"Shorter than the Pitt trail?" I asked, astonished.
"Shorter because healthier," he returned. And, answering my puzzled smile, he added, "A long life on a long trail, but there's ever a shorter cut to the gibbet!"
Mount, who had fallen back beside us, grinned at me and rubbed his nose.
"Butler will be sitting up like a bereaved catamount in the Pitt trail for us," he said. "I've no powder to waste on him and his crew. However, Mr. Cardigan, if you want to take a long shot, now's your chance to mark their hides."
He took me by the arm and led me cautiously a few rods to the left, then crouched down and parted the bushes with his hand. We were kneeling on the very edge of a precipice which I never should have seen, and over which I certainly should have walked had I been here alone. Deep down below us the Ohio flowed, a dark, slow stream, with jutting rocks on the eastern bank and a long flat sand-spit on the west.
At the point of this spit a man was standing, leaning on a rifle. It was not Butler.
"There's another fellow on that rock," whispered Mount, pointing. "Butler will be watching the slope below our camp."
"Let him watch it," observed the Weasel; "we'll be with Cresap by moon-rise!"
"You can take a safe shot from here," smiled Mount, looking around at me; "but it's too far to go for the scalp."
I shook my head, shuddering, and we resumed our march, filing away into the west in perfect silence until the sun stood in mid-heaven and the heated air under the great pines drove us to the nearest water, which I had been sniffing for some time past.