“I see you don’t understan’ me,” pursues Borlasse in explanation. “It’s easy enough; but we must mount at once, an’ make after him. He won’t so readily find his way acrosst the cut-rock plain. An’ I tell yez, boys, it’s our only chance.”
There are dissenting voices. Some urge the danger of going back that way. They may meet the outraged settlers.
“No fear of them yet,” argues the chief, “but there will be if the nigger meets them. We needn’t go on to the San Saba. If we don’t overtake him ’fore reachin’ the cottonwood, we’ll hev’ to let him slide. Then we can hurry back hyar, an’ go down the creek to the Colorado.”
The course counselled, seeming best, is decided on.
Hastily saddling their horses, and stowing the plunder in a place where it will be safe till their return, they mount, and start off for the upper plain.
Silence again reigns around the deserted camp; no human voice there—no sound, save the calling of the wild turkeys, that cannot awake that ghastly sleeper.
At the same hour, almost the very moment, when Borlasse and his freebooters, ascending from Coyote Creek, set foot on the table plain, a party of mounted men, coming up from the San Saba bottom, strikes it on the opposite edge. It is scarce necessary to say that these are the pursuing settlers. Dupré at their head. Hardly have they struck out into the sterile waste, before getting bewildered, with neither trace nor track to give them a clue to the direction. But they have with them a surer guide than the foot-prints of men, or the hoof-marks of horses—their prisoner Bill Bosley.
To save his life, the wretch told all about his late associates and is now conducting the pursuers to Coyote Creek.
Withal, he is not sure of the way; and halts hesitatingly.
Woodley mistaking his uncertainty for reluctance, puts a pistol to his head, saying:—