So the pair had started off. Yet, like the automobile searchers, Jeff and Rafe did not expect to run across Tom and Harry and their captors so close to the gully.
For this reason the pair proceeded without very much caution at the outset.
Even now, after Duff and Ashby had sighted them, Moore and Bodson halted twice to light matches and examine the trail that their keen eyes had discovered as moving westward from the gully.
“Now, I reckon we've got the general direction,” muttered Rafe Bodson when, after having once more discovered the tracks he turned and got the general course. “We know the way to head.”
“Then we won't light any more matches,” suggested Jeff. “It might get us into trouble.”
Accordingly they kept on, guiding themselves now by their general knowledge of the country.
Jim Duff and Ashby were well concealed, not only by the sand, but by a little fringe of brush as well.
Hence it is not to be wondered at that Bodson and Moore went forward to be astonished by a sudden movement in the sand, followed by a hail of “Gentlemen, get your hands up, or take your medicine!”
The command came in Jim Duff's tones.
He was barely thirty feet away from the surprised pair, one of his revolvers leveled so to drop Bodson at a touch of the trigger.