“That's the only thing I'm afeerd of,” said the Falin calmly. “But whut I'm tellin' you's our only chance.”
“How do you know he won't hear us going down? Why not leave the horses?”
“We might need the hosses, and hit's mud and sand all the way—you ought to know that.”
Hale did know that; so on they went quietly and hid their horses aside from the road near the place where Hale had fished when he first went to Lonesome Cove. There the Falin disappeared on foot.
“Do you trust him?” asked Hale, turning to Budd, and Budd laughed.
“I reckon you can trust a Falin against a friend of a Tolliver, or t'other way round—any time.” Within half an hour the Falin came back with the news that there were no signs that the fugitive had yet come in.
“No use surrounding the house now,” he said, “he might see one of us first when he comes in an' git away. We'll do that atter daylight.”
And at daylight they saw the fugitive ride out of the woods at the back of the house and boldly around to the front of the house, where he left his horse in the yard and disappeared.
“Now send three men to ketch him if he runs out the back way—quick!” said the Falin. “Hit'll take 'em twenty minutes to git thar through the woods. Soon's they git thar, let one of 'em shoot his pistol off an' that'll be the signal fer us.”
The three men started swiftly, but the pistol shot came before they had gone a hundred yards, for one of the three—a new man and unaccustomed to the use of fire-arms, stumbled over a root while he was seeing that his pistol was in order and let it go off accidentally.