For two hours Crow Wing circled about the little glade. There was not a tree which escaped him, nor did any hollow go unexamined which was within reach of the tallest man. Crow Wing’s face betrayed neither hope nor disappointment and therefore his companion could not tell how important this search was. The patience displayed by the Indian was all that suggested the object of his examination to be of any moment.
At length, in poking the barrel of his gun into the hollow at the base of a big tree Crow Wing disturbed some object which fell out upon the ground. Enoch, who looked over his shoulder could not at first imagine what it was. He saw several rotting straps attached to the thing, however, and as his companion with a grunt of evident satisfaction, began poking into the hollow still further, the white boy picked the object up and knocked the dirt and decayed wood off it. It was so strange an object that at first Enoch saw no connection between it and the matter which he and Crow Wing had discussed–Jonas Harding’s death.
It was the dry and broken hoof of some ruminant animal–an ox, perhaps, for it was too large for any deer that Enoch had ever seen. It was even larger than the hoof of the buck he and Crow Wing had recently shot. And when the boy thought of that he was reminded of the hoof prints which had been found all about the lick when his father’s body was discovered lying there. He uttered a stifled exclamation and drawing up one foot fitted the cloven hoof against the sole of his moccasin. The rotten straps or thongs would once have bound the thing to a man’s foot. He might have stood upon it–walked upon it, indeed; and the impression left by this cloven hoof would naturally lead one to suppose that a big deer had been that way!
Enoch turned with sweating brow and shaking hands toward the Indian. Crow Wing stood upright again and now held a second hoof, likewise supplied with thongs, in his hand. They looked at each other.
“Umph!” grunted Crow Wing. “Now Harding know? See moose hoofs. Crow Wing know where moose killed–see moose killed. Hawknose kill much that winter; Hawknose hunt with Injins up north; then come back to crick. Harding ’member what Crow Wing tell him when trapping on Otter Crick? See Hawknose running; blood on clothes; blood on hands and on gun. Now Harding know how father be killed.”
Enoch’s eyes blazed with wrath. “I know, Crow Wing. I believe what you tell me. I see no other explanation of the affair. Give me those hoofs, Crow Wing.”
“Harding keep them till he punish Hawknose?” queried the Indian.
“Yes.”
The young brave pulled his belt tighter and prepared to depart. “Hawknose never Crow Wing’s brother,” he said. “Harding been brother. But now the hatchet will be dug up. The Long-guns cannot get the Six Nations to fight the red-coats. And the friends of my white brother will be beaten. They will become the squaws of the red-coats and of the great King across the sea. So my people will go north and join the red-coats.” He shook Enoch’s hand gravely. “Crow Wing and Harding been brothers; but when they meet again be enemies. Umph?”
“I hope we’ll never meet again, then, Crow Wing,” declared the white youth. “I hope there will be no war. More than that, I hope your people will not join the British if there is war.”