“But that start that you’re talking about,” reminded Strubell, “has been made hours ago, if it was made at all, and he must now be far to the eastward.”
“He will be on the lookout for us and will strike the trail before going far.”
“I see no reason to believe that; we are not following any trail at all; if we were there would be hope, but the chance of his finding our footprints equals that of picking up a certain blade of grass on the left bank of the Brazos, when no one can direct you within a hundred miles of the spot.”
Herbert was trying to gather hope from the different views of the situation, but it looked as if his friends were determined to prevent anything of the kind.
“If you folks knew Nick Ribsam as well as I,” he sturdily insisted, “you would have a higher opinion of him than you seem to have.”
“Baker and I thought as well of him as you,” said Strubell, “but we are judging him now by what he did this evening; if he had stayed where he ought to have stayed the whole business would have been over.”
“But the Apaches are still near us,” replied Herbert.
“We could manage that; Rickard would let us inside, where we could all be together; Kimmaho might lay siege to us for days or weeks, but he couldn’t harm us, and after a time would grow tired and ride off to more inviting fields.”
“It looks to me,” observed Lattin, who seemed to dislike the general condemnation in which he had joined of a youth of whom they had all become fond, “that the most that can be said about the younker is that he has made the same mistake that one of us was likely to make. He found what he thought was a good chance to give the scamps the slip, and he done it as neatly as anything of the kind was ever done in this world.”
Eph Bozeman had held his peace for some time. Strubell now turned to him and asked his views, adding that they would be followed.