“If I did, I’d know it,” replied Allan; “not that I’ve even set eyes on the print of his hunting shoe or boot, if he wears such, instead of moccasins; but stop and remember, Bumpus we had a heavy rain day before yesterday that must have passed over this section as well as where we struck it. After that it turned cold.”
“Oh! I forgot all about that,” admitted the other scout, looking foolish. “Why, of course, that same rain would have washed out the footprints of anybody who had camped here as long ago as four or five nights. That’s right Allan.”
“If it didn’t exactly wash the footprints out, it would make them look faint; and a trailer would soon know they were old. Now let me take a turn around, and do the rest of you sit quiet here, till I call out that I’ve found something.”
He took a blazing brand from the fire, and began to move around the outskirts of the camp, beyond the tents and the glow of the fire.
“Why does he go so far away?” asked Bumpus.
“Because we’ve been walking around here so much that all chance of making any discovery would be lost,” replied Thad; “and out there he may stand a show. There, I can see him stoop down lower, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d hit a footprint right away.”
The others all craned their necks in order to see what Allan was doing; and of course Giraffe had them left far in the lurch when it came to this, on account of his being gifted by a bountiful Nature with such an exceedingly long ostrich like appendage below his head.
“Yes, he’s sure struck something,” Giraffe declared, as though anxious to show what an advantage it was sometimes to be the possessor of a neck that was longer than any of the others.
“There, he’s beckoning to us to come on over, fellers!” exclaimed Bumpus, as he tried to leap to his feet; but, owing to his weight, this was never an easy thing for him, and he did not refuse the helping hand Thad stretched out.
So they joined Allan, as he stood there, holding his torch near the ground.