"Boys, she's right!" cried Jack. "We don't want no blood on our hands to start off with, if we can see him punished proper. Shand, you stay here. Lead off, girl!"
Shand shrugged with a sour look, and came down the bank. It was always tacitly understood between him and Jack that young Joe was not to be trusted alone, so he submitted.
The other three started. Bela, making believe to be baffled for a moment, finally led the way up-stream. She went first at the rolling gait the Indians affect. The men were hard put to it to keep up with her over the uneven ground, for the grassy plain, which looked like a billiard-table, was full of bumps.
She kept her eyes on the ground. It was a simple matter for her to follow Sam's tracks in the grass, but the men, though they could see the faint depressions when she pointed them out, could never have found them unaided.
The tracks led them parallel to the general direction of the river, cutting across from point to point of the willows on the outside of each bend. On the horizon ahead was the pine-clad ridge that bounded the lower end of the lake. Jack-Knife Mountain rose over it. The sea of grass was dazzling in the sunlight.
Half an hour's swift walking gave them no glimpse ahead of their quarry.
"Waste too much time talking," said Bela.
"Well, you did the most of it," retorted Joe.
It was evident from the direction of the tracks that Sam was taking care to keep under cover of each point of the willows until he gained the next one. Each point afforded his pursuers a new survey ahead. Not until they had walked another half-hour at that gruelling pace were they in time to see a black spot just about to disappear ahead.
"Down!" cried Bela, and they dropped full length in the grass until it had gone.