FOR half an hour the fugitives raced on, every muscle straining in a mad effort to outdistance their pitiless pursuers. Their feet seemed shod with lead as they turned and twisted among the boulders; their breath came and went in great, panting gasps that shook their bodies, yet for all their frenzied endeavours, their relentless enemies drew nearer. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the wolfish creatures gained upon them.
Then, in the grim wall of cliffs upon their left, appeared the dark mouth of a canyon.
“Quick!” gasped the Yankee; “in here with you!”
Like a flash the fugitives turned, and—with what was almost their last effort—plunged into the great cleft that split the range of hills in twain. Six yards from the entrance they swung round and stood at bay, Seymour and the millionaire fingering the triggers of their rifles.
Some time passed, but there came no sign of their pursuers; even their howls had ceased, and the three grew puzzled to account for the strange silence. It was not natural! They knew the character of the wolf-men too well by this time to think for a moment that they had given up the pursuit—had abandoned the chase! What could be the meaning of their sudden silence?
“They’ve got some devil’s card up their sleeve,” Silas muttered. “I guess they ain’t gone dumb all of a sudden for nothing. Say, there’d be no harm in prospecting a bit further along this gully? If there’s no back entrance, we’ll be in a darned awkward position.”
“You’re right,” assented the baronet. “Mervyn, if you’re in want of a feed, you can peck a bit as we go along.”
Cautiously they crept along the canyon, pausing occasionally to listen for any sound of their foes. But the underworld might have been deserted for all they could hear. Never had the silence been more profound.
The cliffs on either side rose steep and inaccessible as the wall of a house. Not a crevice or foothold of any description presented itself in the face of the towering walls. As straight were they as though the hills had been split asunder by the stroke of some giant sword. Here and there, at the base of the cliffs, grew a solitary fungus or a cluster of puff-balls, the weird, bloated forms of these latter betraying nothing of their terrible explosive power.
For an hour, perhaps, the three men moved forward, plunging deeper and deeper into the heart of the hills, and still there came no sound from the wolf-men. They had almost begun to believe—incredible though it seemed—that they had shaken off their pursuers. What else could be the meaning of their inaction?