betray themselves.

"As the white trapper has truly said," he began, "fifty men or more have
passed this way. They are most of them white men, but three or four are
Indians."

"Good!" said Drake, with an approving nod; "I thought ye'd notice that.
Well, go on."

"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?"

"Why not?" responded Tolly, "We're more than a match for 'em. Paul
Bevan has told me oftentimes that honest men are, as a rule, ten times
more plucky than dishonest ones. Well, you are one honest man, that's
equal to ten; an' Buckie and I are two honest boys, equal, say, to five
each, that's ten more, making twenty among three of us. Three times
twenty's sixty, isn't it? so, surely that's more than enough to fight
fifty."

"Ah, boy," answered the trapper, with a slightly puzzled expression, "I
never could make nothin' o' 'rithmetic, though my mother put me to
sch