Should this be so, the only way to find them was to search for their back track.
This he had now found and, with a shout of triumph at his own cleverness, Jim forded the river and followed the track of the horses.
This was now clear enough, the horsemen taking no pains whatever to conceal their traces, feeling perfectly confident that any pursuers must now be thrown off the scent.

Jim followed it till sundown, when he had made some thirty miles; and then, withdrawing some little distance from the tracks, he made his fire and camped for the night.
He was now inside the line of the outlying stations, and had approached to the edge of a bit of wild and broken country, which offered so few inducements to settlers that it had been passed by for the better land beyond; although occasionally, when herbage was scarce, the settlers in the neighbourhood drove the animals up to feed among its hills.

The black had no doubt that the gang, of which he was in pursuit, had their haunt somewhere in the heart of this wild and little-known tract.
In the morning he again started and, after travelling several miles, entered a narrow valley with very steep sides, with trees and brushwood growing wherever they could get a foothold.

He now adopted a careless and indifferent carriage and, although he kept a sharp lookout, no one who saw him would have supposed that he had any particular object in view.
Presently he noticed that the tracks turned sharply off from the line he had followed, in the centre of the valley; and entered the trees, which grew thickly here at the foot of the hills.

He made no halt, even for an instant, but walked straight on.