For supper they ate bacon, and crackers dipped in water and fried in the bacon grease. Then they sat looking into their tiny camp fire and took up their planning and assurances once again.
The stars came out, then the moon. All about them the forest was mysteriously silent, save for the occasional low roar of a bull bat swooping down upon some luckless insect, or the distant questioning of an owl.
“To-morrow at noon,” breathed Manzanita, “everything will be cleared up. Then out we’ll go to dear old Pa Squawtooth and tell him everything. And then——”
“Then there’s going to be a wedding,” said the man called Tom.
From close at hand came a fiendish laugh—ribald, mocking, insane.
“Only a coyote,” said Manzanita. “But wasn’t it funny that he laughed just when you said that. Do you believe in omens, Tom? Don’t ever, ever again become implicated in highway robbery unless you have a safety razor in your pocket, Tom!”
CHAPTER XXI
THE SIGNAL
A WEARY party of horsemen rode from the mountains toward Squawtooth about eleven o’clock the following morning. Squawtooth Canby, a despairing man, rode in the lead, with his son Martin at his side.
The dogs had failed to arrive because of the storm, and doubtless would have proved useless anyway. Because of the storm, too, the Indian trailers had failed; for the wind had scattered pine needles and leaves and flattened dry grass until the slightest evidences of the fugitives’ flight had been obliterated. The missing pinto mare and the roan colt, together with their saddles and bridles, were all that the search party had found.
“Ain’t that there a machine, son?” asked Squawtooth, pointing ahead as they neared the ranch.