"Right you are, pard," declared Jesse, "And it doesn't look as though we'd get clear," he added. "Duck, boys, duck! Here comes the Injuns! Skirt the edge of the bank!"
Luckily for themselves, none of the outlaws had risen from the brushwood so that their chief's exhortation was unnecessary and, with agility born of desperation, they struck westward along the crest of the gorge.
When they had seen the troopers change their direction and rush madly after the fleeing bandits, the savages had checked their pursuit, all but the five whom Jesse had sent to the Happy Hunting Ground.
No love did they bear for the soldiers and they were not eager to mingle with them, even though they were engaged in the chase of a common foe.
Hurriedly Great Bear had passed the word for silence and, sitting on their ponies like statues, they had advanced at a walk.
Not even the roar of the carbines had induced the chieftain to increase the pace.
But when he saw the forms of the cavalrymen mounting the farther edge of the ravine, he became interested.
"Jess Jame fool um paleface!" he grunted, his eyes twinkling with delight. "Sojers no get Jess. Injun got chance."
If the bandits had, indeed, taken to the plains across the gorge, Great Bear knew that he and his braves were as likely to find them as the troopers. But because he was wise in his generation, the wily old warrior again enjoined his braves to silence that they might surprise the little band had they doubled on their tracks as he more than half suspected.
The shoeless hoofs of their ponies making scarcely no sound because of the thunderous charge of the cavalry on the farther plains, the redskins bore down on the ravine.