, through swamp and
dingle, over hill and prairie, till it was lost on the border of the
Athabasca lake. Though the party in retreat was large, so well were they
all trained in the Indian tactics of flight and concealment, that it
required a most experienced eye to keep on their track. They had
marched, according to custom, in Indian file, each carefully walking in
the steps of the other, so that, to an unpractised observer, there would
appear to have been but one wayfarer in the path. Wherever it was
practicable, the path was carried over rocks, or the soft elastic
mosses, or through the bed of a running brook, with the hope of eluding
the pursuer. But no artifice of the Athapuscow could elude the
well-trained eye of the Chippeway. He would instantly detect the
slightest trace of a footstep on the ground, or the passage of a human
body through the thicket. In one place, the edges of the moss had been
torn, or a blade of grass trampled in upon it; in another, the small
stones of the surface had been displaced, showing sometimes the fresh
earth, and sometimes the hole of a worm uncovered, with half the length
of its astonished occupant protruded to the light, as if investigating
the cause of the sudden unroofing of his cell. Here some dry stick
broken, or the bark of a protruding root peeled off, would betray the
step of the fugitive; and there a shrub slightly bent, or a leaf turned
up and lapped over upon another, or a few petals of a wild flower torn
off and scattered upon the ground, would reveal the rude touch of his
foot, or arm, or the trailing of his blanket, as he passed. Even on the
bare rock, if a few grains of earth had been carried forward, or a
pebble, a leaf, a dry stick, or a bit of moss, adhering to the foot had
been deposited there, it was instantly noticed and understood. The
rushing of the waters in the brook did not always replace, in a moment,
every stone that had been disturbed in its bed, nor restore the broken
limb, nor the bent weed, to its place. So quick and intuitive were these
observations, that the march of the pursuer was as rapid and direct as
that of the pursued. The one would seldom lose more time in hunting for
the track, than the other had consumed in his various artifices of
concealment.

On arriving at the lake, it was evident that a considerable number of
the enemy had been encamped, and that they had just embarked. Their
fires were still smoking, and the rocks were not yet dry, fr