The time dragged with the always impetuous Roger; but finally they arrived at the bend of the river indicated. All immediately began to look for signs to prove that the men had camped there.
A joyous exclamation from keen-eyed Roger announced that he had found the dead ashes of a fire in a little depression among the rocks. Then the others discovered footprints of moccasined feet, many of them in the softer places where the earth was not yet frozen.
“Here are the tracks of Indians, for they all toe in,” Dick observed, stating a fact that was well known to every pioneer boy of the day. “Toeing-in” was invariably the sign of an Indian, though of course some bordermen had also taken to that method of walking, which is supposed, to be the natural way.
“And these others were made by whites, either our friends or the Frenchmen,” added Roger, quick to pick out those that differed from the first type.
“I am looking for the track of Jasper,” Dick told him, as he continued to move this way and that, his eyes searching the ground as he neared the bank of the river.
“But tell me how you would know his trail from any other? Most moccasins make pretty much the same kind of a mark, I’ve always believed.”
“Well, Williams’s do not, it happens,” the other explained. “I thought you must have noticed it as we came along. He bought the pair he is wearing from a Mandan squaw. They have a queer seam across the middle. I never saw one like it before, and I think that is the track now.”
He pointed to the ground, and Roger, looking, gave a cry of satisfaction.
“It certainly is as you say, and here must be where Jasper jumped when he made for the water, and sprang into one of the dugouts. See, in many places his footprints are partly covered by those of the pursuing Blackfeet.”
“And this must be where he found the canoe into which he jumped,” continued Dick, as he showed his companion a slight depression in the sand.