They scrutinized the ground minutely. It seemed normal enough. There was absolutely no sign that the earth had been disturbed.
Rick picked up a handful of soil and examined it. "Dirt," he said. "Plain dirt. Why was it so interesting to the spooks?"
"Try your lens," Scotty reminded him.
Rick did so. The lens showed the usual combination of mineral and organic matter of various sizes and colors. "I can't see anything unusual," he reported. "Maybe the lens isn't powerful enough. I'll take a sample and look at it under the microscope later." He found a scrap of paper in his wallet and folded a bit of dirt into it.
"Let's continue," Scotty urged.
They worked their way across the cornfield, following the tracks. Twice more they found places where the ghosts had paused to confer about something, or examine something.
Then, at the edge of the cornfield, they lost the tracks in a rank growth of weeds. Probably the ghosts had trampled the weeds last night, but they had sprung up again and left no trace of the passage.
Scotty took the lead. "I'll show you where the car was parked."
They traveled through alternate weeds and hay to where the hilltop dropped away rapidly to a valley about three hundred feet below. This marked the end of the igneous outcropping in which the lead mine was located, Rick guessed. The hill was steep, and overgrown with blackberry bushes.
"I got caught a thousand times in as many feet last night," Scotty commented. "It's easy by day, but don't try it by night." He led the way through clear spaces between the thorny patches, always going downhill.