"Again I cannot be sure, but I was no great distance from Dornblatt.
Immediately after hearing the dog, I broke a ski. Since that made the
remaining ski useless, I threw both away and plowed through the snow. It
took me much longer to reach the village than it would have had the ski
not broken."
Franz pondered the information. Emil and Hermann Gottschalk could have
gone to the Widow Geiser's only to evict her, and trust Emil to wait
until after all crops were harvested and stored! But that was in the
past. For the present, a man was lost in the storm.
Franz thought over the affair from every angle. It was probable that
Hermann and his father had gone a considerable distance past the Widow
Geiser's before they realized they were lost and turned back. On the
return trip, they had set a reasonably accurate course. Hermann had left
his father an estimated hour before nightfall. Soon after darkness
descended, or approximately within the past forty-five minutes, a
barking dog had guided him to Dornblatt.
However, probably, since leaving his father his rate of travel had been
that of an exhausted youngster. He had also broken a ski, which, by his
own admission, was responsible for more delay. Emil Gottschalk, Franz
decided, was approximately forty-five-minutes' skiing time from
Dornblatt and the proper direction in which to seek him was toward the
Widow Geiser's.
But there were so many other possibilities that entered the picture.
Just how far beyond the Widow Geiser's were Hermann and his father when
they turned back? Or were they beyond her place at all? In such a storm,
with both lost and neither able to see, it would be comparatively easy
to travel up the slope, and, without ever reaching the Widow Geiser's
farm, both Hermann and his father might be sincerely convinced that they
were far past it. Or had they gone down the slope? Or--