How shall we get horses to leave this
forest? Where shall we sleep to-night? What shall we have for dinner? I
could eat a whole side of venison."

"Well, you won't, my friend. Let me think."

After a time he said: "We must stay here until night. Then we will go
back to the pueblo if we can find the way. As for food, we can have
none to-day. There are no berries at this time of year, and we have
nothing to shoot game with. Other people have gone the day without
food, and we can. When we get back to the pueblo, even if we cannot
reach the larder, we can find the corral without being seen. I don't
believe that the soldiers have found it, and the Indians in charge of
the mustangs will let us have two when they know what has happened.
Now, do not let us talk. It will make us more hungry."

Adan groaned, but accepted the decree of silence. The day wore on to
noon, and in the unbroken stillness the boys ventured out of the grimy
tree and lay at full length on the turf. The great redwoods towered in
endless corridors, their straight columns unbroken by branch or twig
for a hundred and fifty feet. Through the green close arbours above
came an occasional rift of sunshine, but the aisles were full of cold
green light. The boys shivered in their coyote skin coats and drew
close together; they dared not run about to keep warm; they must
husband their strength, and hunger was biting. There was no wind in the
tree-tops, no murmur of creek, only the low hum of the forest, that in
their strained ear-sense grew to a roar. Finally they fell asleep, and
it was dark when Roldan awoke. He shook Adan.

"Come," he said; and his partner, grumbling but acquiescent, got to his
feet and tramped heavily over the soft ground.

They had fled beyond paths, and Roldan could only trust to his locality
sense, which he knew to be good. But more than once they were brought
to halt before a wall of brush, which no man could have penetrated
without an axe. Then they would feel their way along its irregular
bristling side for a mile or more before it thinned sufficiently for
egress. Frequently they heard the deadly rattle, and more than once the
near cry of a panther, but there was nothing to do but push on.
Precautions would have availed them nothing, and there was no refuge
nearer than the pueblo. Sometimes they walked down aisles unchoked by
brush but full of moving shadows, above which sounded the lonely
continuous hooting of the owl. Now and again