Chagrined to think they had both showed such a lamentable lack of ordinary woodcraft, the cowboys looked at one another.
“By thunder! we are a pretty pair!” exclaimed Deadshot. “Here we’d clean forgotten there was any other way to get out of this death hole. Say, Nig, it’s a mighty good thing we’ve got you to help us or, if we didn’t show any more common sense than we have so far. Scalping Louie could raid all the ranches within a hundred miles while we sat round somewhere, thinking we’d got him cornered.”
“That’s no dream,” assented the man from the Star and Moon outfit. “If we ever do get the cuss, the credit’ll probably belong to Nig.”
All the while the cowpunchers were berating themselves for their forgetting the other trails leading into the bottoms, they were riding toward the West, and it was not long before they found, to their delight, that the going was easier than along the track by which they had entered.
“How much out of our way is this going to take us?” inquired Ki Yi, after they had proceeded for an hour or so.
“By turning to South, ’fore long, no make much more than twenty mile.”
“How near will that bring us to where the cattle were driven in?” he asked, continuing his questions.
“Mebbe ten, mebbe twelve mile South.”
“Well, I suppose you know what you’re talking about. But I can’t see how you figure that out,” declared Deadshot. “Here you say our having to go back and round will take us twenty miles out of the way and yet we’ll bring up in about ten from where we started.”
“Uhuh. Go West. Go South. Go North. Swamp not all burned. Nig know trail save um going clear out.”