“All right, we’ll be quiet now.”
“Ay, do, my lads. Get a good sleep, and have a nap or two to-morrow, for we shall be travelling all night.”
There was silence for the rest of the time in the little camp, broken only by a weary sigh or two, for no sleep came to the restless lads; and the next morning found them red-eyed and feverish in spite of the bathe they had in the intensely cold water of the neighbouring mountain rill.
And all that day they were on the strain, and constantly on the watch for the colonel, hoping that he would become communicative. But he was very quiet, and spent the greater part of the day either sleeping or pretending, and lounging about watching the Indians busy cutting down trees, or peeling the boughs and twigs.
John Manning, too, looked wonderfully lazy, and avoided the boys, who at last began to look at each other in despair.
“I can’t make it out,” said Perry at last. “We are not going to-night, or father would have said something—don’t you think so?”
“Don’t know.”
“But you don’t think we can be going?”
“I think we are,” replied Cyril, “and they are doing all this to throw the Indians off their guard.”
Dinner-time came, for which meal John Manning had prepared a very satisfactory dish from some charqui flavoured with fruit and vegetables, and the boys anxiously waited again for some communication from the colonel. But he was still reticent, and after the meal was over, Diego and his companion were summoned and left to clear the tin bowl which did duty as a dish, a duty they always carried out to perfection, never leaving it so long as there was a scrap to finish.