“But I mustn’t allow anything to happen to me,” he thought, anxiously. “These boys would be leaderless at least until Buck got back, and there is no telling what might happen to them. I mustn’t be gone long, either.”
He came to the bridge, which he had found one day in his wanderings, and he crossed it, his footsteps sounding hollow and damp as his shoes pressed the rotted boards. On the other side he stepped ashore into a slippery species of soil that gently oozed water as his foot struck and sank slightly into it. The bushes here were thick and he was compelled to force his way through them. Before going beyond the bridge he lowered his lantern and looked at the soft earth and at once perceived something which excited his closest attention.
There was the imprint in the dirt of a large shoe.
The shoe was evidently a good one and showed no sign of wear, while the heel of it was quite new and left impressions which proclaimed it to be a rubber one with regulation holes and a trade mark which was too faint to be of more than passing value to him. But the sight of the print alone caused him to rejoice that at last there was a clear record.
“Now, I’ll just see where this print leads to,” he thought and started off. A moment later he halted as another thought came to him.
“The prints don’t return. Suppose the man is hiding in the bushes, just waiting for me!”
The reflection made his skin creep and for a moment he fought a growing desire to turn and go back. But after an instant of indecision he fought it off. “I’ll have to chance it and go on. I won’t go far from camp, and if I do see anyone, I can fight it out or run like a streak. I won’t cross the bridge, either, I’ll cut right across the ground and jump into the creek and swim it. Don’t know if I’m foolish or not, but here goes!”
With every sense on the alert he walked forward, eyes straining, ears pitched for a sound, ready to retreat at a moment’s notice. It was no easy task to follow the footprints and look around him at the same time, but he managed to do it as he advanced. At a point opposite the camp he came to a complete halt and marked the spot where the man had evidently stood when he delivered the groans, for there the soft ground was foot-printed lavishly. From that spot the man had gone off down the stream away from the camp until he had come to the creek at a point where rocks protruded so far above the stream that he had found it easy to walk across and take to the woods alongside of the camp. Ted noted that the ford was out of sight of the tents and while they were going into the tents the man had evidently crossed the low part of the stream and had entered the woods at a point not far from where Buck and his squad had entered it.
“After he finished his groaning he must have decided that he had scared us enough,” mused Ted, as he stood there peering around. “Confound him, if I ever get my hands on him, I’ll knock his head off, provided I’m big enough! What anyone should take all the trouble to try and scare a bunch of fellows out of camp for is more than I can figure out!”
He crossed the stream at the point where the mysterious man had crossed and made his way back toward the camp, coming up alongside of the fires, in plain sight of the anxiously waiting boys. They were greatly astonished to see him come from the opposite direction from that in which he had started.