"Stop!" he heard the men call, and heard the clicking of a pistol hammer. Then he reached some brushwood, and, crouching low, continued to move on. No shot came, for the reason that the desperadoes could not locate him with certainty.
At length Joe reached a clump of trees. Had he not had his hands before him he might have run into them head first. He glided around them, and then continued onward, down a slope leading into a broad belt of timber. Still with his hands before him, he advanced through the undergrowth and between the stately trees for a distance of several hundred feet.
He was now exhausted with running and with fighting the entangling vines, and had to halt to catch his breath. As he came to a stop he listened attentively, to learn if the men were following, but the downpour of rain drowned out every other sound.
Soaked to the skin, hatless, and still short of breath, he went on once more, feeling that he was not yet far enough from the cave for safety. He tried to steer a course in the direction of the cave where he had left Darry and the old scout, but whether he was successful or not he could not tell.
A hundred yards further and Joe came to another slope, covered with prairie grass. Down this he rolled in the darkness, to bring up in more brush below. Then he climbed out of the hollow at the opposite side, and, reaching a large fallen tree, sat down to rest and think over his situation. The tree lay partly under one with wide-spreading branches, so the boy was somewhat sheltered from the storm.
It must be confessed that Joe's heart sank within him as he reviewed the situation. Where he was he could not tell, nor could he form any definite plan for rejoining his cousin and old Benson. More than this, he was afraid that the desperadoes might come up at any minute and pounce upon him.
But as the minutes slipped by, and he neither saw nor heard anything of those in pursuit, he grew easier. Evidently they had given up the chase.
"I hope they have," was what he thought. "I never want to get so close to them again. They are a hard crowd, if ever there was one. If I can get to the fort and tell Colonel Fairfield of what I've heard, I'll be doing a good thing."
An hour went by slowly, and then Joe looked around to find some means of making himself comfortable for the balance of the night, knowing it would be useless to pursue his course through the forest in the darkness.
"This is camping out with a vengeance!" he muttered grimly. "Darry ought to be along; I guess he'd soon get enough of it. I'll be lucky if I don't fall in with some savage animal."