"But we must look for marks—tracks, Baldy calls them," said Teddy. "Tracks will tell us which way the Indians went," and so the children kept their eyes turned toward the sod as they rode along.
For a while they could see many marks in the soft ground—the marks of horses' feet, some shod with iron shoes and others bare, for on the prairie grass there is not the same need of iron shoes on the hoofs of horses as in the city, with its hard, paved streets. Then the marks were not so plain; and pretty soon, about a mile from the spring amid the rocks where the ground was quite hard, Teddy and Janet could see no marks at all.
"Which way do we go?" asked Ted's sister, as he called to his pony to stop. "Do you know the way?"
"No, I don't guess I do," he answered. "But anyhow we can ride along and maybe well see 'em."
"Yes, we can do that," Janet said.
It was still early in the afternoon, and the sun was shining brightly. They knew they were still on Uncle Frank's ranch, and, though they could not see the buildings any more, they could see the place where they had had a drink at the spring.
"All we've got to do, if we want to come back," observed Teddy, "is ride to the rocks and then we know the way home from there."
"Yes, that's easy," Janet said.
So they rode on and on.
Of course the Curlytops ought not to have done what they did, but they did not think, any more than Trouble thought when he opened the corral gate and let out the ponies.