“I know it, Tom,” answered Kit. “But we’ll have to take the risk.”
Alexander Godey interrupted. He had been examining for sign, on down the trail.
“Here,” he called. “I find it! The lame mule, an’ the savages beside him. En avant, camarades! The savages would drive off the mule, an’ Baptiste, he follows.”
Godey had read truly. Where he awaited, in the dusk could be descried, imprinted upon the sandy dust, hoof-marks of a hobbling mule, pointing back down the trail, with the bare soles of Indians on either side of them. Moreover, the hoof-marks of a horse, probably Tabeau’s horse, also were to be descried, pointing in the same direction, but printed upon the others—therefore later.
So they followed the trail. After about an hour of steady, silent riding, a rustle in some bushes was heard.
“S-st!” warned Kit.
They halted, short, and peered, and listened, holding breath. Kit and Godey slipped from their horses, to steal forward, noiseless as shadows. Presently they returned, as silently.
“It’s the mule,” reported Kit. “It’s the lame mule, with an arrow in her side, standing thar, to die. They shot her an’ left her till they’d come back.”
“Anything of Baptiste?” demanded Fitzpatrick.
“We found a wet place—wet an’ sticky—in the brush. Too dark to say jest what it air,” stated Kit, succinctly. “But it, an’ the smoke, taken together, strike me as bad. Don’t believe we can do more till daylight. We mout as well go back to camp.”