“I think I see your plan, pard,” said Hickok. “You think it best for us to scout along the rim on either side?”
“Precisely.”
“All right; here goes,” and the Laramie man dashed away along what was then sometimes called a “hog-back,” or long, low ridge of land.
The scout galloped down on his side, and the novel chase was on.
Occasionally the scout or Hickok rode up to the edge of the cañon and peered into it, hoping to catch a glimpse of their pards or the fugitives.
For miles a stern test of the speed of their weary horses was made, but they had not discovered hair or hoof of the four men and four horses they believed were galloping down the course of the dry gorge.
The only time lost was the occasional trip of one or the other to the rim of the gorge to glance along its bed.
At sunset they seemed to have come out on a height of land which fell off rapidly into a beautiful valley.
Tired horses plunged down the receding slopes of the cañon’s sides, and soon Buffalo Bill and his pard sat with the noses of their mounts together.
They had bounded the pathway down which the fugitives and their own pards had fled. And over the green and smiling grazing lands to the southeast of them for miles there was not a moving thing the size of a coyote.