“Crazy Snake?” he said, voicing the name in the thought of each.
“That’s our opinion; at any rate, the rascal was a Blackfoot, as the feather and the tracks show. I hardly think he had any warriors with him, or, at most, he must have had only a few, or he would have tried to tackle us and get our scalps.”
Nomad turned his horse about and rode to the grave, where he slid out of his saddle.
They saw him at work vigorously with the spade, as they took up the trail, after getting their horses.
The trail was not difficult to follow, until it entered the rocky hills.
They progressed slowly, however, for they could not be sure that an ambush had not been laid for them.
Hard as the trail was to follow in the hills, they clung to it, finding it the tracks of but one Indian.
After a little while it bent back in a semicircle toward the river, this showing that the redskin had merely run into the hills to get the benefit of their cover, and that his real destination was the river.
They followed on more rapidly, and some distance below, where hills and trees would screen him from sight of any one at the cabin, they found that his trail converged more, and then went straight toward the cañon stream.
Here the trail was so plain in the soft soil that they were able to follow it at rapid speed, and soon came to the river, where they found water on the rocks, and other evidence to show that at this point the Blackfoot had taken to a boat. It was certain he had gone down the river, and not up; for to go up the river would have forced him to pass so near to the cabin that he would have been in danger of discovery, and, besides, the work of pulling against the current would have been no small labor.