There were other prints, now that they were searching closely. Clearly, three men had walked the field last night. But nowhere did they find a clue to what the men had searched for. There was no raw dirt, no impressions left where something had been removed.
"Fact," Rick stated. "Three men were here."
Scotty laughed. "This does not mean there were not also three ghosts who left no tracks."
Rick had to laugh, too. "Now what do we do?"
"Look in the upland cornfield."
They started the survey of the cornfield directly above the mine entrance, where they had first seen the three ghosts. Tracks were visible almost at once.
"We're lucky," Scotty said. "Even with the weeds between the rows there's enough bare ground so we can do some real tracking. Let's see how the tracks run."
As Scotty had predicted, the tracking was much easier. A few yards into the cornfield they came to a gap where a few seeds had failed to germinate or the plants had died. It was a bare space, sparsely grown with weeds.
Scotty pointed to the three sets of tracks, and put his own feet in one set, while Rick did the same with another set. From the position of the third set it was clear that the three men had faced each other.
Rick said excitedly, "They paused and bent over. But over what?"