Up out of the valley, borne upon the buoyant atmosphere, comes the baying of bloodhounds. In echo it reverberates along the façade of the cliff, for a time keeping continuous. Soon after a human voice, quickly followed by a second; these not echoes or repetitions of the same; for one is the coarse guttural cry of a man, the other a scream in the shrill treble of of a woman. The first is the shout of surprise uttered by Chico, the second the shriek of alarm sent forth by Conchita.
With hearts audibly beating, the listeners bend their ears to catch what may come next, both conjecturing the import of the sounds that have already reached them, and this with instinctive correctness. Walt is the first to give speech to his interpretation of it.
“They’re at the shanty now,” he says, in a whisper. “The two houn’s guv tongue on hearin’ ’em approach. That fust shout war from the Injun Cheeko; and the t’other air hern—my gurl’s. Durnation! if they hurt but a he’r o’ her head—Wagh! what’s the use o’ my threetenin’?”
As if seeing his impotence, the hunter suddenly ceases speech, again setting himself to listen. Hamersley, without heeding him, is already in this attitude.
And now out of the valley arise other sounds, not all of them loud. The stream, here and there falling in cataracts, does something to deaden them. Only now and then there is the neigh of a horse, and intermittently the bark of one of the bloodhounds, as if these animals had yielded, but yet remain hostile to the intruders. They hear human voices, too, but no shout following that of Chico, and no scream save the one sent up by Conchita.
There is loud talk, a confusion of speakers, but no report of firearms. This last is tranquillising. A shot at that moment heard by Hamersley would give him more uneasiness than if the gun were aimed at himself.
“Thank God!” he gasps out, after a long spell of listening, “Miranda has made no resistance. He’s seen it would be no use, and has quietly surrendered. I suppose it’s all over now, and they are captives.”
“Wal, better thet than they shed be corpses,” is the consolatory reflection of the hunter. “So long as thar’s breath left in thar bodies we kin hev hope, as I sayed arready. Let’s keep up our hearts by thinkin’ o’ the fix we war in atween the wagguns, an’ arterwards thet scrape in the cave. We kim clar out o’ both in a way we mout call mirakelous, an’ we may yit git them clar in someat the same fashion. ’Slong’s I’ve got my claws roun’ the stock o’ a good gun, wi’ plenty o’ powder and lead, I ain’t a-goin’ to deespar. We’ve both got that, tharfor niver say die!”
The hunter’s quaint speech is encouraging; but for all, it does not hinder him and his comrade from soon after returning to a condition of despondency, if not actual despair.
A feeling which holds possession of them till the rising of the sun, and on till it reaches meridian.