As though fearful the same fate from which they had so barely rescued the owner of the Double Cross might Overtake them, the horsemen never paused until they were on solid ground.
With careful hands, they loosed the lariats, the cruelly-torn flesh of the ranchman revealing as nothing else could the terrific force of the sucking mudhole, then bound up his wounds in salve and linen which Deadshot took from his saddlebags.
“Reckon we’ll have to find some other way of routing out the Midnight Raider than trying to follow him through the swamp,” exclaimed Bowser, with a feeble attempt at a smile, after a drink of brandy had revived him.
“No doubt about that!” asserted Hawks. “Even if we could run across him, which we probably couldn’t, he would be able to dispose of us very effectually by luring us into one of those hellholes.”
“Then how do you propose to trail him to his lair?” demanded Deadshot.
“That’s up to you and Ki Yi, as leaders, to figure out,” returned the owner of the Star and Moon.
“The only way I can see is to start early in the morning and follow the trail on foot,” suggested Dude.
“And run the additional danger of getting bitten by copperhead and such like deadly snakes,” exclaimed another of his companions, to whom the name of Grouch had been given. “Not for mine, thank you.”
“Isn’t there some one who knows these bottom lands?” asked Hawks. “I should think some of those old Piutes, over by the catacombs, ought to know them. They say the Injuns used them, in olden times, as a prison for their captives.”
“Man dear, but you’ve hit the nail on the head!” ejaculated Deadshot, in delight. “There’s an ornery crittur, part greaser, part Injun and part coon, whom I ran across last summer, they call him ‘Slippery Nig,’ who knows every mudhole and hummock of grass in the swamps.”