Besides this, he still had his gun and his watch. Both these were likely to prove useful.

 

He wondered a little why Ben had not taken the watch. But his wonder diminished when he remembered that Boone had told him one day that he had never owned a watch.

 

"How, then, do you tell time?" Rupert inquired.

 

"By the sun," answered Ben.

 

Rupert had tested him more than once, and found that from long and close observation his guide could always guess within a[Pg 311] few minutes of the correct time. To Ben the watch had no value, and it didn't occur to him that he might raise money on it when he reached the settlements.

 

Rupert felt that he must lose no time in forming some plan of reaching the point from which he started. He went down to the river, faintly hoping that he might see Ben returning in the skiff, but this he owned to himself was extremely improbable.

 

Ben was ten, perhaps fifteen miles on the way back. What his object could have been in playing him such a dastardly trick, or what possible excuse he could make to Giles Packard for returning alone, Rupert could not conjecture³.

 

He took it for granted that Boone would go back to his old home at Red Gulch⁴. He did not dream of his plan of going to New York. If he had, this would have explained his sudden defection.

 

Rupert stood on the shore of the river and looked up the stream. Everything was calm and placid⁵, and lonely. At the East he would have seen houses, on the banks and passing[Pg 312] boats, but here he found himself alone with nature.

 

Without thinking especially what he was doing, he started to walk up stream, that is, along the river bank in an easterly direction.

 

"If I could only come across a boat," he soliloquized, "no matter how poor, I should think it a piece of great luck."

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