“Well, I’m glad they knew how,” spoke Nat. “I thought it was an accident.”
Then Jack told of the shooting of the deer, how they were lost in the bad lands, and how they found the horses and slid down to the camp fire.
Long Gun, in his broken English, explained that the horses which they had were often used by hunters, who thought nothing of sliding down a favorable place in the side of the mountain on the backs of their steeds. Jack’s and Nat’s animals had probably thought that their riders desired to come down that way, as it was the shortest route to camp and supper.
“Well, you certainly had us worried,” said Sam as the two wanderers were seated before the fire, eating a late meal. “We could hear your guns, but the echoes confused us. Long Gun said you’d be all right, but if you hadn’t come pretty soon Bony and I were going after you.”
“Say, what about our deer, that you shot, Jack?” asked Nat a little later. “Can’t we go get it?”
“Not to-night,” replied Jack. “I wouldn’t venture in among those peaks in the dark for ten deer. We’ll get it in the morning.”
“Hu! Mebby none left,” grunted the Indian.
“None left? What do you mean?”
“Plenty things eat um. Bears, rats, foxes, mebby.”
“Well, we’ll have to shoot another, that’s all,” said Jack. “But did you fellows have any luck?”