"I followed that cussed trail north, east, south, west and then all over the whole United States, it seemed to me. And it was always growing older, because I had to waste time in dodging chaparrals and things like that that might hold him and his gun. I went picking my way on a roundabout course past thickets of honey mesquite and cactus gardens, over alkali flats and everything else, and the more I fooled about the madder I got. I ain't no real, genuine fool, and I've had some experience at trailing, but I had to confess that I was just a plain, ordinary monkey-on-a-stick when stacked up against a kid that was only about half my age, because suddenly the plainness of the trail disappeared and I was left out on the middle of a burning desert to guess the answer as best I could. I knew what he had done, all right, but that didn't help me a whole lot. Did you ever trail anybody that used padded-leather footpads on his cayuse's feet, and that went on a walk, picking out the hardest ground? No? Well, I have, and it's no cinch. "I got tired of chasing myself back to the same place four times out of five, and I reckons that it wouldn't be very long before he had made his circle and got me in front of him. It ain't no church fair to be hunting a mad devil like him under the best conditions, and it's a whole lot less like one when he gets behind you doing the same thing. I didn't know whether he had swung to the north or south, so I tossed up a coin and cried heads for north--and it was tails. I cut loose at a lope and had been riding for some time when I saw something through an opening in the chaparrals to the east of me, and it moved. I swung my glasses on it, and I'm blamed if it wasn't an Apache war party bound north. They were about a mile to the east of me, and if they kept on going straight ahead they would run across my trail in about three hours, for it gradually worked their way. I ducked right then and there and struck west for a time, turning south again until I hit the Cimarron Trail, which I followed east. Well, as I went around one side of the chaparral six mad Apaches went around the other, and they hit my trail too soon to suit me. I heard a hair-raising yell and lit out in the direction of Chattanooga as hard as I could go, with a hungry chorus a mile behind me.