“We’ll never find them in the brush,” promised Tim. “They’re too clever for that. A posse would smoke them out. We’ll have a look around and see what we can find.”
They discovered the footprints of two men but the marks looked as though someone had made a hasty attempt to cover them up. When the trail entered the brush the footprints were soon lost to view.
“We’ll swing around the car in circles,” said Tim. “In that way we ought to come upon their trail somewhere. Keep an eye on the direction it was headed when we lost it.”
Ralph nodded and disappeared in the closely matted underbrush.
Tim could hear his companion’s footsteps growing fainter and fainter until they could be heard no longer. The flying reporter moved carefully, eyes on the alert for any sign which might give him some clue on how the bandits had escaped after wrecking and setting fire to their machine.
He found what he was looking for in a small clearing in the underbrush. There were two parallel marks, spaced about six feet apart, and extending for thirty or forty feet. They were exactly like the marks which he had found near the scene of the attempted holdup of the midnight mail only a few days before.
Tim cupped his hands and called lustily for Ralph. An answering cry came for a distance and five minutes later Ralph threshed his way through the heavy scrub.
“Look at those,” Tim cried exultantly. “Same thing we saw near the railroad right-of-way after they tried to hold up the mail train. When we find out what they mean and what they were made by we’ll have the secret of these robberies.”
“They look like they had been made by the wheels of an airplane,” said Ralph, “but no plane could take off in such a short distance.”
“How about an autogyro?” suggested Tim.