After proceeding a short distance, the shoe-tracks again became too indistinct to be followed farther. By quartering, however, we came upon them once more--at a place where the impressions were deep and clearly defined. Once more the immense foot rose upon the _retina_ of my memory--this time more vividly--this time enabling me to _place_ it: for I now remembered many an odd incident that had secured it a corner on the page of my recollections. Sticking through a stirrup with an enormous Mexican Spur on its heel--its owner mounted on a horse thin and rawboned as himself--I remembered the foot, as well as the limbs and body to which it was attached. Beyond a doubt, the tall fugitive we were following was an old fellow campaigner--a veteran of the "Rifle Rangers!" The figure, as seen through the telescope, confirmed me in the belief. The long limbs, arms, and neck--the thin, angular body--all were characteristics of the bodily architecture of Jephthah Bigelow. I no longer doubted that the taller of the two men was my old follower "Jeph Bigelow," or "Sure-shot," as his Ranger comrades had christened him; and appropriate was the designation--for a surer shot than Jeph never looked through the hind-sights of a rifle. Who the little man might turn out to be, I could not guess--though I was not without some recollections of a figure resembling his. I remembered a certain Patrick, who was also a "mimber of the corpse," and whose _build_ bore a close resemblance to that of him seen between the trams of the barrow. My conjecture as to who the men were, increased my desire to overtake them. If the tall man should turn out to be Sure-shot, a rifle would be added to our strength worth a dozen ordinary guns; and, considering the risk we were running-- in danger of losing our scalps every hour in the day--it was of no small importance that we should join company with the deserters.