“I wonder if his sleep was disturbed last night,” Said Raymond. “Isn’t he an innocent old sinner?”
“Perhaps he didn’t have anything to do with it,” suggested Sidney.
“Don’t you believe it. If he had been surprised by the commotion, he would have tried to find out what it was.”
“I guess maybe shooting, and perhaps shooting men, too, is so common here that no one notices it.”
“But we haven’t heard any shooting at all,” said Raymond, “except what I did.” “That’s so,” replied Sidney. “Perhaps they were so attracted by the possibilities of my purse that they forgot everything else.”
“They’ll have to make another try for that purse. I suppose that we’ll have to pack some grub now, and that’ll be no fun.” “I guess we’ll have to,” replied Sidney, “if it’s nothing more than bread and cheese. I don’t know whether we’ll find a village very often or not, and we must be prepared to camp out if necessary.”
After breakfast they went out to a bazaar and bought two small leather pouches, in which they placed a little food and the few small articles they had to carry. The pouches they slung over their shoulders with the blanket rolls above. Then they were ready to begin their tramp, and the undertaking, when it was close at hand, seemed so formidable that their courage almost failed them. It was necessary for Sidney to bolster up their declining spirits by declaring again that they would probably not be able to return to Nizhni-Novgorod even if they should wish to do so. So they took the road, or rather the trail, for beyond Timour Kahn Shoura there was no wagon road, but only narrow saddle trails that led up into the high plateaux and ranges of the Caucasus.
That first day their way was through a succession of narrow, wooded ravines that were pleasant rather than difficult. The ascent was gradual and was not difficult at any time, and there was sufficient shade to temper the sun’s rays, which, in those southern valleys, would otherwise have been scorching.
The boys would have covered the ground more effectively if they had not been somewhat nervous as a result of the events of the preceding night. They fully expected that the men who had tried to enter their room at the inn would waylay them somewhere on the road that day. The country through which they passed was ideal for such an enterprise, for there was frequent and abundant shelter for an ambush. They were, therefore, constantly on the qui vive, and examined rather carefully before passing every spot that seemed favorable for an attack from robbers. Such vigilance retarded their speed, and they had a feeling that they were making very little progress. The packs, too, though not really heavy, were burdensome, and toward night made the boys’ legs, which lately had not been used to tramping, drag distressingly.
“I guess those fellows at Timmy got scared last night after all,” remarked Raymond as the day waned and there had been no alarm.