At length, with an indistinct perception of inability to sustain himself erect, and a belief he would feel better in a recumbent attitude, he gropes his way back to the glade, where, staggering about for a while, he at length settles down, dead drunk. In ten seconds he is asleep, in slumber so profound, that a cannon shot—even the voice of Simeon Woodley—would scarce awake him.
Chapter Sixty Eight.
“Brasfort.”
“Brasfort has caught scent!”
The speech comes from one of two men making their way through a wood, the same across which Richard Darke has just retreated. But they are not retreating as he; on the contrary pursuing, himself the object of their pursuit. For they two men are Charles Clancy, and Jupiter.
They are mounted, Clancy on his horse—a splendid animal—the mulatto astride the mule.
The hound is with them, not now trotting idly after, but in front, with nose to the earth. They are on Darke’s trail. The animal has just struck, and is following it, though not fast. For a strap around its neck, with a cord attached, and held in Clancy’s hand, keeps it in check, while another buckled about its jaws hinders it from giving tongue. Both precautions show Clancy’s determination to take pains with the game he is pursuing, and not again give it a chance to get away. Twice has his mother’s murderer escaped him. It will not be so a third time.
They are trailing in darkness, else he would not need assistance from the dog. For it is only a short while since his separation from the party that went on to the Mission. Soon as getting into their saddles, Clancy and his faithful follower struck into the timber, at the point where Darke was seen to enter, and they are now fairly on his tracks. In the obscurity they cannot see them; but the behaviour of the hound tells they are there.