Harry said, “Well, as Scout Harris says, it’s a mystery. Somebody was up here before us, that’s sure. There’s no use trying to dope it out, I suppose. Let’s send the signal. Our friends down below will think we’re lost.”
All the while Tom Slade was sort of wandering around that rocky open space on the top of the mountain. A couple of times he looked over to where we were as if he was kind of thinking. Most of the time he looked at the ground and the flat rocks. I knew he had some idea in his head, all right.
Pretty soon he came strolling over and said sort of offhand like, “Let’s follow these broken bushes in a ways.”
“Nobody went through here, Tom,” Rossie said; “if they had there’d be footprints. Let’s get busy with the smudge signal.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” Tom said.
“Every minute is precious, Tommy boy,” Harry told him.
“Sure, let’s go in,” Brent said; “I’m for adventure every time. You never can tell; come ahead.”
So we all followed Tom in. The brush was awful thick and I kept tearing it apart down near the ground, hunting for footprints, but I couldn’t find a single one. The brush wasn’t even broken above, either, after we had gone a few feet and Tom just pushed around without any signs to go by, all the while squinting his eyes into the bushes and poking the underbrush with his feet.
Pretty soon, good night, Pee-wee gave a shout. “I see it! I see it!” he yelled. “The mystery is solved! I know why there isn’t any man’s footprint here. It was an animal that came through! There he is now—it’s a zebra!”
“A which?” Harry said.