From that time on the boy pretended great fatigue. He insisted on frequent rests, and always lay down panting whenever his captors halted in their clumsy ascent of the slope. The half-breeds regarded the boy with scornful glances at such times, as if expressing contempt for one unable to endure an ordinary journey up a mountainside.
The boy was perfectly willing that they should believe him to be exhausted by his efforts. When, after a few short rests, they dropped their hands away from his arms, he experienced a thrill of hope.
At last his opportunity came. The half-breeds became less watchful as time passed on. They even turned their snaky eyes away from him at times, looking over the valley below and conversing together in a language he could not understand.
Watching his opportunity, when their eyes were directed in another direction, the boy sprang away and ran as nimbly as a mountain goat up the acclivity. The half-breeds were so astonished at the sudden action of the boy; so utterly bewildered by the speed he made, that for a moment they made no effort to stop him.
When at last they sprang after him, threatening to shoot if he did not halt instantly, it was too late. Jimmie passed around a ledge of rock and was soon out of their sight.
The remainder of that race for freedom always came back to the boy’s mind as a bit of nightmare. He ran swiftly along ledges, bounded over boulders, dipped breathlessly into gulches, and clung to precipitous sides with his bare fingers until it seemed that he must drop from sheer exhaustion. At last he came to a canyon wider and deeper than any which he had yet encountered.
He scrambled down the slope, always pursued by fragments of rocks from above, and presently landed a hundred feet below on a shelf which seemed to promise temporary safety. Panting and trembling from the exertion, came in every limb, he listened for sounds of pursuit but none came to his ears.
Sitting on the narrow ledge, his back against an almost vertical wall, he realized that he had climbed to a great distance, for he shivered in his warm clothing and the sharp sting of frosty air was in his nostrils. Without knowing it, he had actually entered the region of snow.
After a time composure came back with his breath, and he began looking around in the hope of finding some way out which did not lead in the direction his pursuers were probably taking. Then his attention was attracted to the shelf upon which he sat.
It seemed to him that at some time in the distant past crude steps had been cut in the ledge and along the wall leading into the gorge below. Melting snows and the storms of many winters had, in a measure, obliterated the sharp outlines of the treads, but still the boy saw the work of man in the arrangement.