“Right—but—”
“With boots on, you say?” interrupted Hawksley, who had risen unobserved.
“Yes, and large ones too.”
“Then he did not make them, for he left his boots at the house, with his empty saddle-bags.”
“Likely he took moccasins out o’ the bags, so’s to step easy,” suggested Ruel.
“Hark! some one is coming.”
“Two, rather, from the sound. Yes—see; it’s Fenton an’ Morley. Jest in time, boys,” he added, as the two men rode up to the spot. “We want you, with Hawksley here, to take an’ foller up this trail, while Ned an’ I look to t’other ’ne. Grupp the feller alive, mind ye. Whoever he is, he kin tell all what happened here last night. Think you kin foller it, Morley?”
“Ef any man kin, I kin,” quietly replied the little, weasen-featured hunter, throwing his bridle-rein to Fenton.
“If you git him, send up a smoke o’ wet grass. We’ll see it, an’ we’ll do the same if we git sure news fust.”
But little more was said. Hawksley had by this time entirely regained his composure, and, though he firmly believed that his child was dead, he resolved to bear up until he had drank deeply of revenge. He, together with Fenton and Morley, set forward upon the trail, the old hunter tracing it up with the certainty of a blood-hound.