Next minute the train of mounted men, with Don Juan and Carlos at its head, passed out of the great gate, and took the road that led out from the valley.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
It was not yet daybreak when the party left the house, but they had not started too early. Carlos knew that they could follow the road so far as the lancers had gone, in the darkness; and it would be light enough by the time they had got to the point where these had turned back.
Five miles below the house of Don Juan the road forked—one, leading southward, was that by which Carlos had returned the evening before; the other, or left fork, led nearly in a direct line towards the Pecos, where there was a ford. The left fork had been that taken by the troopers, as their horse-tracks showed.
It was now day. They could have followed the trail at a gallop, as it was a much-travelled and well-known path. But the eye of the cibolero was not bent upon this plain trail, but upon the ground on each side of it, and this double scrutiny caused him to ride more slowly.
On both sides were cattle-tracks. These were, no doubt, made by the cattle stolen from Don Juan—in all numbering about fifty. The cibolero said they must have passed over the ground two days before. That would correspond with the time when they had been taken.
The trackers soon passed the limits of the valley, and entered the plain through which runs the Pecos. They were about approaching that stream in a direct line, and were still two miles from its banks, when the dog Cibolo, who had been trotting in advance of the party, suddenly turned to the left, and ran on in that direction. The keen eye of Carlos detected a new trail upon which the dog was running, and which parted from the track of the troopers. It ran in a direction due north.
What appeared singular both to Carlos and Don Juan was the fact of Cibolo having taken this new route, as it was not marked by a road or path of any kind, but merely by the footprints of some animals that had lately passed over it!