“We’d feel some better, I think,” remarked Donald, as the ranchman fell silent, doubtless thinking of the many things he knew of that were calculated to give him anxiety; “if only we knew that posse was galloping this way as fast as their horses could carry them.”
“I should say we would,” Adrian admitted; “and if it was daytime that might be learned by making use of the field glasses; but now we couldn’t tell until they were right in on top of us.”
“Well, we used to have a way down where I came from, that is as old as the hills,” Donald went on to say. “I remember one time when I was trying it Billie up and declared that he’d read about
the same dodge in one of Cooper’s Leatherstocking stories of the woods in the old times about Revolutionary days. I’ve got a good notion to try the thing right now.”
“No harm done anyhow,” argued Adrian, possibly more than half guessing to what his chum referred.
So what did the Arizona boy do but throw himself flat on his chest, and place his ear on the ground. Yes, it was an old idea, and one that has served its purpose many a time. If you doubt how sound travels faster and stronger along some such good conductor than through the air, the first chance you have, after a train has passed, put your ear to the rail, and you will find that you can hear the click of the wheels passing over the joints long after the train has passed from sight, and when not a sound can be caught otherwise.
After lying thus for a minute or so Donald arose again.
“Not much luck, I reckon?” remarked his chum, for Mr. Comstock had passed on.
“Well, not that you could call by that name,” returned Donald; “you see, the cattle keep up such a trampling around, and making all sorts of noises that it was pretty hard to get anything else. I did think, though, I caught the whinny of a cayuse coming from out there in the black somewhere; because
our hosses are all safe in the stables, you know, and the door locked in the bargain.”