“Too late indeed,” rejoined Lawrence, with a feeling of bitterness, “nevertheless, we must ride somewhere. Catch our horses, Quashy, and I will wait for you and think.”
Having applied himself to that most difficult process—thinking out a plan with insufficient material for thought—our hero resolved to ride in what he supposed—judging by the position of the sun—was an easterly direction, hoping to strike the trail of the pursuers and fugitives before night.
“You see, Quashy,” he remarked, as they galloped swiftly over the flowering plains, “we are almost sure to find the trail in a short time; for although neither you nor I have had much experience in following trails in the wilderness, we have got some sort of idea—at least I have, from books—of how the thing should be done, and even the most stupid white man could scarcely ride across the track of several hundred horsemen without observing it.”
“Das true, massa. Eben the stoopidist black man am equal to dat. But what if you’s mistook de d’rection, an’ we’s ridin’ west instead ob east?”
“Why then, Quashy, we’d discover our mistake sooner or later by arriving at the Andes,” returned Lawrence, with a bland smile.
“Hi! I don’ mean west,” returned the negro, with a reciprocal grin; “you couldn’t be so mistook as dat—but s’pose you’se go souf by mistake?”
“Why, then the straits of Magellan would bring us up.”
“Ah—well, massa, I dun know whar de straits ob Majillum is, but it would be a comfort to be brought up anywhar, for den you couldn’t go no farder. An’ if we’s on de right track, we’re sure to come to de Atlantic at last, eben if we miss de Injins an’ de sodjers altogidder. Das pleasant to t’ink on—i’n’t it?”
Apparently Lawrence did not think it remarkably pleasant, for he paid no further attention to the remarks of his companion, but proceeded along with a profound, almost stern, gravity, and with his eyes glancing keenly right and left after the most approved manner of the Indian brave or the backwoods scout.
No track or trail, however, of any kind was to be seen. For more than an hour they sped along, down in the flowering hollows, over the grassy waves steering carefully past the riddled townships of the biscachos, now and then diverging a little to avoid some larger shrubs or tangled masses of herbage, sometimes uttering a word of comment on passing objects, and occasionally craning their necks on observing some buzzard or other bird on the horizon, but never drawing rein until they came to a rising ground, from the highest point of which they could have a commanding view of the region all round. Here they pulled up.