  “Go on, Wells-Fargo.”

“Well, sir, you can leave him here, chatting with the boys, and you can slip out and go to any cabin in this camp and open a book—­yes, sir, a dozen of them—­and take the page in your memory, and he’ll start out and go straight to that cabin and open every one of them books at the right page, and call it off, and never make a mistake.”

“He must be the devil!”

“More than one has thought it.  Now I’ll tell you a perfectly wonderful thing that he done.  The other night he—­”

There was a sudden great murmur of sounds outside, the door flew open, and an excited crowd burst in, with the camp’s one white woman in the lead and crying: 

“My child! my child! she’s lost and gone!  For the love of God help me to find Archy Stillman; we’ve hunted everywhere!”

Said the barkeeper: 

“Sit down, sit down, Mrs. Hogan, and don’t worry.  He asked for a bed three hours ago, tuckered out tramping the trails the way he’s always doing, and went up-stairs.  Ham Sandwich, run up and roust him out; he’s in No. 14.”

The youth was soon down-stairs and ready.  He asked Mrs. Hogan for particulars.

“Bless you, dear, there ain’t any; I wish there was.  I put her to sleep at seven in the evening, and when I went in there an hour ago to go to bed myself, she was gone.  I rushed for your cabin, dear, and you wasn’t there, and I’ve hunted for you ever since, at every cabin down the gulch, and now I’ve come up again, and I’m that distracted and scared and heart-broke; but, thanks to God, I’ve found you at last, dear heart, and you’ll find my child.  Come on! come quick!”

“Move right along; I’m with you, madam.  Go to your cabin first.”

The whole company streamed out to join the hunt.  All the southern half of the village was up, a hundred men strong, and waiting outside, a vague dark mass sprinkled with twinkling lanterns.  The mass fell into columns by threes and fours to accommodate itself to the narrow road, and strode briskly along southward in the wake of the leaders.  In a few minutes the Hogan cabin was reached.

“There’s the bunk,” said Mrs. Hogan; “there’s where she was; it’s where I laid her at seven o’clock; but where she is now, God only knows.”

“Hand me a lantern,” said Archy.  He set it on the hard earth floor and knelt by it, pretending to examine the ground closely.  “Here’s her track,” he said, touching the ground here and there and yonder with his finger.  “Do you see?”

Several of the company dropped upon their knees and did their best to see.  One or two thought they discerned something like a track; the others shook their heads and confessed that the smooth hard surface had no marks upon it which their eyes were sharp enough to discover.  One said, “Maybe a child’s foot could make a mark on it, but I don’t see how.”