“They were making straight for my father’s camp,” continued the lad, bending a stern look on the trail, “but they turned sharp round, like the swallow, on coming to the trail of the white man Brixton, and followed it.”
“How d’ye know that, lad?” asked the trapper.
“Because I see it” returned the boy, promptly, pointing at the same time to a spot on the hill-side considerably above them, where the conformation of the land at a certain spot revealed enough of the trail of the “fifty men or more,” to show the change of direction.
“Good again, lad. A worthy son of your father. I didn’t give ’e credit for sharpness enough to perceive that. Can you read anything more?”
“One man was a horseman, but he left his horse behind on getting to the rough places of the hills and walked with the rest. He is Paul Bevan’s enemy.”
“And how d’ye know all that?” said Drake, regarding the little fellow with a look of pride.
“By the footprints,” returned Leaping Buck. “He wears boots and spurs.”
“Just so,” returned the trapper, “and we’ve bin told by Paul that Stalker was the only man of his band who wouldn’t fall in wi’ the ways o’ the country, but sticks to the clumsy Jack-boots and spurs of old England. Yes, the scoundrel has followed you up, Tolly, as Paul Bevan said he would, and, havin’ come across Brixton’s track, has gone after him, from all which I now come to the conclusion that your friend Mister Tom is a prisoner, an’ stands in need of our sarvices. What say you, Tolly?”
“Go at ’em at once,” replied the warlike Trevor, “an’ set him free.”
“What! us three attack fifty men?”