CHAPTER XXI
THE SEARCH
The fruitless search was vigorously prosecuted. On Saturday the Hardwick
mill ran short-handed while nearly half its male employees made some
effort to solve the mystery. Parties combed again and again the nearer
mountains. Sunday all the mill operatives were free; and then groups of
women and children added themselves to the men; dinners were taken
along, lending a grotesque suggestion of picnicking to the work, a
suggestion contradicted by the anxious faces, the strained timbre of the
voices that called from group to group. But night brought the amateur
searchers straggling home with nothing to tell. It should have been
significant to any one who knew the mountain people, that information
concerning Gray Stoddard within a week of his disappearance, was
noticeably lacking. Nobody would admit that his had been a familiar
figure on those roads. At the utmost they had "seed him a good deal a
while ago, but he'd sorter quit riding up this-a-way of late." But on no
road could there be found man, woman, or child who had seen Gray
Stoddard riding Friday morning on his roan horse. The whole outlying
district seemed to be in a conspiracy of silence.
In Watauga and in Cottonville itself, clues were found by the police,
followed up and proved worthless. All Gray's Eastern connections were
immediately communicated with by telegraph, in the forlorn hope of
finding some internal clue.
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