“Because he was a dare-devil,” said Roy.
Mr. Ellsworth stood silently as Tom and Roy started up the trail. It led them, as they had supposed it would, to a broader path by which the hill could be surmounted. Here were indistinct footprints at intervals. Why they were not regular Tom could not imagine.
“Why didn’t the fellow go this way, I wonder?” Roy said.
“You answered that yourself,” Tom answered.
They were now upon the summit and could look down and see the two boats side by side in the lake. It was a dizzy height. Behind them was a broad, flat plateau which became a gentle slope and fell away into the lower country beyond. The path crossed this and here the footprints were plainer and more regular. Then they verged from the path and were difficult to follow amid the sparse vegetation of the plateau.
A few yards and they ended abruptly at a point where there was a little disturbance of the earth and what Tom and Roy thought to be the imprints, very faint, of rubber tires.
“There must have been an auto here,” said Roy.
“It must have been one of those motor-cycle affairs with a kind of a baby carriage alongside it,” said Tom. “Those prints are too close together for a regular auto.”
“How could an auto or a motor-cycle get up here, anyway?” queried Roy.
From the spot where they happened to be, they could just manage to trace a second line of footprints coming from another direction.