"Bloodhounds!" gasped Jack, who had read and heard much of the ferocity and tracking ability of the animals. "They will trace us down and tear us to pieces."
"Hum, you've bin readin' Uncle Tom's Cabin, I reckon," sniffed Pete. "No, they won't tear us to pieces, Jack, but what they will do is to round us up and then set up the almightiest yelling and screeching and baying you ever heard. They'll bring the whole hornet's nest down around our ears."
"What are we to do, Pete?" breathed Jack, completely at a loss in the face of this new peril, which seemed doubly hard to bear, coming as it did when escape had seemed certain.
"Dunno. Just ride ahead, I reckon, that's all we can do, and thank our lucky stars it ain't daylight. If only we was a spell farther into the hills, we might strike water, and that would throw them off."
"How would that confuse them?"
"Well, hounds can't track through water. It kills the scent. I'd give several head of beef critters for a sight of a creek right now."
All this time they had been riding ahead, and although it was pitchy dark they could tell that they were rising. Whether they were on a trail or not, they had no means of knowing. That the ground was rough and stony, though, they knew, for the ponies, sure-footed as they were, stumbled incessantly.
"Good thing none of Ramon's men reached out as far as this, or we'd sure be giving ourselves away every time one of these cayuses shakes a foot," grunted Pete.