"No telling how long he had to lie still while the pack yelped about his hiding-place; that he came this way means only one thing. And that is that our luck is with us, and we're headed as straight as he is toward his prospect hole. Ready? Let's follow him!" She jumped up. But before they started they gathered up, to the last small bit, what was left of their fish; Deveril made the small bundle, fish enwrapped in leaves, with a handkerchief about the whole. "If he should hear us?" she whispered. "If he should lie in waiting and see us?" He chuckled. "In any case, we'll have it on him! He can't know that we're on the run, too; he got away too fast for that. And even if he should know, what would he do about it? He has no love for Taggart, anyway; and he has no wish to get himself into the hands of that mob that he has just ducked away from, like a rabbit dodging a pack of hounds. If he catches us ... why, then, we catch him at the same time! Come on." Thus began the second lap of their journey; thus they, fleeing, followed like shadows upon the traces of one who fled. For Mexicali Joe would obviously keep to the bed of the cañon; if he forsook it in order to climb up either slope to a ridge above, he must of necessity pass through the more sparsely timbered spaces, where he would run constantly into danger of being seen. The only danger to their plans lay with the possibility that he might overhear sounds of their following and might draw a little to one side and hide in some dense copse, and so let them go by. But they had the advantage from the beginning; they knew he was ahead, and he did not know that they followed; so long as they, listening always, did not hear him ahead, there was little danger of him hearing them coming after him. With all the noise of the water, tumbling over falls and splashing along over rocks, singing cheerily to itself at every step, there was small likelihood of any one of the three cautious footfalls being heard....