"Well, don't tell the whole town about it," said Skinny. "Keep quiet and we'll surround 'em."
"But the chicken and eggs are gone," he added, after a moment. "I was going to give you some of that chicken, Bill."
We stopped and had a long look at the tracks. There were four footprints and a hole, which looked as if it had been made with a stick, or cane. Three of the prints were like those which any man would make in walking and one was the print of a bare foot, only it had a queer look that we couldn't understand.
"We've got 'em," whispered Skinny. "We'll know that footprint again anywhere we find it. Forward, and mum's the word!"
Twice after that we found the same queer footprint; once in the dust of a road that runs along the south side of Plunkett's woods, and again on the edge of a brook which comes down from the mountain somewhere.
Then we lost the trail and didn't know where to go. Just because we didn't know what else to do, we followed the brook up, until we came to a gully out of sight from the road.
Skinny was ahead, aiming with his stick and saying what he would do if he should catch the fellow that stole his chicken. All of a sudden we saw him drop behind a bush and lie still. We dropped, too. We didn't know what for, but I've noticed that it is 'most always a good thing to drop first and find out why afterward. Then we crawled slowly up to him to see what had happened.
There, sitting on the ground in a grassy ravine, near the brook, were two men, and they were eating what remained of our lunch. One of them had his left shoe off and his foot done up in a bandage. That was what had made the track look so queer.
Now that we had caught them we didn't know what to do with them, for they were too big for us to tackle.
"I believe we could get away with the lame one," whispered Skinny, "only they have about eaten it all up; so what's the use? Besides, the other one looks as big as a house."