They did so, but with the same results. Each pack was filled with stones, and, in some instances, pieces of wood, parts of limbs of trees, dirt, shale and the like.
"Oh, my stars, what a mess!" cried Crazy Jane.
"Did you not say that our equipment was perfectly safe here?" demanded Miss Elting, turning sharply on the guide.
"I—I thought it was, Miss."
"Then how do you explain this?" she asked with a comprehensive wave of the hand.
"I don't explain it. I swum! I don't know what to think about it. I wish I could get my hands on the scoundrel."
Miss Elting sat down to think. "It is plain that we have been followed into the mountains. The man whom Hazel saw at the 'Slide' undoubtedly is the one who has been causing us all the trouble. He may have been hovering about us all the time, we knowing nothing about it. I am afraid we aren't very clever, girls. We have allowed our enemy to outwit us."
"I don't believe he has, Miss Elting," replied Harriet. "If so, he has been watching us from a distance. We surely should have discovered if the man had come close to our camp."
"It must have been the man that Hazel saw, and I believe he was the one who dropped the green goggles," was Harriet's emphatic declaration. "I wonder what his grievance is?"
"All our stuff gone; we'll have to go back, won't we?" mourned Margery.