"They didn't happen to turn this way," said Elmer; "and since you all kept so still I don't believe they'd have noticed us even if they had looked. I want to say it was well done, boys."
"That was Johnny Spreen, wasn't it?" asked Landy, as though he wanted to have someone corroborate what his own eyes had told him.
"It certainly was," said Lil Artha. "The farmer wouldn't let him come with us, but I guess the Chief just swore them both into his posse, and then they had to come or run up against the law. A sheriff or a police Chief can do that, you understand; no matter whether a man wants to serve or not, he's got to."
"And you all noticed, I reckon," remarked Chatz, "that they were making straight fo' the hide-out where Hen and that man spent the night. That shows Johnny must have figured out after we left him that it would be a good place for hiding. What do you all say about it?"
"Oh! there's no question but what you're correct, old top!" Lil Artha told him in his queer way. "But I'm real tickled because Elmer didn't take a notion to hail the Chief, and take him in on our deal."
Elmer laughed at that.
"It wasn't any 'Hail to the Chief' this time, you see, Lil Artha," he remarked. "We have borne the heat and burden of the day, and it wasn't right that that crowd, coming in at the tail end of the chase, should share alike with us. Besides, you remember we decided we wanted to get at poor Hen before the law could lay a hand on him."
"So we did," muttered Chatz.
"But Elmer," objected Toby, "supposing they get to that place, and find the birds flown, don't you reckon they'll notice that we've been there?"
"So far as the Chief and his men go," returned the other, "I wouldn't believe them capable of finding out anything except that the camp was empty. But all the same I suppose they will know about us."