“Well, now let me tell you about them,” and the guide began to explain. “You see, there are large tracks, medium-sized tracks, and small ones. The large ones, you’ll observe, are rather blunt, and so I know they were made by a buck. He blunts the tips of his toes by stamping around. The medium-sized ones are quite sharp at the point, and were undoubtedly made by a doe, and the small tracks beside them were made by her fawn, a little deer born last spring.
“Then you’ll see, if you look sharp, that the big tracks cover the medium-sized ones in several places, which shows that the buck came along some time after the doe and her fawn had passed. Notice that the little pools in the big tracks are still roiled, which means that the buck has passed only a short time ago.
“Now, look here; see, his tracks are nearer together and run into one another. He heard something which frightened him, possibly us, and started to trot away. Here is where he turned from the road. See that long mark in the bank? He left the road, jumped up that steep place, and went galloping away through the woods. Yes, here are some broken twigs where he went through.”
Ben smiled at the boys and led them to the wagon.
“Well, all aboard, we’ll go on now,” he said.
The lads looked at him in wonder. They did not understand how he could read so much from the few marks in the mud, which, had he not called them to their attention, they would never have noticed.
“Well, that’s your first lesson,” said Ben, as he started the team. “You’ll have many more.”
“My, you know a lot!” declared Ed, enthusiastically. “Who told you all that, Ben?”
“‘The Old Man of the Woods,’” he laughed, and the boys wondered who that might be.
At the foot of a long hill they came to a bit of low, open country, apparently a swamp, or marsh. The wagon bumped and bounced so that the boys had all they could do to hang on. Looking down, they were surprised to find that the road was made of logs laid side by side, lengthwise, across it. They asked Ben for an explanation, and he said it was what was called a “corduroy” road; so named because of its similarity to the ridges in that cloth.