“But I wasn’t through with the bother yet; it took me another long time to find where that fire was burnin’, but I hit it at last. A little faint streak of smoke was climbin’ from behind a ridge, among a growth of pines. I begun creeping forward when I changed my 261 mind. I thought that if one of ’em happened to be on the watch and see me, they would be off afore I could git anywhere near ’em. So I worked round to the other side to come upon ’em from that. Then you see if they took the alarm, they’d have to come back toward you or make another long circuit. Anyway, I was sure of a chance to meet ’em.
“Wal, pards, I don’t want to make a long story of what is a short one. I got round to tother side, but it took me a good while, and it’s hardly an hour ago that I catched my first sight of their camp.”
“What passed between you and them?” asked the captain.
“When I rested my eyes on the little bundle of wood burnin’, there wasn’t a man, woman or horse in sight.”
The listeners were dumbfounded for the moment. After the waste of the greater part of the day, they were no nearer seeing the fugitives than before. In a voice, husky with passion, Captain Dawson exclaimed:
“It will take hard work to convince me that all this was not done on purpose by you.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Vose, showing more anger than at any time since the strange hunt had been begun.
“If you had spent a week trying to fix things so as to help them get away from us, you couldn’t have done any better than your own account shows you to have 262 done. The whole day has been lost and we stand just as near success as we did twenty-four hours ago.”
“You ought to have returned to us as soon as you located them,” added Brush in the effort to soothe the ruffled feelings of the two.
“P’raps I didn’t do the wisest thing,” replied Adams with unexpected meekness; “but I ain’t the first person in the world that has made a mistake. Howsumever, there won’t be any more slips by me.”