It was uncommonly well done on their part, I am bound to admit. I had not given Bates, at any rate, credit for such promptness of action.
Jack’s first impulse was to fulfil their expectations by sending an experimental bullet after them. He half raised his rifle; but on second thought he lowered it again, and turning to us, said:
“Well, after all, I believe that that is the best way out of it. They won’t trouble us any more. We’ll inform the authorities, and if they want to go after them they can do so. I’m sorry for Bates, though; he’ll live to be hanged, I’m afraid.”
“I wish he had escaped before,” said Percy. “Now that he has gone off again with Squeaky there’s no telling what scrape he will be led into next. It is a pity we didn’t tell him we were going to let him escape.”
“I’m sorry too,” Jack responded; “but we acted to the best of our judgment. I don’t think we are to blame. There is one thing:—he may have been so badly scared by the prospect of going to prison that he may conclude to part company with Squeaky at the first opportunity.”
“Do you suppose they will go back to the hiding-place?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” replied Jack. “They will know that we shall give information of the place as soon as we get to town, and that somebody will probably set out at once to recover the horses, when they might be caught like rats in a trap. They are more likely, I think, to get as far away as they can from the place. Come on. Let us jog along. We must get in before sunset, if possible.”
The citizens of Bozeman were accustomed, I suppose, to the sight of rough-looking strangers riding through their streets; and we were rough-looking enough, surely, with our elbows showing through our coat-sleeves and our knees through our trousers, with our hair down below our collars, and our faces so sunburned that Jack and Percy looked like a pair of Mexicans, while I was about the colour of the rising moon. At any rate, nobody took any notice of us as we rode along the main street of the little town to the post-office, and there pulled up.
Jack dismounted and went in, returning in a few minutes with a handful of letters, and we then passed on through the town and encamped upon the stream just outside. There were three or four letters for each of us. Eagerly, and with a bit of a tremour, Percy and I tore open the envelopes, one after the other, glanced at the contents, and simultaneously heaved such a big sigh of satisfaction that Jack looked up.
“All right?” he asked.