Yes, there were toes in this animal's tracks—as plain as could be. So the scouts guessed every animal known, excepting the coyote and water-loving creatures. After many futile suggestions, they made a plaster cast of these tracks also.
"I'm going to carry this load back to camp, girls, and be ready for the next one you give me," announced Mr. Gilroy, starting to go down the trail.
The next two tracks, one that of a large-toed animal and the other of one whose tracks showed how the hair grew down low on the hind legs,—for the hair showed in several of the imprints made of plaster,—strangely ended near the bungalow, and on the other side of the hard trail again, they ran as far as the barnyard.
"I never saw the beat of it! Any one would think Gilly hung the bait on the barn door to entice the animals here," said Julie, who was angry at winding up at such a place three times running. Mr. Gilroy had to laugh in spite of himself.
"Say, where did you put that bait, anyway, Gilly?" demanded the scout leader, watching the man skeptically.
"Where we knew it would attract the best results."
"Gilly, I verily believe you are hoaxing us!" cried Julie. Mrs. Vernon smiled at her bright scout, but Mr. Gilroy shook his head protestingly.
"Why should I hoax any one? I was laughing at the way you brave scouts dodged when Joan said the animal they lost might be crouching on a bough of the trees."
"No, that wasn't what made you laugh." Then Julie went over and held a secret conference with her corporal and Ruth, and they, grinning, urged her to do as she suggested.
So Julie took a sample of the different casts made in the tracks, and left the others engaged in finding new and intricate tracks. Mr. Gilroy and the Captain were not taken into the three scouts' confidence, but they must have suspected where Julie proposed going, for soon after she had gone Mrs. Vernon said: