“You think, then, that there is a possibility that she may have escaped, after all?”
“Well, there’s the trouble,” returned Lightning Jo, with something of his old familiar look. “When I set to thinking about it, I can’t see any way under heaven by which she could have come out alive, and I s’pose I couldn’t have seen any way how you folks were ever to get out of Dead Man’s Gulch, if I could have knowed how things were there. It is mighty hard, and you feel it, too, if you thought half as much of that little gal as I do.”
Poor Egbert was inexpressibly shocked at this remark, and looked reprovingly at the scout. He made no reply and assumed a thoughtful attitude upon the other side of the small camp-fire; but just then the scout roused up.
“Confound it! what’s the use! I ain’t going to make a fool of myself! This will never do!”
And stretching and yawning, he suddenly raised his voice, and emitted his peculiar yell, that rung among and through the rocks, gorges and ravines with a power that must have carried it a long distance over the prairie.
“What in the name of heaven do you mean by that?” asked the astonished Rodman, suspecting that he was out of his head.
“Some of the poor dogs may have managed to crawl out as did you, and that’ll tell them where to look for me. What do you s’pose I kindled this fire for?”
“To dry your clothes and keep the chill off.”
“Not a bit of it; the night ain’t cold, and there’s nothing in damp clothes that you or I need mind. If it hadn’t been fur these sticks burning, you’d never have found your way here, and it may do the same for others. No, Roddy,” said Jo, in a more natural voice, “we’ve got nothin’ to do but to wait where we are till morning. Then we’ll take our reckoning, and make a search for the gal.”