Some of the reds took up the chase, and others remained, hewing and hacking the corpses with spite and pitiless malignity.
Ridge collected a few of his immediate followers and hastened after the fugitive gold robber. The whole of the bottomland rang with the yells of the pursuers, the red men delighting in the ruse of Kidd, whom now they believed a foeman worthy of their fiendish ingenuity at the torture stake.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
THE WOMEN'S CAMP.
Filditch and his son, with the other whites, crossed the gorge and proceeded towards the bandits' camp, where some smoke was ascending in a mass.
Men on the frontier are kept in so nearly the same condition by the similitude of their habits, food, exercises, occupations, that when a race for life ensues, the fugitive, with a reasonable start beyond gunshot, is rarely overtaken. In this case, Kidd and his eight or ten companions rather gained than lost by the pursuers being forced, for prudence sake, not to rush on straight, but to circle each large stone and tree stump where the enemy might have halted to fire.
At the end of the canyon Kidd's party were not only well ahead, but they had even halted more than once to breathe freely. Two had fallen and been secured, for the Indians had set up a yell of delight.
"Cheer up!" cried the captain, "We are out of the valley, and the golden tract is only just beyond. The thing is fixed for our satisfaction after all if we only press on pretty stiff."