“That if we follow him,” White replied, “we shall be led away from the chase. He takes too much pains to show us which way he has gone.”
“You are right,” said Edgar; “for he has passed here since sunrise, and his horse was as fresh as when he left the grove. The water is all brushed from his tracks, but is not disturbed between. We’ll not follow him.”
And, without further consultation, he sprang again to the saddle, and resumed his original direction—verging, indeed, rather from, than toward, the solitary trail. Those little indications—like circumstantial evidence—more convincing than positive declarations, or more apparent signs, satisfied him that this was an attempt to draw him off. He smiled at the shallowness of the deceit, and rode away. His companions understood his reasoning almost instinctively. [The fact that the grass was dry in the tracks, proved that they had been made since sunrise; because the dew must have ceased to drip from one blade to another, and its being undisturbed between, established the freshness of the Indian’s horse, because every bound was a clear spring from the ground.] Fifteen minutes brought them to the outskirts of Cahokia timber; and, after a rigid examination of this, they issued again upon the prairie toward the West, maintaining the same course.
They were now approaching a more densely wooded country. The prairies grew narrower, and were broken, here and there, by groves, and strips of timber, along the banks of numerous little streams. The ground became uneven, in places even hilly; and every thing denoted the approach to the Mississippi. This continued for about three hours, during which they had made scarcely five miles an hour: it was noon, too, and the September sun was pouring upon their heads the overpowering heat of the season. A halt became necessary, both for men and horses. Edgar rode within the shelter of the timber, and dismounted on the bank of a shallow stream—the first they had seen with a gravelly bed.
“We must rest awhile, boys,” he said, “and recruit our horses—or we shall break down before night.”
His companions followed his example; and all led their panting horses to the stream, to drink of its clear sparkling waters. But Edgar drew his back, suddenly, before he had touched the tide; and, arresting the others in the same manner, pointed to the bottom of the rivulet.
“Is not that a horse’s track?” he asked, indicating the spot with his rifle.
“Yes,” said White, “and here are more! And here, to the left, they are plainer, and more numerous. Our visitors must have passed this way, and are not going to the Portage!”
The tracks were but faint prints in the shifting gravel of the stream; and, to the eyes of less observant men, would have been quite void of meaning. It was, however, the peculiar faculty of Western Rangers, never to overlook any thing; and their attention once attracted, but a few moments were consumed in determining that, fifteen or twenty horsemen had ridden along the bed of the stream; that they were Indians, and traveling in haste. It might seem a more difficult matter to fix, even approximately, the length of time which had elapsed since their passage; but the invention of rangers was seldom at fault.
“George,” said the captain to Fielding, “get on your horse, and ride up the stream a few rods—as fast as he can walk—in among those tracks.”