"Oh, Tommy!" Harriet laughed merrily. "Is that all?"
"I was thinking the same thing," chuckled the guide. "Wish I could bend over like that. But don't bother us, little one. This is our busy night, and right serious business it is, too." The laughter disappeared from his face and Janus bent low to his task.
The others of the party had either seated themselves on the ground or leaned against trees. They chatted while the guide and Harriet Burrell sought for the true trail, but it was not very encouraging work.
The two torches flickered and smoked weirdly, now and then becoming mere glows like distant lamps in a fog, as the bearer slipped behind a tree or was masked by an intervening growth of bushes whose foliage was very thick and dense.
"Oh, Mr. Grubb, who of our party has brass-headed tacks in his boot heels?" called Harriet.
"I have. Why?"
"I found a heel mark that gave me that impression," answered Harriet laughingly.
"Well, I swum!"
"It was a guess about their being brass-headed, though," she admitted.
"You would have made a prize sheriff, Little Brownie," declared the guide, gazing at her admiringly. "If I'd had you to nose the trail when I was after Red Tacy and Charlie Valdes it wouldn't have taken me a matter of two months to get them."