“Deespair be durned! Thar’s allers a hope while thar’s a bit o’ breth in the body. Keep up yur heart, man! Think o’ how we war ’mong them wagguns. That oughter strengthen yur gizzern. Niver say die till yur dead, and the crowner are holdin’ his ’quest over yur karkidge. Thet’s the doctryne o’ Walt Wilder.”
As if to give illustrative proof of it, he catches hold of his comrade’s sleeve; with a pluck turns him around, and leads him back to the place where they had parted from the mules. These are released from their pickets, then led silently, and in a circuitous direction, towards the base of one of the buttes.
Its sides appear too steep for even a mule to scale them; but a boulder-strewed ravine offers a suitable place for secreting the animals.
There they are left, their lariats affording sufficient length to make them fast to the rocks, while a tapado of the saddle-blankets secures them against binneying.
Having thus disposed of the animals, the two men scramble on up the ravine, reach the summit of the hill, and sit down among the cedar-scrub that crowns it, determined to remain there and await the “development of events.”
Chapter Fifty One.
Approaching the Prey.
Were we gifted with clairvoyance, it might at times spare us much misery, thought at other times it would make it. Perhaps ’tis better we are as we are.