Soon as he is within hailing distance, several unable to restrain themselves, call out, inquiring the news.
“Not bad, gentlemen! Rayther good than otherways,” shouts back Oris.
His response lifts a load from their hearts, and in calmer mood they await further information. In a short time the scout presents himself before Colonel Armstrong, around whom the others cluster, all alike eager to hear the report. For they are still under anxiety about the character of the despoilers, having as yet no reason to think them other than Indians. Nor does Tucker’s account contradict this idea; though one thing he has to tell begets a suspicion to the contrary.
Rapidly and briefly as possible the young hunter gives details of what has happened to Dupré’s party, up to the time of his separating from it; first making their minds easy by assuring them it was then safe.
They were delayed a long time in getting upon the trail of the robbers, from these having taken a bye-path leading along the base of the bluff. At length having found the route of their retreat, they followed it over the lower ford, and there saw sign to convince them that the Indians—still supposing them such—had gone on across the bottom, and in all probability up the bluff beyond—thus identifying them with the band which the hunters had seen and tracked down. Indeed no one doubted this, nor could. But, while the scouters were examining the return tracks, they came upon others less intelligible—in short, perplexing. There were the hoof-marks of four horses and a mule—all shod; first seen upon a side trace leading from the main ford road. Striking into and following it for a few hundred yards, they came upon a place where men had encamped and stayed for some time—perhaps slept. The grass bent down showed where their bodies had been astretch. And these men must have been white. Fragments of biscuit, with other débris of eatables, not known to Indians, were evidence of this.
Returning from the abandoned bivouac, with the intention to ride straight back to the Mission, the scouters came upon another side trace leading out on the opposite side of the ford road, and up the river. On this they again saw the tracks of the shod horses and mule; among them the foot-prints of a large dog.
Taking this second trace it conducted them to a glade, with a grand tree, a live-oak, standing in its centre. The sign told of the party having stopped there also. While occupied in examining their traces, and much mystified by them, they picked up an article, which, instead of making matters clearer, tended to mystify them more—a wig! Of all things in the world this in such a place!
Still, not so strange either, seeing it was the counterfeit of an Indian chevelure—the hair long and black, taken from the tail of a horse.
For all, it had never belonged to, or covered, a red man’s skull—since it was that worn by Bosley, and torn from his head when Woodley and Heywood were stripping him for examination.
The scouters, of course, could not know of this; and, while inspecting the queer waif, wondering what it could mean, two others were taken up: one a sprig of cypress, the other an orange blossom; both showing as if but lately plucked, and alike out of place there.