"Back from the tombs," came the cheerful whisper. "Phil, you're the greatest boy that ever was, and you've done a job that the oldest and boldest scout might envy.
"I was a captive,
The Indians had me;
Phil was adaptive,
Now they've lost me.
"I composed that rhyme while I was lying on the death platform up there. I certainly had plenty of time--and now which way did you come, Phil?"
"Under the shelter of the creek bank. The woods run down to it, and it is high enough to hide a man."
"Then that is the way we will go, and we will not linger in the going. Let the Comanches sing and dance if they will. They can enjoy themselves that way, but we can enjoy ourselves more by running down the dark bed of a creek."
They slipped among the wet trees and bushes, and silently lowered themselves down the bank into the sand of the creek bottom. There they took a parting look at the medicine lodge. It showed through a rift in the trees, huge and dark, and on either side of it the two saw faint lights in the village. Above the soft swishing of the rain rose the steady whistling sound from the lodge, which had never been broken for a moment, not even by the escape of the prisoner and the search.
"I was never before so glad to tell a place good-by," whispered Bill Breakstone.
"It's time to go," said Phil. "I'll lead the way, as I've been over it once."
He walked swiftly along the sand, keeping well under cover of the bank, and Bill Breakstone was close behind him. They heard the rain pattering on the surface of the water, and both were wet through and through, but joy thrilled in every vein of the two. Bill Breakstone had escaped death and torture; Phil Bedford, a boy, had rescued him in face of the impossible, and they certainly had full cause for rejoicing.
"How far down the creek bed do you think we ought to go?" asked Breakstone.