Dick shook his head as though he did not believe such a thing could be possible.
“It might happen that way, Roger, but I feel pretty sure we’re well rid of that rascal. Let us keep the one thing before us to find Jasper, and fetch him back to camp again in time to start afresh.”
“There, Benjamin is beckoning to us, Dick; he is ready to start off,” and Roger eagerly obeyed the finger of the guide, for he was anxious to be on the move.
They did not even stop to make a fire and cook anything at noon, but munched some food that had been brought along with them. Roger begrudged even a ten-minute stop, when it was not absolutely necessary.
“We ought to keep on the move as long as daylight lasts,” he declared. “After it gets dark there’ll be plenty of time to rest, and do a little cooking. By then we might possibly be lucky enough to reach their second camping place.”
Time passed on, and constantly the little party pressed ahead. Just as had been hoped, Williams and his companions did not seem to care to hide their trail; though, when the chance offered, they always took a course that gave them an opportunity to walk on hard ground, or even rocks, which actions sprang from the natural caution of frontiersmen.
Slowly the sun sank toward the golden West. The boys surveyed a low-lying bank of somber gray clouds and wondered if the long delayed opening snow-storm of winter might spring from that source. Roger as usual found cause for new anxiety in that possibility.
“If it does come down on us, you see, Dick,” he said, complainingly, “the first thing we’d lose the trail we’re following, and then we’d be in a nice pickle. What could we do if that happened?”
“Just as we did when following the explorers along the Missouri,” he was told. “Use our heads to figure things out and take chances. It has worked with us lots of times, and will again.”