Shrill, angry calls came through the darkness, and were answered from a dozen different directions. Then, immediately to the right of them there came a muffled thump, followed by the dull sounds of a horse's footfalls.
"Warn't I right?" asked Steve. "Another of the critters thar, and a second 'way to the left. Now's your time, young 'un. Let's git as slippy as we can."
Jack needed no second invitation. He too had heard the sounds on the right and those calls from the wood; and, realizing that, though the distraction had come just at the critical moment, and would call off the attention of the circle of watchers from themselves, yet it indicated probably a full discovery of that struggle which had taken place amongst the trees, and with it a knowledge that the fugitives had fled, he gripped Steve firmly in his arms and swung him up on to the back of the Indian pony; for the well-trained beast had remained beside its fallen master. To sling his rifle and leap up behind the hunter was the work of a moment, and straightway he set the animal in motion. But almost instantly he was faced by another difficulty.
"Where away?" he asked, for the darkness confused him.
"Dead straight ahead fer a while," came the whispered answer; "then slick ter the right, whar our camp lies. Likely as not some of the boys is riding over ter meet us, for they'll have reckoned by this that things aer queer. Gently does it, Carrots. There ain't no use hurryin'."
At a gentle walk, therefore, they rode away from the small collection of trees which had proved their salvation, and at the same time had very nearly seen their ending. When the pony had covered a quarter of a mile, or thereabouts, Jack turned it to the right, and, setting the plucky little beast at a trot, went on into the night.
"They'll follow?" he asked, after a while; for the cries which they had heard for some time had ceased now for the past five minutes. "I suppose they found those two men and then had a palaver, as you call it?"
"Yer kin put it like that. Them critters has had a hard nut to crack, 'cos, don't yer see, the trees and the darkness bothered 'em. Yes, they found them two critters you downed in the wood, and, in course, they made sartin we was still there, in hidin', but shifted from the old quarters. So they sent their best men in ter ferret around, and in a while they found not a soul save their own comrades."
"That is when we heard their cries, I suppose?" said Jack.
"Right agin. That aer when they began ter shriek. That ain't much like Injuns, and jest shows that their dander's been properly up. They sets to, then, to have a palaver, and——Gee! That aer bad!"