“Well, we’re nearly out of this end of the mountains now, and there they go off on the level plain,” Frank remarked, pointing with his right hand.
“It’s going to be a stern chase then,” declared his chum.
“Looks like it, Bob; but the one thing I don’t like is that night will be down on us in short order now. We don’t have long twilight in the Southwest, you know. And while there ought to be a pretty fair moon, I notice that clouds are swarming up over yonder, so that in less than half an hour its going to be some dark.”
Bob looked up at the sky, then toward the distant fugitives, and shook his head, as if the situation did not exactly appeal to him.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LONG CHASE
“Frank, you don’t think it’s going to storm, do you?” asked Bob, a little later.
At that the other laughed aloud.
“Oh! I see what’s on your mind, old fellow!” he exclaimed. “You’re thinking of what happened to us when we were lost on Thunder Mountain, and a cloudburst came near catching us in the canyon. But no such danger here, Bob.”
“Well, I’m glad of that, anyhow,” retorted the other; “because I’m not extra fond of storms myself; and down here in this queer country they carry on in a way I’m not used to. But suppose dark comes down on us, as you say it’s bound to do soon, and we’re still a long distance behind those fellows—what then?”
“Mr. Riley will have to decide,” returned Frank, willing that an older head than his should take the lead in such an emergency.