I agreed to this proposal; and, after securing our four quadrupeds to trees, we started off into the depth of the woods. Only for a short distance were we able to make out the footsteps of the men: for they had chosen the dry sward to walk upon. In one place, where the path was bare of grass, their tracks were distinctly outlined; and a minute examination of them assured me of the correctness of my conjecture—that we were trailing a brace of runaways from a military post. There was no mistaking the print of the “regulation” shoe. Its shape was impressed upon my memory as plainly as in the earth before my eyes; and it required no quartermaster to recognise the low, ill-rounded heel and flat pegged soles. I identified them at a glance; and saw, moreover, that the feet of both the fugitives were encased in the same cheap chaussure. Only in size did the tracks differ; and in this so widely, that the smaller was little more than two-thirds the length of the larger one! The latter was remarkable for size—not so much in its breadth as length, which last was not less than thirteen standard inches!
On noting this peculiarity, my companion uttered an exclamation of astonishment. “Thar’s a fut, an’ no mistake!” cried he. “I reck’n ’twar Long-legs as made them tracks. Well! ef I hedn’t seed the man hisself, I’d a swore thar war giants in these parts!”
I made no reply, though far more astonished than he. My astonishment sprang from a different source; and was mixed up in my mind with some old memories. I remembered the foot!
Chapter Forty Three.
Tracking the Trundle.
Yes, I had seen that foot before; or one so very like it, that the resemblance was cheating me. This could hardly be. With the exception of its fellow, the foot of which I was thinking could have no counterpart on the prairies: it must be the same? At first, my recollections of it were but vague. I remembered the foot associated with some ludicrous incidents; but what they were, or when and where they had occurred, I could not say. Certainly I had seen it somewhere; but where? No matter: the foot recalled no unpleasant associations. I felt satisfied it was a friendly one; and was now more anxious than ever of overtaking its sesquipedalian owner.
After proceeding a short distance, the shoe-tracks again became too indistinct to be followed farther. By quartering, however, we came upon them once more—at a place where the impressions were deep and clearly defined. Once more the immense foot rose upon the retina of my memory—this time more vividly—this time enabling me to place it: for I now remembered many an odd incident that had secured it a corner on the page of my recollections. Sticking through a stirrup with an enormous Mexican Spur on its heel—its owner mounted on a horse thin and rawboned as himself—I remembered the foot, as well as the limbs and body to which it was attached. Beyond a doubt, the tall fugitive we were following was an old fellow campaigner—a veteran of the “Rifle Rangers!”
The figure, as seen through the telescope, confirmed me in the belief. The long limbs, arms, and neck—the thin, angular body—all were characteristics of the bodily architecture of Jephthah Bigelow. I no longer doubted that the taller of the two men was my old follower “Jeph Bigelow,” or “Sure-shot,” as his Ranger comrades had christened him; and appropriate was the designation—for a surer shot than Jeph never looked through the hind-sights of a rifle. Who the little man might turn out to be, I could not guess—though I was not without some recollections of a figure resembling his. I remembered a certain Patrick, who was also a “mimber of the corpse,” and whose build bore a close resemblance to that of him seen between the trams of the barrow. My conjecture as to who the men were, increased my desire to overtake them. If the tall man should turn out to be Sure-shot, a rifle would be added to our strength worth a dozen ordinary guns; and, considering the risk we were running—in danger of losing our scalps every hour in the day—it was of no small importance that we should join company with the deserters.