“That’s powerful hard to tell, but it can’t be much less than a mile, and that’s a good ways in such a hilly country as this. Yer can’t git over it faster than yer kin run.”
“But ye know the way thar, as I understand ye to remark?”
The scout signified that he would have no more trouble in reaching it then in making his way across a room. They decided, though, that the best thing they could do was to wait where they were until daylight, and then take up the hunt. They remained talking and smoking for an hour or two longer, neither closing their eyes in slumber, although the occasion was improved to its utmost by their animals. The scout was capable of losing a couple of nights’ rest without being materially effected thereby, while Mickey’s experience almost enabled him to do the same.
As soon as it was fairly light the two were on the move, Sut leading the course in the direction of the spot where they had left Fred Munson the day before, and which he had vacated very suddenly. They were picking their way along as best they could, when they struck a small stream, when the scout paused so suddenly that his comrade inquired the cause.
“That’s quar, powerful quar,” he said looking down at the ground and speaking as if to himself.
“One horse has been ’long har, and I think it war mine, and that he had that younker on his back.”
“Which way was the young spalpeen traveling?”
The scout indicated the course, and then added, in an excited undertone:
“It looks to me as if he got scared out and had to leave, and it ain’t no ways likely that anything would have scared him short of Injuns—so it’s time we j’ined him.”
The Irishman was decidedly of the same opinion, and the trail was at once taken.