“There couldn't be any sartinty about it, and the best we could do was to make a guess. Soot got off his mustang and crawled round on his hands and knees, running his fingers over the ground, and looking down as careful like as me mither used to do with my head when she obsarved me scratching it more industrious than usual. He did n't say much, and arter a time he came back to where his mustang was waitin', and, leanin' agin the beast, looked up in my face, and axed me which party I thought you was in. I said the thray, of course, and that was the rason why they had gone off by themselves.”
“You were right, then, of course.”
“Yes, and when I answered, Soot, he just laughed kind o' soft like, and said that that was the very rason why he did not believe you was with the thray. He remarked that Lone Wolf was a mighty sharp old spalpeen. He knowed that Soot would be coming on his trail, and he divided up his party so as to bother him. Anybody would be apt to think just the same as I did—that the boy would be sent to the Injun town in charge of the little party, while the others went on to hatch up some deviltry. Lone Wolf knowed enough to do that, and he had therefore kept the laddy with the big company, meaning that his old friend, the scout, should go on a fool's errand.
“That's the way Soot rasoned, you see, and that's where he missed it altogether. He wasn't ready for both of us to take the one trail, so it was agreed that we should also divide into two parties—he going after the big company and I after the small one, he figuring out that, by so doing, he would get all the heavy work to do, and I would n't any, and there is where he missed it bad. There wasn't any way that we could fix it so that we could come together again, so the understanding was that each was to go on his own hook, and get back to New Bosting the best way we could, and if there was n't any New Bosting to go to, why, we was to keep on till we reached Fort Severn, which, you know is about fifty miles beyant.
“You understand, I was just as sartin' that I was on your trail as Soot was that he was gainin' on ye; so we both worked our purtiest. I've been studyin' up this trailin' business ever since we struck this side of the Mississippi, and I'd calculated that I'd larned something 'bout such things. I belave I could hang to the tracks of them three horsemen till I cotched up to 'em, and nothing could throw me off; but it was n't long before I begun to get things mixed. The trail bothered me, and at last I was stunned altogether. I begun to think that maybe Soot was right, after all, and the best thing I could do was to turn round and cut for home; but I kept the thing up till I struck a trail that led up into the mountains, which I concluded was made by one of the spalpeens in toting you off on his shoulders. That looked, too, as if the Ingin' settlement was somewhere not far off, and I begun to think ag'in that Soot was wrong and I right. I kept the thing up till night, when I had n't diskivered the first sign, and not only that, but had lost the trail, and gone astray myself.”
“Just as I did,” Fred observed.
“I pushed my mustang ahead,” Mickey continued, “and he seemed to climb like a goat, but there was some places where I had to get off and help him. I struck a spot yesterday where there was the best of water and grass, and the place looked so inviting that I turned him loose, intending to lave him to rist till to-day. While he was there, I thought I might as well be taking observations around there, makin' sartin' to not get out of sight of the hoss, so I shouldn't get lost from him.”
“And is he near by?”
“Not more than a mile away. I was pokin” round like a thaif in a pratie-patch, when I coom onto a small paice of soft airth, where, as sure as the sun shines, I seed your footprint. I knowed it by its smallness, and by the print of them odd-shaped nails in your heel. Well, you see, that just set me wild. I knowed at once that by some hook or crook you had give the spalpeens the slip, and was wandering round kind of lost like mysilf. So I started on the tracks, and followed them, till it got dark, as best I could, though they sometimes led me over the rocks and hard earth, in such a way that I could only guess at 'em. When night came, I was pretty near this spot, but I was puzzled. I could n't tell where to look further, and I was afeared of gettin' off altogether. So I contented mesilf wid shtrayin' here and there, and now and then givin' out the signal that you and me used to toot when we was off on hunts together. When this morning arriv', I struck signs agin, and at last found that your track led toward these bushes, and thinks I to myself, thinks I, you'd crawled in there to take a snooze, and I hove ahead to wake you up, but I was too ambitious for me own good, as was the case when I proposed to Bridget O'Flannigan, and found that she had been already married to Tim McGubbins a twelvemonth, and had a pair of twins to boast of. I own it wasn't a dignified and graceful way of coming down-stairs, but I was down before I made up my mind.”
“Well, Mickey, we are here, and the great thing now is to get out. Can you tell any way?”