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assurance. Of Max Bauer I knew nothing but that he was employed by, or seemed to be employed by Pittingel, but I trusted him none at all. There was power in the man but evil, also. I knew a little of fear as I watched him go, and it angered me. Why should I fear? Or Yance? Who had ever defeated us?
    Yet all men can fail, and each man must somewhere find his master, with whatever strength, whatever weapon. So we must be wary, we must use what guile we had, for it was upon my shoulders that nothing we had ever attempted or done was so fearsome a thing as this we now would try.
    I knew not why I believed so, yet believe it I did.
    Through the dappled light and shadow of the forest I walked on gentle feet, knowing only that Yance had come upon something.
    Of course, it would be no great thing. If the ground is trampled, one has only to cast about in a great circle, an ever-widening circle, for when those who were here left this place, they did not make tracks only in the meadow but in the leaving of it.
    Yance was sauatted at the foot of a huge old chestnut awaiting me. When I squatted beside him, he said, “Old tracks.” He paused. “Five or six men … two of them barefooted.”
    â€œ
Barefooted?
”
    â€œAye, an’ they’ve gone barefooted a lot. Feet spread wide.” He paused again, throwing down the twig on which he was chewing. “Looked to be carrying heavy. Deep prints.”
    We were silent together, each thinking it over. “It ain’t likely,” Yance said, “that any folks native to this country would go barefoot. The Indians didn’t, and certainly those Puritan folk or Separatists or whatever they are, they hold to boots.”
    We straightened up, looked carefully about, and listened; then we moved off. He pointed the trail, and it was as he said. Five men, two of them barefoot.
    The trail was not an easy one, but we hung to it. At times, rains had washed it away entirely, but we were helped by the fact that these folks did little hunting, and most were afeared to go into the woods alone, so after the meadow nobody had messed up what tracks there were.
    We saw deer tracks, too. There was game here if a man were to hunt it down.
    We lost the trail.
    In the morning we found it again, just a few tracks where they had crossed a stream and one of the barefooted men had slipped. A few hours later we found what we both had been watching for. A camp.
    We studied it carefully before we moved in, and then it was only I who went in, and Yance began hunting the tracks made when they left.
    He came up to the edge of camp. “Still going north,” he said. “Find anything?”
    â€œAll three have muskets,” I said.
    â€œ
Three?
”
    â€œTwo of them, the barefooted ones, are not armed.”
    â€œSlaves,” he said.
    â€œMaybe … likely,” I added.
    â€œThat Pittingel now … that man I was in the stocks with … he thought Pittingel was a slaver.”
    â€œHe
thought.
We know nothing, Yance, and it doesn’t pay to decide anything without we’ve evidence for it. The man may be a fine Christian gentleman.”
    Yance snorted.
    Then I said, “What else?”
    â€œIt’s the girls, all right. I found their tracks, only a couple of them, for they weren’t allowed to walk about. One set of smaller tracks, the others a shade larger. Then they were tied up and dumped on the ground. There was some cooking done.”
    â€œSlave?”
    â€œNo, one of the others.” We sat together in the dappled shade of a tree, alert for sound. “It’s an old camp, Yance. Been used two, three times before. Several times, I think.
    â€œThey had more than one fire, some old smoke-blackened stones, some fresh. Found where ashes had been beaten down by rain, then a fire laid atop that. Not so large a fire.”
    We rested, chewing on venison jerky. “No Indians made this trail, an’