Before Otto Relstaub could finish his remark, the crack of two rifles cut short his words. At the same moment the whistling bullets and the war whoops left no doubt of the explanation. Several Pawnees had been prowling along their trail, when the sight of the boys moving away led them to believe they had taken the alarm and were trying to escape. Firing hastily, they broke into a run, with less than a hundred yards separating pursuer and pursued.
"Fly, Otto!" called his companion; "if you can run, now is the time; they're on our heels!"
As the German lad knew the right course, he was obliged to take the lead, while Jack Carleton was behind him. The latter was much the fleeter of foot, and it made him desperate to observe what seemed the sluggish movements of his guide.
"Hurry!" he added, pushing him forward; "they will be on us in a minute and then it's all up!"
"Yaw; I ish doing petter as nefer I couldn't does," replied Otto, who in his excitement dropped back into his crooked words and sentences.
"You ain't half trying, I've seen you do twice as well."
"Yaw; but I dinks—"
The catastrophe came. Like the immortal John Smith, Otto was so busy with his eyes that he had no opportunity to watch where his feet led him. He sprawled forward on his hands and knees, and Jack Carleton narrowly missed going headlong over him. The situation was too critical to laugh, and Otto, thoroughly scared, was up again in an instant, plunging forward with unabated ardor.
The Pawnees lost no time, and the peril was of the most imminent nature. But having regained his feet, Otto dashed forward with the utmost speed he could command, so that the frightened Jack could not find fault with his tardiness.
The leader was following no beaten path or clearly marked trail, but was heading toward a point half way up the ridge, where a mass of rocks rose higher than any others near them, and among which the boy had found a refuge from the storm that drove him thither—a storm which it may be necessary to say, was so local in its character, that Deerfoot and his friends, who were not far off, saw nothing of the elemental disturbance.