They slipped among the wet trees and bushes, and silently lowered themselves down the bank into the sand of the creek bottom. There they took a parting look at the medicine lodge. It showed through a rift in the trees, huge and dark, and on either side of it the two saw faint lights in the village. Above the soft swishing of the rain rose the steady whistling sound from the lodge, which had never been broken for a moment, not even by the escape of the prisoner and the search. "I was never before so glad to tell a place good-by," whispered Bill Breakstone. "It’s time to go," said Phil. "I’ll lead the way, as I’ve been over it once." He walked swiftly along the sand, keeping well under cover of the bank, and Bill Breakstone was close behind him. They heard the rain pattering on the surface of the water, and both were wet through and through, but joy thrilled in every vein of the two. Bill Breakstone had escaped death and torture; Phil Bedford, a boy, had rescued him in face of the impossible, and they certainly had full cause for rejoicing. "How far down the creek bed do you think we ought to go?" asked Breakstone. "A quarter of a mile anyway," replied Phil, "and then we can cut across the plain and enter the forest." Everything had been so distinct and vivid that he remembered the very place at which he had dropped down into the creek bed, when he approached the medicine lodge, and when he came to it again, he said: "Here we are," springing up at one bound. Breakstone promptly followed him. Then a figure appeared in the dusk immediately in front of Phil, the figure of a tall man, naked save the breech cloth, a great crown of brightly colored feathers upon his head. It was a Comanche warrior, probably the last of those returning from the fruitless search for the captive. The Comanche uttered the whoop of alarm, and Phil, acting solely on impulse, struck madly with the butt of his rifle. But he struck true. The fierce cry was suddenly cut short. The boy, with a shuddering effect, felt something crush beneath his rifle stock. Then he and Bill Breakstone leaped over the fallen body and ran with all their might across the plain toward the woods. "It was well that you hit so quick and hard," breathed Breakstone, "but his single yell has alarmed the warriors. Look back, they are getting ready to pursue." Phil cast one hurried glance over his shoulder. He saw lights twinkling among the Comanche lodges, and then he heard a long, deep, full-throated cry, uttered by perhaps a hundred throats. "Hark to them!" exclaimed Breakstone. "They know the direction from which that cry came, and you and I, Phil, will have to make tracks faster than we ever did before in our lives." "At any rate, we’ve got a good start," said Phil. They ran with all speed toward the woods, but behind them and in other directions they heard presently the beat of hoofs, and both felt a thrill of alarm.