To desert them, and make for the settlement, he held, would be a faithless and cowardly act.
While they were together Joe Blunt had often talked to him about the route he meant to pursue to the Rocky Mountains, so that, if they had escaped the Indians, he thought there might be some chance of finding them at last.

But, to set against this, there was the probability that they had been taken and carried away in a totally different direction; or they might have taken to the river, as he had done, and gone farther down without his observing them.

Then, again, if they had escaped, they would be sure to return and search the country round for him, so that if he left the spot he might miss them.
"Oh for my dear pup Crusoe!" he exclaimed aloud in this dilemma; but the faithful ear was shut now, and the deep silence that followed his cry was so oppressive that the young hunter sprang forward at a run over the plain, as if to fly from solitude.

He soon became so absorbed, however, in his efforts to find the trail of his companions, that he forgot all other considerations, and ran straight forward for hours together with his eyes eagerly fixed on the ground.

At last he felt so hungry, having tasted no food since supper-time the previous evening, that he halted for the purpose of eating a morsel of maple sugar.