Tom waited in the margin of the woods for him to come up, and when he drew nearer saw that his face was pale, and that he carried his arm in a sling, as if he had been wounded. When Tom saw that, he began to grow pale, too.
"Oh, it's all over," said Elam. "Look there."
"What! Is your horse wounded, too?"
"Yes, and was hardly able to move when I rode him into the fort. Say, you told me that soldiers always wanted to see the fair thing done, didn't you? They're a mean set. But I got the start of them. Do you know what became of those two men who were here? Well, the Cheyennes have got them."
"The Cheyennes!" exclaimed Tom.
Elam looked at him and nodded, and got off his horse with difficulty. Tom looked at the long ragged streak in his neck, and did not wonder that he was glad to be rid of his rider.
CHAPTER XIII.
ELAM INTERVIEWS THE MAJOR.
When Elam mounted his horse and set out for the fort that morning, it was with the secret determination to confront Aleck and his companion, or, failing in that, he would push on ahead, and by seeing the colonel or the sutler he would render their attempts at disposing of the furs of no account. He had already borne enough from one of these men to put him pretty well out of patience. Although Elam said nothing about it, Aleck had been at the bottom of three desperate attempts upon his life, as well as of four efforts that had been made to rob him, and Elam thought he couldn't stand it any longer. He rode along just outside of the willows that skirted the foot-hills, so that he could not be picked off by a stray rifle shot, and keeping a close watch of the prairie on all sides of him, and when night came he hadn't seen anything of the robbers. When darkness fell, he allowed his horse to browse around him while he ate some of the lunch that was wrapped up in his blanket, and then put out again. He was satisfied that by this time he had got beyond the men, and now he wanted to get to the fort and put the people there on their guard. Was Elam flustered while he was doing all this? Not a bit of it. He went about his work as he would have tried to compass the death of some wild animal that had escaped him. When the first gray streaks of dawn were seen in the east, he camped in a sheep-herder's dugout, but it was empty. Beyond a doubt the men had gone into the mountains to escape the blizzards. There was a small stack of hay behind the cabin, and to this Elam staked out his horse, and went in and tumbled into an empty bunk. He was within twenty miles of the fort.