After an hour of this, we began to feel rock under foot, and our moccasins crushed patches of reindeer moss, dry as powder.
It was in such a place as this, or by wading through running water, that there could be any hope of hiding our trail; and as we began to traverse a vast, flat shoulder of naked rock, I saw that the Mohican meant to check and perplex any pursuit next morning.
What was my disgust, then, to observe that the Wyandotte's moccasins were soaking wet, and that he left at every step his mark for the morning sun to dry at leisure.
Stooping stealthily, I laid my hand flat in his wet tracks, and felt the grit of sand.

Accidentally or otherwise, he had stepped into some spring brook which we had crossed in the darkness.

Clearly the man was a fool, or something else.
And I was obliged to halt the file and wait until the Wyandotte had changed to spare moccasins; which I am bound to say he seemed to do willingly enough.

And my belief in his crass stupidity grew, relieving me of fiercer sentiments which I had begun to harbour as I thought of all we knew or suspected concerning this man.
So it was forward once more across the naked, star-lit rock, where blueberry bushes grew from crevices, and here and there some tall evergreen, the roots of which were slowly sundering the rock into soil.
Rattlesnakes were unpleasantly numerous here--this country being notorious for them, especially where rocks abound.

But so that they sprung their goblin rattles in the dark to warn us, we had less fear of them than of that slyer and no less deadly cousin of theirs, which moved abroad at night as they did, but was often too lazy or too vicious to warn us.
The Mohican sprang aside for one, and ere I could prevent him, the Wyandotte had crushed it.