Then the call came again not more than a hundred feet ahead of us, and as quick as I had been scared, I wasn’t again, for this time it did sound exactly like a loon.
In a jiffy we all felt better and said so to each other. The newest broken twig right beside us was pointing in the direction the sound came from, so we decided there was probably a lake right close by which is where loons nearly always are—out on some lake somewhere swimming along like ducks, and diving and also screaming bloody murder to their mates.
We all swished along, being very careful to look at the broken twigs so we’d remember what they looked like when we got ready to come back, which we planned we’d do after awhile.
My fat goat and I were walking together ahead of my Man Friday and my acrobatic goat. We dodged out way around fallen tree trunks and old stumps and around wild rose bushes and also wild raspberry patches and chokecherries, and still there wasn’t any lake anywhere.
It certainly was a queer feeling we had though, as we dodged along, talking about our mystery and wondering where we were going, and how soon we would get there.
“’Tsfunny how come Circus found that envelope back there with only a blank piece of white paper in it,” I said. “Do you s’pose the kidnapper dropped it when he left the little Ostberg girl there?”
“I suppose—why sure, he did,” Poetry said.
“How come the police didn’t find it there then, when they searched the place last week for clues. If it’d been there then, wouldn’t they have found it?” I asked those two questions as fast as I could ’cause that envelope in my pocket seemed like it was hot and would burn a hole in my shirt any minute.
Poetry’s fat forehead frowned. He was as struck as I was, over the mystery.
All our minds were as blank as the blank letter and not a one of us could think of anything that would make it make sense, so we went on, following our trail of broken twigs. It was fun what we were doing, and we didn’t feel very scared ’cause we knew the kidnapper was in jail. In fact, we were all thrilled with the most interesting excitement we’d had in a long time, ’cause for some reason we were sure we might find something terribly interesting at the end of the trail—if we ever came to it—not knowing that we’d not only find something very interesting but would bump into an experience even more exciting and thrilling than the ones we’d already had on our camping trip—and one that was just as dangerous.