"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 bats whirred past, and once a startled wildcat
scurried across the path and darted up a tree, crying with terror.

"If we only don't meet a bear," thought Roldan, who dared not speak lest
his voice should shake courage and terrors apart.

It was midnight when Adan announced with what emphasis was left in
him,--

"We are lost."

Roldan answered through his teeth: "Yes, but I think I hear the creek.
When we find that, all we have to do is to follow it south."

"My heart is in the South," muttered Adan. "We might follow that."