and began to follow the footprints he had discovered. He passed within ten paces of Ben, whose heart almost stopped beating for the moment, and then moved on toward the rocks.
"He's on my trail, and he'll soon catch up to me," reasoned the young officer. Then he thought of an old trick, frequently used by the Indians and the hunters of the West, as well as by certain wild animals, and walked in a semicircle toward the trail and overlapped it for a dozen steps. This done, he leaped to a near-by rock, and from this to another rock, and then into a tiny stream of water, thus breaking the trail.
Still the young officer was not satisfied, and reaching some more brushwood, he waited impatiently to see what the sharpshooter would do next. It had now begun to rain, but the downpour was not as heavy as he had expected.
Ten minutes passed, and to the young captain the time seemed an age. He knew Gilmore would become alarmed over his absence, and was on the point of returning to the hollow, when he saw the Tagal again, now following the trail back from the rocks.
The sharpshooter reached the point where the trail overlapped itself, and moved on for a hundred feet
