“No! What do yuh make of it?”
“Queer thing to do, Sleepy.”
They got back to their feet.
“How’s the tooth?” asked Hashknife.
“Tooth? Oh, yeah. Say, I forgot it. Let’s go.”
They went ahead again, stumbling along while the rain increased, and they began to be very uncomfortable. Added to their discomfort was the knowledge that they had lost all sense of direction. Hashknife knew they were travelling parallel to the river until they were shot at, and from that time on he wasn’t sure of anything.
He felt they had travelled more than a mile, but they found no wagon-road. There were no stars to guide them, and the wind had shifted several times.
“‘We’re lost, the captain shouted,’” declared Sleepy, as they halted against the bank of a washout, where the wind and rain did not strike them so heavily.
“That wind was blowin’ from the north when we started, and we tried to foller the wind,” laughed Hashknife. “Is yore tobacco wet?”
They rolled a smoke and considered things.