Of course, this did not mean rapid riding, but it did mean a deadly and persistent pursuit. It meant a bloody revenge for slain warriors.
One brave was now sent back after the squad of watchers, but Great Bear's force was a very strong one without them. Yet other braves were riding fast and far in the advance.
Sooner or later it was sure that such a following, by trailers so skilful and so determined, would bring them near enough for a sweeping blow. What could half a dozen rangers and one Lipan boy do against the overwhelming rush of a hundred and fifty warriors?
Red Wolf did not actually come back to his white friends. He only rode near enough to whoop to them and to wave his lance, as if inviting them to follow.
"That's high!" exclaimed Jim Cheyne. "We might ha' hunted for water all night if it hadn't been for him."
"It takes an Indian sometimes," replied the colonel. "But this crowd won't make a long camp on this prairie."
"You bet!" came from several voices at once, and away they rode after the young Lipan.
It was a very pretty place for a camp, when they came to look at it. Nearly an acre of ground was occupied by tall, old sycamores and spreading oaks, and outside of these were bushes. In the middle of all was a fine spring, from which a tiny brooklet rippled out into the plain. Close around the spring the ground had been trodden hard by the hoofs of many generations of buffalo and deer, but there was plenty of grass without picketing their horses outside of the grove.
"Boys," said Bowie, "if Great Bear should find us, he'll have braves enough to corral us in such a place as this. They could just ride around and around, out of shot, and pen us in till we starved."
"That's so," put in a short, bandy-legged ranger whom the others had called "Joe," without troubling themselves to add any other name; "but I reckon we won't wait to be penned in. What I'm a-thinkin' of jest now is bufler hump."
He had the entire sympathy of his hungry comrades, and they did not have to wait long. The fire was hardly up in good shape before the two hunters rode in, bringing the best pieces of a fine "bufler."
"Now we're all right for rations," said Jim Cheyne; "but I'd like to know what's went with that young Lipan wolf."