“If what?” asked Perry.
“The Indians will let us depart.”
“That’s it, sir,” put in John Manning. “What I was saying to the young gentleman this morning. They don’t mean to let us go. We’ve regularly walked into a trap.”
There was silence for a few moments, the colonel frowning, as if resenting the interference of his servant, but directly after he said quietly:
“I’m afraid you are right, John Manning, but we must set our wits against theirs. In another week we shall have quite sufficient of the treasured seed to satisfy me—that is, if you three are more careful—then we must start back, before our stores begin to fail.”
“What about the guides, sir?” said Cyril. “They will not help us.”
“No,” said the colonel. “Not the Indian guides, but I have a little English guide here, upon which we shall have to depend. There must be other passes through the mountains, and we know that our course is due west. We shall have to trust to this.”
He held out a little pocket-compass as he spoke, and then, after they had added somewhat to the store of seed already collected, both boys this time making the proper selection of tree from which to gather the reproductive seeds, they walked slowly back toward the camp.
But not alone: the Indians who had followed them outward, returning slowly behind them, carefully keeping far in the background, and trying to conceal the fact that they were on the watch; but it was only too plain to all that it would require a great deal of ingenuity to escape notice and get a fair start when the time came for making their escape.