CHAPTER VII.
OLD BLAZE IN A TIGHT PLACE.
“Durn the bushes!”
It was Old Blaze who spoke. He was slowly working his way through a thicket, in pitchy darkness, and at every step he either stumbled against a stone, or was brushed in the face by the limbs of the scraggy saplings that abounded in the place.
“Durn the bushes! ’Pears like I won’t never git nowhar to-night. The dark comes down in chunks, and e’en a’most smothers me, and these hyar bushes are the peskiest things I ever lit into.”
Thus muttering and grumbling, the hunter pushed on, until he was fairly out of the thicket.
“I reckon it’s all plain sailin’ now,” said he. “But it’s darker out in the open than ’twas in thar, or this ole hoss has gone clean blind. Hello! what’s this?”
“This” was a perpendicular wall of rock, against which he had walked in the darkness.
“I ’lowed it was a thicker chunk of dark than or’nary,” he muttered, “that had come along and struck me; but it seems to be solid rock. Wonder, now, ef this hyar ain’t the very place whar Silverspur tumbled over and nearly killed hisself. I wish I’d let the boy come on this chase, as he wanted to, ’stead of leavin’ him up thar in the hills; but I shouldn’t wonder ef he gits the wind of the game afore I do, arter all. Wal, this rock cain’t be stepped over, and I reckon I’d best camp right hyar and wait till mornin’.”
Without further ceremony, he laid down at the foot of the cliff, and was soon sound asleep.