to a clearing in a heavily-wooded section at the back of his property.
“I’m sure this is the right place,” he insisted in response to a comment that they might be in the wrong part of the woods. “Look, you can see the fresh cuts on the stumps, and there’s the pile of logs we were going to haul out. Besides, do you think I don’t know my own land? He was here, and now he’s gone.”
The searchers fanned out from the body-less clearing, two by two, calling Nathan’s name as they went. Some of the men had brought their dogs, which barked and yapped crazily as they tore off through the underbrush, far more likely to run down a rabbit than anything else, Lewis figured. He hoped that if they did find Nathan Elliott, the dogs wouldn’t tear him to pieces before their masters were able to call them off.
Lewis was teamed with Martin Carr, a young lad of fourteen or so, and was grateful for the boy’s sharp eyes. His own eyesight had once been keen, but he knew that it was beginning to fail, and he found that he had to squint to see anything at a distance. Betsy had been urging him to get spectacles, but he resisted. He had to admit that there was a certain amount of vanity in this resistance; he didn’t like the notion that he was growing old and felt disinclined to advertise his creeping infirmities to the world.
He and Martin set off in a northwesterly direction, sweeping back and forth in a zigzagging motion, checking under bushes and in thickets.
“Look over there.” Martin pointed off to his right. “The grass has all been flattened down.”
Lewis squinted, but could see nothing. He walked over to where Martin had pointed. The boy was right, there had been something there, but it was almost certainly the trampling of deer as they made their slow autumn move into deeper woods. They followed the trail that led from this, and at intervals they found coyote scat and mounds of rabbit pellets scattered amongst the fallen leaves. It was obviously a well-worn thoroughfare for animals, but there was nothing to indicate the recent passage of a man.
The trail led them into buckthorn and spindly poplar. In places there were gulleys and swampy areas, where they had to pick their way around, the footing too unsure to risk climbing through.
“If he came through here, he’d be pretty scratched up,” Martin said. “There isn’t much of a path.”
Martin was in front, trying as much as he could to shoulder the hard work of breaking trail, but mostly managing to let go the branches at just the wrong moment so that they snapped back into Lewis’s face. Lewis was certain that Nathan could not have come this way. Even if he had regained consciousness and wandered off in some sort of dazed delirium, he would scarcely have been in any condition to battle his way through these thorns and brambles. Lewis’s hands were badly scratched after only a few minutes in the scrubby growth.
Finally, they reached a line of thick dogwood that stretched in both directions. Martin bulled his way through the dense bushes and Lewis followed his trampled path. Beyond the dogwood was a stream.
“If he did come through here, surely he would’ve followed the crick along,” Martin said. “There’s only a little water in it and it would be easier than walking through the bush. Which way do you figure we should go?”
It was not a wide stream, more, as Martin said, a creek, whose course dried in the heat of summer and at other times of the year flowed only strongly enough to prevent the dogwood from gaining hold. It could well peter out to nothing; if not, it would almost certainly flow into West Lake. If Nathan had followed it south, Lewis figured he would have soon reached the main road between Wellington and Bloomfield. He would have been able to find his way to a house easily enough from there.
If he had somehow crossed the road without being seen, he would then have been halted by the open water of the lake. It was true that at one end of this lake there was a vast reedy marsh, and if Nathan had wandered into this wild area and fallen, his body would probably never be found. But the marsh was well to the east. It was a possibility, but not very probable.
Lewis wasn’t sure how far the creek ran in the opposite direction, but if they followed it north he knew they would reach the road that divided the lakeshore lots from the farms on the next concession. There were pockets of woods on all these lots, but none of them were large, not big enough to swallow up a man. The inland concession was more sparsely settled, the farmhouses farther apart; even so, someone would surely have noticed Nate Elliott if he had wandered through the trees and come out on the road.
Better to look in the thickest part of the woods, he decided, and so they headed south.
There were no signs along the creek. Occasionally, they would climb the bank and cast about in the surrounding bush for any sort of trail, broken branches, or trampled grass. They found nothing.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Lewis said. They had followed the stream to where its course had been diverted to empty into a small pond behind the Elliott barn. “The sun will be setting soon. We’d better rejoin the others and see if they’ve had any better luck.”
They hadn’t. Most of the other searchers had returned to the clearing by that time, as well, but not even Lem Jackson, who was the best tracker in the district, had been able to pick up a trail.
“Looks like a horse came through here and headed off north,” he said. “But we hit that ridge of hard rock that juts up and I couldn’t make out where it went from there. There’s no tellin’ how long ago it was either.”
“Well, we’d best leave it for today,” Constable Williams said. “If we can’t find a man in broad daylight, our chances will be next to nothing in the pitch black.”
It was the right decision, but a difficult one. The risk of one of the searchers being injured by a misstep or losing his way in the dark was great and no one wanted to lose another man in pursuit of the first. But the cold north wind promised another heavy frost that night and they all knew that if Nate Elliott was still alive, he probably wouldn’t be by morning. Lewis could sense the spirits of the crowd plummeting, and they muttered as they began to shuffle down the path that led home.
Lewis glanced at the brother of the missing man to see how he was taking the news. Reuben’s features were crumpled into a mask of despair. “We can’t leave him out here another night!” he cried.
“I’m sorry, Reuben, but we can’t risk it,” the constable told him solemnly.
“But what am I going to tell my father? Nate has only just come back again after all these years and now he’s gone again. Pa’s going to want to know why we’re not out looking for him.”
The others edged away, uncertain how to react. It was Lewis who hurried his pace to fall into step beside Reuben. His years as a minister had given him experience in offering comfort where hope was scarce.
“Perhaps he’s found shelter somewhere,” he suggested as they walked. “It’s possible that he came to while you were gone and wandered off in a stupor. He may have stumbled upon an old cabin somewhere and decided to hole up until he felt strong enough to walk out. Or maybe he drifted into someone’s farmyard and they’re looking after him even as we speak. For all we know, we could hear he’s been found when we get back to the village.”
Reuben was unconvinced. “I know he’s gone, I just know it,” he kept saying, his voice hoarse from a day of shouting his brother’s name. “Wolves got him, or a bear maybe.”
It had been many years since the bigger beasts like wolves or bears ran thick in the settled Prince Edward District. Lewis couldn’t
