It was equally improbable that Bill Tozer had anything to do with it.

He knew that both of the boys had paper and pencils with them, for he had seen them figuring over some problems they were discussing, and with a thrill of conviction he remembered that the paper they used was of precisely the same pattern as the piece he held in his hand.
"The younker has been here, but what the mischief has become of him ?" and the mystified cowman looked right and left, on the floor and at the roof, as if he suspected the youth was hiding in one of those places.
An explanation suggested itself.

After taking the lad to the cavern, his captor from some cause had changed his mind and transferred him to another place of confinement.
No; there was another theory which would explain the mystery: it was that Motoza, yielding to his implacable enmity of the youth, had placed him beyond all reach of his friends.

The spirit of revenge with an American Indian is tenfold stronger than cupidity.

It was not improbable that the miscreant, having committed the unspeakable crime, was concealing it from Tozer, his ally in the dreadful business.
The work of the cowman was finished for the time.