“Has a troop passed this way?” asked our guide of a cow-herd.
“Surely,” said he, “they will scarce be over the hill by now.”
“Carried they two women in their company?”
He laughed and said no.
“Have not two women been carried this way lately?”
“I’ll be hanged if there was a sign of a woman,” said he.
We looked blank at one another. The fellow seemed to speak true. Yet his story agreed not with that of the dying man.
There was naught but to spur on, and by all means come level with the villain, wherever he was.
As we commenced the steep ascent, we could discern the moving figures of horsemen on the skyline above—as it seemed to us, in two bands, one of which suddenly disappeared on the other side, while the other, numbering some half-dozen men, made southward along the ridge. As we came higher we saw these last still there, moving hurriedly to and fro, as though seeking what they found not. It could hardly be us they looked for, for their faces were set southward, nor was it till we came within a mile of where they stood that they turned and suddenly perceived us. Then they too vanished below the skyline and we lost them.
By the time we reached the ridge top, the first party was clattering far down the plain, raising a cloud of dust at their heels, and, as it seemed, pushing on with all speed to their journey’s end.