Ted refused at the time to reveal the details of his plan for trapping the person who was annoying them in their camp, but he promised that he would later on. Feeling that a good part of the morning had been wasted in the details of his fight with Plum, he preferred that they get things done around the camp. This was attended to and then he and Buck had two important matters to attend to.
The first was that of seeking the tracks of the horse who had posed on the rock on the previous evening, with a view to tracing the animal in the hope of obtaining some clue as to its owner. They went to the rock and searched carefully around, moving away from it with eyes alert to pick up the mark of a hoof, but the ground around was too rocky to help them any. Some fifty feet away from it they found one print but that was all, and they finally gave it up as a bad job.
“When that fellow brought the horse down to the rock he made a good job of it,” Ted admitted, mopping his forehead. “He didn’t mean that we were to find any hoof prints.”
“But a horse is pretty heavy, and I should think he would be bound to leave marks,” murmured Buck.
“Well, there is a way to do everything,” said Ted, with a grin. “I remember a trick I used to work on my father. I used to go swimming over in Tier’s Pond that summer you were away and the only way to get there without hoofing it was to take the horse and carriage, because I was small then and didn’t have the old car. But I knew if my dad saw the wheel prints and the hoof prints in the gravel, he’d know I had taken the carriage and the horse, which he didn’t want me to take, so I put a couple of blankets down and walked the horse across them, then went back and picked up the first one and put it down ahead of the horse’s hoofs, and in that way we got out of the drive without leaving a mark. When I came back at night I used to spread them out again and get in without so much as a trace showing. Maybe that is what our friend of last night did.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. He had everything carefully planned, and we’ll have to hustle some to catch up with him.”
After lunch the two leaders went to the farmhouse and there Ted used the telephone to call Lawyer Calvert. When the president of the club got on the wire Ted told him the events of the past few days and narrated his reason for thrashing Plum. The lawyer listened without comment until he was finished.
“You did just what was right, Thorn,” he told Ted. “That boy had it coming to him for a long time. When he gets in town I’ll see to it that he doesn’t spread any stories around among the parents. But are you sure that everything is all right? You don’t need any special protection?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Calvert,” replied Ted. “So far we have managed to stand it and I think that we’ll be able to face it to the end. I have some plans for setting a trap for the man, whoever he is, and I think we’ll fix him so that he’ll stay away. If things should get serious I would let you know, and if necessary abandon the camp, but I’m pretty sure that it won’t come to that.”
“All right, just as you say. You are in complete charge and I rely on you. If you need any more money with which to buy provisions, call me and I’ll see to it that you get it.”