its base the searcher experimented
with his gun barrel, poking it into the farther extremity of the cavity
and rattling out the decayed wood and the debris of squirrel nests and
owl lairs. In several cases these creatures themselves were disturbed,
the lively squirrels to run chattering up the higher branches, the owls
lumbering away into the forest, bumping against the trees in their
blindness, and hooting mournfully at the disturbers of their peace. All
this time Crow Wing continued with an unmoved face. Not an interstice in
the roots of the trees escaped his eye and to Enoch, who could not
imagine what he was looking for, his actions seemed without reason. But
he knew better than to ask him the nature of his search.

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 su