“To my mind we have a hard fight afore us,” went on Andrew Pembly. “The Injuns must know we are after ’em.”
“Perhaps not.”
The way was rough, and more than once the party had to make a détour, to avoid some great fallen monarch of the forest, or get out of the way of some sharp rocks next to impossible to climb over.
The pioneers did not keep very close together, and presently Joe found himself in the company of three others on the side of a little cliff fronting a small gully thick with brushwood and weeds.
Joe had dropped a little behind, and was on the point of starting to catch up when he heard a faint sound in the gully.
“What was that?” was the question he asked himself.
Instantly he thought of but two things, a wild animal or an Indian. The sound must have come from one or the other.
“I’ll have to investigate,” he reasoned.
He would have called to his companions, but they had gone ahead, and were out of sight around the end of the little cliff.
“If I call out loud it may serve as a warning to some enemy,” he thought.