All they knew or cared for was that a gully at the opposite end was seen to slope upward, promising a path to the plain above.
In sixty seconds they were in it, toiling onward and upward amidst a chaos of rocks where no horse could follow--loose boulders that looked as if hurled down from the heavens above or belched upward from the bowels of the earth.
The retreat of the fugitives up the ravine, like their dash out of the enclosed corral, was still but a doubtful effort.

Neither of them had full confidence of being able eventually to escape.

It was like the wounded squirrel clutching at the last tiny twig of a tree, however unable to support it.

They were not quite certain that the sloping gorge would give them a path to the upper plain; for Wilder had only a doubtful recollection of what some trapper had told him.

But even if it did, the Indians, expert climbers as they were, would soon be after them, close upon their heels.