“Shunt them off on a side trail, Hugh!” whispered the anxious Billy. “We ought to be crowd enough ourselves to do the business if ever we come up with those three.”
Hugh managed to do this without hurting the feelings of the padrone. It only required a little tact to accomplish the thing. He suggested that the strikers could cover the ground in one district while the scouts carried out their own plans. The padrone understood, because he and his men drifted off again on the hunt, for they spread out like an open fan as they went.
Billy chuckled as though he felt relieved.
“Thank goodness for that!” he observed. “I can breathe easy again. Not but that the padrone means honest, and his men seem to be all right; but their ways ain’t our ways, you know; and, well, I won’t say any more because I want to be fair.”
“What’s happened now, I wonder?” asked Whistling Smith, when they saw that the two in the van had come to a sudden pause.
Hugh turned to the rest of the eager party hovering around.
“Ralph says that right here he can see where the man who had been carrying the child turned and gave his burden into the charge of the fellow wearing the torn shoe” was what he told them, much to their wonder and delight.
“That’s going some,” said the admiring Alec. “Think of him being able to read signs just as easy as we might a page in a book. If any Indian, or that old hunter in Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales, could beat our chum, I’ll eat my hat.”
When the forward movement was resumed they were all feeling more satisfied than ever that it would come out right. Difficulties might, and doubtless would, continue to arise and confront them, but so long as they had such a clever comrade glued to the trail, these must in turn be brushed aside.
Yes, the scent of victory seemed to be in the air for those scouts; it invigorated them beyond measure, and made the labor of that night tramp seem like play.