Magua's whole deal is he's going to capture these ladies and he makes an offer to Cora where he's like your dad beat the crap out of me I hate him. The second half of the book is nanny Bopo, general man row, hingahook, unkus and Hayward trying to track the two daughters and David. It would need to be a cliff big enough to create suspense because you're fighting on the edge of a cliff but not big enough to kill short enough that if you fell off it you could plausibly come back later and say well you didn't see my body on camera.