"Lee-Enfield, .303," declared Beverley, picking up and sniffing at the brass cylinder. "Fired recently; I can smell burnt cordite distinctly. We're on the trail."
Twenty yards farther on the shelving ground was stained by a quantity of blood, the dark-red stain continuing at regular intervals.
"Good enough," remarked Villiers. "Young Dick shot a pig and wounded it pretty badly. The brute got away and he followed it."
"Hope to goodness it isn't Dick's blood," said Bobby anxiously. "The youngster might have put a bullet through his leg or arm by accident."
"If so, he would have turned back," reasoned Jack; "no, it's a wounded pig's trail."
Two hundred yards farther on they stumbled over the body of the victim of Dick's rifle.
The animal was stone dead. On examination the two men discovered two bullet-wounds. One, a fairly-deep one in the pig's flank, had accounted for its comparatively long flight before collapsing through loss of blood. The other, obviously fired at close range, had passed completely through the pig's head.
"So Master Dick, instead of administering the coup de grâce in the orthodox manner, wasted another cartridge on the animal," commented Villiers. "The pig's been dead for at least three or four hours. Now, what's the next move?"
The narrow path, evidently the "runway" of a porcine herd, terminated abruptly at what appeared to be a cul-de-sac.
"He retraced his steps," declared Beverley.