“That’s a man’s footprint,” Pee-wee said; “there’s a mystery up here.”
“Let’s see it,” Rossie Bent said; “where is it?”
“You make me sick!” the kid shouted. “How can you see a mystery?”
“You smell it, according to Snoozer,” Harry said; “this dog will have a fit in a minute.”
By that time the dog was pushing every which way in among the bushes and every few seconds coming back to the footprint.
“He seems to be kind of rattled.” That’s what Harry said.
Pretty soon the dog went running through the bushes out into a big open space that was just about on the top of the mountain. We found out afterward that that was why the mountain was named Bald Head. Gee whiz, he seemed rattled. He’d stop for a couple of seconds and look all around, then start off all of a sudden, then stop again.
Brent said, “Eliza’s got his goat this time. Look at old Tomasso there; he’s mad because Snoozer took his job.”
I looked at Tom Slade (because that’s whom he meant) and I saw that he was kind of picking among the bushes over to one side of the big open space. So I went over to where he was and I said, “Tom, what do you think about it? I always thought a bloodhound could follow any trail. That’s a fresh footprint too, isn’t it? But maybe that dog isn’t a real bloodhound, hey?”
Tom said, “He’s a real bloodhound, all right, but I don’t think he’ll find anything.”