Larry was laughing again.
“I guess you were the only thing that blew up. But it was that big pine you’re looking at that stopped you. You hit it as square as if you were steering for it. Shake you up much?”
“No; I guess I’m all here yet,” said Purdick, rolling off his tree sled. “But believe me, Larry, that was some ride!”
“Fifty-eight seconds; I timed you by my wrist watch. Did it seem as long as that—or longer?”
Purdick shook his head. “You can’t prove anything by me. After I lost my stick I just shut my eyes and came. Whereabouts are we?”
“Not more than a couple of miles from our camp site and a few hundred feet above the trail—if I’ve kept my reckoning. But let’s be on our way. We are ahead of those rustlers now, and we want to keep ahead. If we move right along, we may not have to do any more sprinting.”
“Here’s hoping,” said little Purdick, stifling a groan as he began once more to swing the vegetable-kingdom legs. “That run on top of the ridge just about put me to sleep from the waist down.”
“You’ll harden up, after we’ve been out a few days,” Larry predicted; and then he set a course diagonally through the forest. In a very short time they came to the thawing zone, first slushy snow and then mud, and springy morass, bad going that slowed them down in spite of all the care they could take in picking their way. But this, too, was left behind in the course of time, and at last they found themselves skirting the canyon on a high bench-like plateau thickly carpeted with the fir needles and densely shaded by the primeval trees.
Here, where their hurrying footsteps made no sound, they could hear the riffle and splash of the stream in the gorge below, and it was Purdick’s quick ear that presently detected other noises—namely, the well-remembered clink of horseshoes upon stone.
“Glory!” he exclaimed, closing up swiftly upon his file leader, “they’re coming! We lost so much time back there in the mud that they’ve overtaken us!”