“He could get there on roots and herbs and wild honey, but he’ll have fresh meat every day. Still, I’ll have to try to overtake him. I must go, anyhow.”
And he asked for his horse and went to get ready for the journey. Ten minutes later Hugh and Harry rushed joyously to his room.
“We’re going with you!” they cried, and Dave was greatly pleased. An hour later all were ready, and at the last moment Firefly was led in, saddled and bridled, and with a leading halter around his neck.
“Harry,” said Colonel Dale, “carry your cousin my apologies and give him Firefly on condition that he ride him back some day. Tell him this home is his”—the speaker halted, but went on gravely and firmly—“whenever he pleases.”
“And give him my love,” said Barbara, holding back her tears.
At the river-gate they turned to wave a last good-by and disappeared in the woods. At that hour the boy far over in the wilderness ahead of them had cooked a squirrel that he had shot for his breakfast and was gnawing it to the bones. Soon he rose and at a trot sped on toward his home beyond the Cumberland. And with him, etched with acid on the steel of his brain, sped two images—Barbara’s face as he last saw it and the face of young Dane Grey.
The boy’s tracks were easily to be seen in the sandy road, and from them Dave judged that he must have left long before daylight. And he was travelling rapidly. They too went as fast as they could, but Firefly led badly and delayed them a good deal. Nobody whom they questioned had laid eyes on the boy, and apparently he had been slipping into the bushes to avoid being seen. At sunset Dave knew that they were not far behind him, but when darkness hid the lad’s tracks Dave stopped for the night. Again Erskine had got the start by going on before day, and it was the middle of the forenoon before Dave, missing the tracks for a hundred yards, halted and turned back to where a little stream crossed the road and dismounted leading his horse and scrutinizing the ground.
“Ah,” he said, “just what I expected. He turned off here to make a bee-line for the fort. He’s not far away now.” An hour later he dismounted again and smiled: “We’re pretty close now.”
Meanwhile Harry and Hugh were getting little lessons in woodcraft. Dave pointed out where the lad had broken a twig climbing over a log, where the loose covering of another log had been detached when he leaped to it, and where he had entered the creek, the toe of one moccasin pointing down-stream.
Then Dave laughed aloud: