“Talk about humbugging anyone—why, it was splendid!”
“But oughtn’t we to go off at right angles now?” said West anxiously, as he turned himself in his saddle and listened.
“Quite time enough to do that when we hear them tearing along in full pursuit, and that will not be to-night.”
“Think not?”
“I feel sure of it, lad! Of course they can’t hatch it out in their thick skulls that their two prisoners were the actors in this little drama: they can’t know till they get back that we have escaped.”
“Of course not.”
“And you may depend upon it that they’ll stand fast for about a quarter of an hour waiting for me to come back, either with my prisoner alive or with his scalp—I mean his rifle, ammunition, and pony.”
“And when they find that you don’t come back?” said West, laughing to himself.
“Then they’ll say that you’ve taken my scalp and gone on home with it: think it is just the fortune of war, and promise themselves that they’ll ride out by daylight to save my body from the Aasvogels and bury it out of sight.”
“And by degrees they will put that and that together,” said West, “and find that they have been thoroughly tricked.”