my great
trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony.
They say an army goes upon its belly, but an old campaigner will tell
you that you can march a soldier till he be too thin to cast a shadow if
only he hath ease of his footgear.

Taking it all in all, it proved a slow business, this looping of the
sunken valley; and when we had worked around to the eastern cliff and to
a meeting point with the old hunter and Richard Jennifer, the sun was
level in our faces and the day was waning.

Coming together again, we made haste to compare notes. There was little
enough to add to the common fund of information, and the mystery of the
lost trail remained a mystery. True, we, the Indian and I, had found a
ravine at the extreme upper end of the valley through which, we thought,
a sure-footed horse might be led at a pinch, up or down; but this ravine
had not been used by the powder train, and apart from it there was no
practicable horse path leading down from the plateau.

As for the hunter and Richard, they had made a discovery which might
stand for what it was worth. At its lower extremity the sunken valley
was separated from the great gorge without only by a ridge which was no
more than a huge dam; and this diking ridge was evidently tunneled by
the stream, since the latter had no visible outlet.

Inasmuch as the most favorable point of espial upon the camp below was
the cliff whence we had first looked down into the sink, we harked back
thither, passing around the lower end of the valley and along the
barrier ridge. Plan we had none as yet, for the preliminary to any
attempt at a rescue must be some better knowledge of the way into and
out of Falconnet's cunningly chosen stronghold. True, we might win in
and out again by the ravine which the chief and I had explored at the
upper end, and Dick was for trying this when the night should give us
the curtain of darkness for a shield. But the old hunter would hold this
forlorn hope in reserve as a last resort.

"Sort it out for yourself, Cap'n Dick," he argued. "Whatsomedever we
make out to do--four on us ag'inst that there whole enduring army o'
their'n--has got to be done on the keen jump, with a toler'ble plain
hoss-road for the skimper-scamper race when it _is_ done. For, looking
it up and down and side to side, we've got to have hosses--some o' their
hosses, at that. I jing! if we could jest make out somehow 'r other to
lay our claws on the beastese