Hadn't the Colonel gone home with the rest of the party?
No, he had not, I returned impatiently, and I wanted to know if any of them had seen him.
They consulted together and finally decided that no one had seen him, and at this the stable boy vouchsafed the information that Red Pepper was still in the barn.
"I thought maybe the Colonel was intending to make me a present of that horse," the landlord observed with a grin, as he joined the group.
A chuckle ran around the circle at this sally.
It was evident that the Colonel did not have a reputation in the county for making presents.
I impatiently gathered up my reins and one of the men remarked:
"I reckon young Gaylord got home in good time.
He was in an almighty hurry when he started. He didn't stop for no farewells."
With numerous interruptions and humorous interpolations, they finally managed to tell me in their exasperatingly slow drawl that Rad had come back to the hotel that afternoon before the rest of the party, had drunk two glasses of brandy, called for his horse, and galloped off without speaking a word to anyone except to swear at the stable boy.
The speaker finished with the assertion that in his opinion Rad Gaylord and Jeff Gaylord were cut out of the same block.
I shifted my seat uneasily.
This information did not tend to throw any light on the question of the Colonel's whereabouts, and I was in no mood just then to listen to any more gossip about Rad.
"I'm not looking for young Gaylord," I said shortly. "I know where he is.
It's the Colonel I'm after.
Neither he nor Cat-Eye Mose have come back, and I'm afraid they're lost in the cave."
The men laughed at this.
People didn't get lost in the cave, they said.
All anyone had to do was to follow the path; and besides, if the Colonel was with Mose he couldn't get lost if he tried.
Mose knew the cave so well that he could find his way around it in the dark.
Colonel Gaylord had probably met some friends in the village and driven home with them.
But I would not be satisfied with an explanation of that sort.
The Colonel, I knew, was not in the habit of abandoning horses in any such casual manner; and even supposing he had gone home with some friends, he would scarcely have taken Mose along.
I dismounted, turned my horse over to the stable boy, and announced that the cave must be searched.
This request was received with some amusement.
The idea of getting out a search party for Cat-Eye Mose struck them as peculiarly ludicrous.
But I insisted, and finally one of the men who was in the habit of acting as guide, took his feet down from the veranda railing with a grunt of disapproval and shambled into the house after some candles and a lantern.
Two or three of the others joined the expedition after a good deal of chaffing at my expense.
We set out for the mouth of the cave by a short cut that led across the fields.
It was quite dark by this time, and as there was no moon our one lantern did not go far toward lighting the path.
We stumbled along over plowed ground and through swampy pastures to the music of croaking frogs and whip-poor-wills.
At first the way was enlivened by humorous suggestions on the part of my companions as to what had become of Colonel Gaylord, but as I did not respond very freely to their bantering, they finally fell silent with only an occasional imprecation as someone stubbed his toe or caught his clothing on a brier.
After a half hour or so of plodding we came to a clear path through the woods and in a few minutes reached the mouth of the cave.
A rough little shanty was built over the entrance.
It was closed by a ramshackle door which a child could have opened without any difficulty; there was at least no danger of the Colonel's having been locked inside.
Lighting our candles, we descended the rough stone staircase into the first great vault, which forms a sort of vestibule to the caverns.
With our hands to our mouths we hallooed several times and then held our breath while we waited for an answer.
The only sound which came out of the stillness was the occasional drip of water or the flap of a bat's wing.
Had the Colonel been lost in any of the winding passages he must have heard us and replied, for the slightest sound is audible in such a cavern, echoing and re-echoing as it does through countless vaulted galleries.
The silence, however, instead of assuring me that he was not there only increased my uneasiness.
What if he had slipped on the wet clay, and having injured himself, was lying unconscious in the darkness?
The men wished to turn back, but I insisted that we go as far as the broken column which lies in a little gallery above Crystal Lake.
That was the place where the coat had been left, and we could at least find out if either the Colonel or Mose had returned for it.
We set out in single file along the damp clay path, the light from our few candles only serving to intensify the blackness around us.
The huge white forms of the stalactites seemed to follow us like ghosts in the gloom; every now and then a bat flapped past our faces, and I wondered with a shiver how anyone could get up courage to go alone into such a hole as that.
"Crystal Lake" is a shallow pool lying in a sort of bowl.
On the farther side the path runs up seven or eight feet above the water along the broken edge of a cliff.
A few steps beyond the pool the path diverges sharply to the left and opens into the little gallery of the broken column.
Just as we were about to ascend the two or three stone steps leading to the incline, the guide in front stopped short, and clutching me by the arm pointed a shaking forefinger toward the pool.
"What's that?" he gasped.