"Better so than left to starve in the wilderness," returned the scout; "and they will leave a wider trail. I would wager fifty beaver skins against as many flints, that the Mohicans and I enter their wigwams within the month! Stoop to it, Uncas, and try what you can make of the moccasin; for moccasin it plainly is, and no shoe."The young Mohican bent over the track, and removing the scattered leaves from around the place, he examined it with much of that sort of scrutiny that a money dealer, in these days of pecuniary doubts, would bestow on a suspected due-bill. At length he arose from his knees, satisfied with the result of the examination.
"Well, boy," demanded the attentive scout; "what does it say? Can you make anything of the tell-tale?""Le Renard Subtil!"
"Ha! that rampaging devil again! there will never be an end of his loping till 'killdeer' has said a friendly word to him."Heyward reluctantly admitted the truth of this intelligence, and now expressed rather his hopes than his doubts by saying:
"One moccasin is so much like another, it is probable there is some mistake.""One moccasin like another! you may as well say that one foot is like another; though we all know that some are long, and others short; some broad and others narrow; some with high, and some with low insteps; some intoed, and some out.
One moccasin is no more like another than one book is like another: though they who can read in one are seldom able to tell the marks of the other. Which is all ordered for the best, giving to every man his natural advantages. Let me get down to it, Uncas; neither book nor moccasin is the worse for having two opinions, instead of one." The scout stooped to the task, and instantly added:
"You are right, boy; here is the patch we saw so often in the other chase. And the fellow will drink when he can get an opportunity; your drinking Indian always learns to walk with a wider toe than the natural savage, it being the gift of a drunkard to straddle, whether of white or red skin.
'Tis just the length and breadth, too! look at it, Sagamore;you measured the prints more than once, when we hunted the varmints from Glenn's to the health springs."Chingachgook complied; and after finishing his short examination, he arose, and with a quiet demeanor, he merely pronounced the word:
"Magua!"
"Ay, 'tis a settled thing; here, then, have passed the dark-hair and Magua."
"And not Alice?" demanded Heyward.
"Of her we have not yet seen the signs," returned the scout, looking closely around at the trees, the bushes and the ground. "What have we there? Uncas, bring hither the thing you see dangling from yonder thorn-bush."When the Indian had complied, the scout received the prize, and holding it on high, he laughed in his silent but heartfelt manner.
"'Tis the tooting we'pon of the singer! now we shall have a trail a priest might travel," he said. "Uncas, look for the marks of a shoe that is long enough to uphold six feet two of tottering human flesh. I begin to have some hopes of the fellow, since he has given up squalling to follow some better trade.""At least he has been faithful to his trust," said Heyward.
"And Cora and Alice are not without a friend.""Yes," said Hawkeye, dropping his rifle, and leaning on it with an air of visible contempt, "he will do their singing.
Can he slay a buck for their dinner; journey by the moss on the beeches, or cut the throat of a Huron? If not, the first catbird* he meets is the cleverer of the two. Well, boy, any signs of such a foundation?"* The powers of the American mocking-bird are generally known. But the true mocking-bird is not found so far north as the state of New York, where it has, however, two substitutes of inferior excellence, the catbird, so often named by the scout, and the bird vulgarly called ground-thresher. Either of these last two birds is superior to the nightingale or the lark, though, in general, the American birds are less musical than those of Europe.
"Here is something like the footstep of one who has worn a shoe; can it be that of our friend?""Touch the leaves lightly or you'll disconsart the formation. That! that is the print of a foot, but 'tis the dark-hair's; and small it is, too, for one of such a noble height and grand appearance. The singer would cover it with his heel.""Where! let me look on the footsteps of my child," said Munro, shoving the bushes aside, and bending fondly over the nearly obliterated impression. Though the tread which had left the mark had been light and rapid, it was still plainly visible. The aged soldier examined it with eyes that grew dim as he gazed; nor did he rise from this stooping posture until Heyward saw that he had watered the trace of his daughter's passage with a scalding tear. Willing to divert a distress which threatened each moment to break through the restraint of appearances, by giving the veteran something to do, the young man said to the scout:
