Shaking his hand warningly at the men behind him, the guide moved forward again with long, noiseless strides. Presently he discovered a thin blue cloud of smoke rising above the bushes close in front of him. He looked at it a moment, and then dashed ahead at the top of his speed, his eager companions following at his heels.
A few hasty steps brought them to the little cleared spot in a thicket of evergreens in which Matt Coyle had made his camp. On one side of it was a lean-to with a roof of boughs, and on the other was the fire, with a battered coffee pot simmering and sputtering beside it. Scattered about over the ground were several slices of half-fried bacon, which had been hurriedly dumped from the pan. A few broken plates and dishes that stood on a log close at hand, bore silent testimony to the fact that the squatter’s wife was just getting ready to lay the table, when news was brought to the camp that Mr. Swan and his party were coming. Under the lean-to were some worthless articles in the way of wearing apparel and bed-clothes, but every thing of value had disappeared. There was nothing like a hammerless shot gun or a Winchester rifle to be found.
“The nest is warm, but where are the birds?” exclaimed Mr. Swan’s employer, who had jumped into the clearing with his coat off and his fists doubled up, all ready to carry out his threat of pounding Matt Coyle before he was sent to jail.
“Didn’t I say that they were sharp?” replied the guide. “The birds have took wing.”
“Then take to your heels and catch them,” exclaimed his employer. “Can’t you follow a trail? They can’t have been gone more than five minutes. A hundred dollars to the man that will capture that villain for me.”
“And I will add a hundred to it,” cried the owner of the stolen Winchester.
The guides did not need these extra inducements, for they had more at stake than these two strangers who spent two months out of every twelve in the woods, and the rest of the year in the city, following some lucrative business or profession. The guides’ bread and butter depended upon their exertions, and they were no whit more anxious to effect Matt’s capture now, than they were before the two hundred dollars reward had been offered them. At a word from Mr. Swan they separated and began circling around the lean-to to find the trail; but this did not take up two minutes of their time. They found five trails; and a short examination of them showed that they all led away in different directions.
“That trick is borrowed from the plains Indians,” said Joe, when Mr. Swan announced this fact to his employer. “Whenever the hostiles find themselves hard pressed by the troops, they break up into little bands, and start off toward different points of the compass; but before they separate, they take care to have it understood where they shall come together again.”
“That’s a fact,” assented the owner of the Winchester. “I have been among those copper-colored gentlemen, when I had nothing to depend on except the speed of my pony; but how does it come that you are so well posted? Have you ever hunted on the plains?”
“No, sir; but I have the promise that I shall some day enjoy that pleasure,” answered Joe. “My uncle told me about it. He’s been there often. Now the question in my mind is: Did Matt, before his family scattered like so many quails, appoint a place of meeting? If he did, that’s where we ought to go.”