Resorting to the tape again, he struck a wider circle, spacing it six feet from the hole. This time there were results—or one result, at least. At a point just beyond one side of the bigger circle there was another hole, the exact mate of the one he had first discovered; round at the bottom and elongated considerably at the top. Noting the direction of the elongation and the lining-up of the two holes, he paced off another six feet, and there, under his eyes, was a third hole.
With his lips pursed in a soundless whistle he climbed to the top of a near-by boulder and let his gaze sweep the slopes below. The morning calm was on the landscape, with no breath of air stirring to whisper in the trees. The boulder-top height commanded a view for miles in three directions, but there was nothing to be seen but the statuesque procession of buttes and valleys, mountain slopes and wooded gulches.
Preparing to go back to camp, Larry did a characteristic thing; that is to say, it was characteristic of him. One of the three holes was in a sort of plastic clay, much like that used by sculptors in modeling. Going down on his knees, he dug carefully all around the hole with his pocket-knife, lifting out a chunk of the clay about the size of a pint cup with the hole intact in the middle of it. Wrapping the lump of clay in his handkerchief, he swung away to retrace his steps to the camp in the farther gulch.
Both Purdick and Dick were up when he got back, and Purdick had breakfast nearly ready.
“Hello, you old early bird,” Dick called out. “Got a handkerchief-ful of worms already?”
Larry didn’t say what he had. Putting the handkerchief-wrapped “specimen” in the cleft of a rock, he turned in to help Purdick dish up the breakfast; and later, while they were eating, he said nothing about his curious find. But when the last flapjack was eaten, he reached for the lump of clay, unwrapped it, and showed it to the others.
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
Both Dick and Purdick examined the “specimen” closely.
“What’s the answer?” said Dick, looking up.