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Updated: July 17, 2025
The Indian seemed pleased at the idea, and soon led the way toward the range of hills whither the foot-prints pointed. "The first thing we know," Thede suggested, "we'll be running into a nest of black bears. They're thick as bees up in this country, and they'll be hungry, too, with all this snow on the ground."
The Indians were cautious and stealthy in their mode of retreating, treading in each other's foot-prints, so that twenty would make no more track than one, and stepping so lightly as scarce to disturb the herbage; yet there were Spaniards so skilled in hunting Indians, that they could trace them even by the turn of a withered leaf, and among the confused tracks of a thousand animals.
The damp earth where the shade was thickest, plainly showed the marks of foot-prints some made by bare feet, some by shoes but I could not follow them for more than a yard or so, and I could not be certain they were not our own traces of the night before. I poked into every one of the cabins, but found nothing suspicious about their appearance.
"If the eyes that looked at me last night belonged to a 'lady' either I am mad or the 'lady' is of another world." I pulled on a bath-robe and hurried out into the garden, Coates showing me the spot where he had found the mysterious foot-prints. A very brief examination sufficed to convince me that his account had been correct.
On the seventh day of our march we had accomplished fifteen miles, when our attention was drawn to a plot of burnt spinifex, surrounded by the recent foot-prints of natives. This set us to scan the country in every direction where any view could be obtained.
My feet rest on the topmost step of a stone stairway worn hip-deep in the rocks of eternity by the moccasined tread of foot-prints that run back, not to A. D. or B. C., but to those post-glacial æons when the advances and recessions of an ice invasion from the Poles left seas where now are deserts; when giant sequoia forests were swept under the sands by the flood waters, and the mammoth and the dinosaur and the brontosaur wallowed where now nestle farm hamlets.
In a few minutes he reached the place referred to; when the snuffling of his canine companion causing him to look down, his attention instantly became fixed upon the foot-prints of the horses which had passed there the day before, and particularly on the two that had repassed there so lately. "What is it, Cæsar?" said he, addressing the brute. "Nothing wrong here, I reckon."
His experience is so truly human experience, that Christians of every persuasion can identify themselves with him; and even those who regard Christianity itself as but a natural outgrowth of the conscience and intellect, and yet desire to live nobly and make the best of themselves, can recognise familiar foot-prints in every step of Christian's journey.
They stand upon the borders of the grave to welcome us, with the countenance of affection, which they wore on earth; yet more lovely, more radiant, more spiritual! O, he spake well who said, that graves are the foot-prints of angels. Death has taken thee, too, and thou hast the dew of thy youth. He has placed thee upon his bosom, and his stern countenance wears a smile.
It was with something of the excited interest which must have stirred Robinson Crusoe on seeing the foot-prints on the sand of what he had conceived to be a desert island that she ran up the hill, through the awakened woods whose thick carpet of brown leaves was alight with the green heads of young ferns, and out to the clearing from which she had so often gazed wist fully in the direction of the great city away in the distance.
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