“Darn it,” he said, “thar’s my old clout lyin’ down thar on the rocks.”
It was the red kerchief he had plucked from his head to put the pursuers on the wrong track.
“It’s jest where I flinged it,” he continued; “I kin recognise the place. That gully, then, must be the one we didn’t go up.”
Walt spoke the truth. The decoy was still in the place where he had set it. The square of soiled and faded cotton had failed to tempt the cupidity of the savages, who knew that in the waggons they had captured were hundreds of such, clean and new, with far richer spoil besides.
“S’pose we still try that path, Frank. It may lead us to the top arter all. If they’ve bin up it they’ve long ago gone down agin; I kin tell by thar yelpin’ around the waggons. They’ve got holt of our corn afore this; and won’t be so sharp in lookin’ arter us.”
“Agreed,” said Hamersley.
Without further delay the two scrambled out through the aperture, and, creeping along the ledge, once more stood in the hollow of the ravine, at the point of its separation into the forks that had perplexed them in their ascent. Perhaps, after all, they had chosen the right one. At the time of their first flight, had they succeeded in reaching the plain above, they would surely have been seen and pursued; though with superior swiftness of foot they might still have escaped.
Once more they faced upward, by the slope of the ravine yet untried.
On passing it, Walt laid hold of his “clout,” as he called it, and replaced it, turban fashion, on his head.
“I can only weesh,” he said, “I ked as convenient rekiver my rifle; an’, darn me, but I would try, ef it war only thar still. It ain’t, I know. Thet air piece is too precious for a Injun to pass by. It’s gone back to the waggons.”