The girls went back the next day, taking Mr. Hammond with them. This time they merely glanced at the spot where the bear and the bull had died, and they did not visit the family of nesters at all. The shadowy mouth of the canyon, its sides running up steeply into the hills, was long in sight before the little cavalcade reached it.
From the mouth of it Mr. Hammond could not judge if Ruth's selection of locality was a wise one. Certain natural attributes were necessary to fit the needs of the story she had written. When, after they had ridden a couple of miles up the canyon, he saw the cliff path and the lip of the overhanging rock on which the hero of the story and Brighteyes' Indian lover were to struggle, he proclaimed himself satisfied.
"You've got it, I do believe," the producer declared. "This will delight Jim Hooley, I am sure. We can stake out a net down here under that rock so if either or both the boys fall, they will land all right. It will be some stunt picture, and no mistake!"
He wanted to look around the place, however, before riding back, and the girls dismounted too. The bottom of the canyon was a smooth lawn—the grass still green. For although the tang of winter was now in the air even at noon, the weather had been remarkably pleasant. Only on the distant heights had the snow fallen, and not much there.
There was a silvery stream wandering through the meadow over which the girls walked. By one pool was a shallow bit of beach, and Ruth, coming upon this alone, suddenly cried out:
"Oh, Helen! Jennie! I am a Miss Crusoe. Come here and see the unmistakable mark of my Man Friday."
"What do you mean, you ridiculous thing?" drawled Jennie. "You cannot be a Crusoe. You are not dressed in skins."
"Well, I like that!" rejoined Ruth, raising her eyebrows in apparent surprise, "I should think I was covered with skin. Why not? Am I different from the remainder of humanity?"
Of course they laughed with her as they came to view her discovery upon the sand. It was the mark of a human foot.
"And no savage, I'll be bound," said Helen. "That is the mark of a mighty brogan. A white man's foot-covering, no less. See! There is another footprint."