“See,” said Susquesus, stooping so low as to place a finger on the dead leaves that ever make a sort of carpet to the forest, “here been moccasin—that heel; this toe.”
Aided, in this manner, I could discover a faint foot-print, which might, by aid of the imagination, be thus read; though the very slight impression that was to be traced, might almost as well be supposed anything else, as it seemed to me.
“I see what you mean, Susquesus; and, I allow, it may be a foot-print,” I answered; “but then it may also have been left by anything else, which has touched the ground just at that spot. It may have been made by a falling branch of a tree.”
“Where branch?” asked the Indian, quick as lightning.
“Sure enough; that is more than I can tell you. But I cannot suppose that a Huron foot-print, without more evidence than you now give.”
“What you call that?—this—that—t'other?” added the Indian, stepping quickly back, and pointing to four other similar, but very faint impressions on the leaves; “no see him, eh?—Just leg apart, too!”
This was true enough; and now my attention was thus directed, and my senses were thus aided, I confess I did discover certain proofs of footsteps, that would, otherwise, have baffled my most serious search.
“I can see what you mean, Susquesus,” I said, “and will allow that this line of impressions, or marks, does make them look more like footsteps. At any rate, most of our party wear moccasins as well as the red-men, and how do you know that some of the surveyors have not passed this way?”
“Surveyor no make such mark. Toe turn in.”
This was true, too. But it did not follow that a foot-print was a Huron's, merely because it was Indian. Then, where were the enemy's warriors to come from, in so short a time as had intervened between the late battle and the present moment? There was little question all the forces of the French, pale-face and red-man, had been collected at Ticonderoga to meet the English; and the distance was so great as almost to render it impossible for a party to reach this spot so soon, coming from the vicinity of the fortress after the occurrence of the late events. Did not the lake interpose an obstacle, I might have inferred that parties of skirmishers would be thrown on the flanks of the advancing army, thus bringing foes within a lessened distance of us; but, there was the lake, affording a safe approach for more than thirty miles, and rendering the employment of any such skirmishers useless. All this occurred to me at the moment, and I mentioned it to my companion as an argument against his own supposition.