We followed Ump to the road. A horse had been hitched to the "rider" of the rail fence, and there were his tracks stamped in the hard clay. There was not light enough to see very clearly, so we struck matches and got down on the bank to study the details of the tracks. I saw that the horse had been one of medium size,--a saddle horse, shod with a "store" shoe, remodelled by some smith. But this knowledge gave no especial light.
Ump and Jud lay on their bellies with their noses to the earth searching the shoe marks. "It's no use," I said, "we can't tell." And I sat up. The two neither answered nor paid the slightest attention. No bacteriologist plodding in his eccentric orbit ever studied the outlines of a new-found germ with deeper or more painstaking care. Presently they began to compare their discoveries.
"He was a Hambletonian," began Jud; "don't you see how long the shoe is from the toe to the cork?" Ump nodded. "An' he was curbed," Jud went on; "his feet set too close under him fer a straight-legged horse. Still, that ain't enough."
"Put this to it," said the hunchback, "an' you've got your hand on him. Them's store nails hammered into a store shoe, an' the corks are beat squat. That's Stone's shoein'. Now you know him."
Then I knew him too. Lem Marks rode a curbed Hambletonian, and Stone was Woodford's blacksmith.
Jud got up and waved his great hand towards the south country.
"They're all ridin'," he said, "every mother's son of the gang. An' they know where we are."
"With rings on their fingers, an' bells on their toes," gabbled Ump; "an' we know where they are."
Then I heard the voice of the old waggon-maker calling us to breakfast.