“That’s what I’d like to have you tell me. I found three of those holes a quarter of a mile away around the mountain. They were about six feet apart, and all alike.”
It was Purdick’s shrewd intelligence that jumped to the one inevitable conclusion. “A crutch print!” he breathed; “the crutch print!”
Larry nodded. “That was the way I doped it out.”
Without another word Purdick got up and began to circle the camp site with his nose to the ground. In the little grove of spruces to the left he found what he was looking for.
“Half a dozen of ’em over here,” he announced; “one deep one, as if the crutch had been leaned on for a good while.”
For a little time nobody said anything, and when the silence was broken, it was Dick who broke it.
“The guess we made last night—that these scamps had given up and gone away—doesn’t go,” he said soberly. “They’re still camping on our trail, and those marks over there under the spruces must have been made after we camped here last night. If we hadn’t been keeping watch, we would probably have lost our guns again.”
“Well?” said Larry.
“Meaning that you want me to say what I think we ought to do?” asked Dick.
“Something like that—yes.”