Following this faint trail, they discovered that the Indians had reached the point where now lay the dead horse.
The rest was plain. They had captured the girl and taken her on with them; and, being in a hurry, through fear, perhaps, they had not stopped to scalp the young white man who lay there unconscious, and whom no doubt they thought dead.
“They went with her to the cañon,” was the declaration of Buffalo Bill, when he had spelled this out from the dim writing in the soil of the gully.
They hastened on to the cañon, and soon reached it.
The stream roared and raced before them.
On the opposite side was a high, unscalable wall, showing conclusively that the Indians and their prisoner had not gone that way.
“Gone downstream,” said Buffalo Bill; “and, of course, they went in a canoe, for they couldn’t have done otherwise.”
There was nothing to do now but to retrace their way to where the scouts had sunk the Indian canoe, raise it, and set out down the river, following the blind water trail taken by the Indians and their captive.
The mental state of young Clayton may be imagined while this search was being made, and now when this canoe pursuit was begun. Yet he tried to be hopeful, and he was resolutely courageous.
He crouched in the stern of the canoe, wishing that he had in his own hands the stout ash blade which the scout was wielding so skillfully in the bow. He felt that the speed of the canoe was slow, very slow, though it was going as fast as the nature of the channel warranted.