“Oh, we can follow the hoof-prints, all right.”
“While we can see them, but it won’t be more than a couple of hours before it is dark.”
The thought that they were in a fair way to be caught in the woods by night seemed to come to both boys at once, and they glanced at one another apprehensively.
Taking out his watch, Phil looked at it.
“It’s half-past four,” he said. “Suppose we hunt for another half-hour, marking our trail, and then, if we don’t find him, go back?”
“Why not go back now, saddle the ponies, and start out again? We must find the black. We haven’t enough money to buy another horse and, besides, we can travel faster on the ponies.” As this seemed a good suggestion, Phil readily agreed. Making all possible haste, the young homesteaders retraced their steps much faster than they had taken them, being careful to mark the trail by breaking branches and soon were mounted and again on the search.
Returned to the spot whence they had gone back, they separated and rode some hundred feet apart that they might search a broader area.
In silence, save for the creaking of their saddle leathers and the tramp of their mounts, they proceeded until Phil suddenly called:
“I can see a house over here to the right.”
“Didn’t know we had any neighbours so near,” returned his brother as, riding over, he gazed in the direction Phil pointed. “Queer Andy didn’t tell us. Perhaps the black has gone there.”