“That’s a queer way of saying it, Arthur,” laughed Hugh, “but it covers the ground, I think. You mean the field keeps on getting larger the more our horizon is extended, which is what one writer says. Come on then, we’ll leave the bear to finish his bread, and lick up the crumbs. I had thought to have a share of that brown loaf myself, but it went in a good cause and I don’t feel sorry.”
With the scout master leading them and all bending low so as to keep a close watch on the tracks, they started forth. None of them could tell just where that trail might take them,—a dozen possibilities opened up before their mental vision. If they thought anything at all, possibly Billy and Arthur were convinced that the foreigner may have wanted to get rid of his charge, and had thus basely abandoned the poor bear to its fate. Then again there was a chance that in going to town he may have been arrested for some trivial thing, and was even then languishing in the lockup, unable to make the police understand that his performing bear would starve unless some one went up to Cedar Hill to relieve the animal’s wants.
Several times Hugh did call a temporary halt. He had come upon some phase of the trail that might have mystified a greenhorn, but which proved no puzzle to him, because of his wide experience in these things. And he took pleasure in explaining to his comrades what the combination meant.
“It seems that the fellow might be trying to blind anybody that chanced to be following his tracks,” Hugh once told his mates. “Three times now he’s even gone to the trouble to walk along a fallen tree trunk, and jump from the further end. If I didn’t know the old Indian dodge, it would have fooled me, too.”
“And I never heard about such a game,” admitted Arthur, while Billy nodded his head acknowledging the same thing.
“But whatever do you think he wants to do that for, Hugh?” the last named asked.
“I don’t know, Billy,” replied the patrol leader thoughtfully. “Seems to me he might be following a series of marks somehow, for look here at this plain ‘blaze’ on this tree, made at least several months ago, perhaps even last year. Now, it might be possible that the man has got a secret cache somewhere around, where he keeps his valuables; and whenever he finds himself in this neighborhood he goes there to add to the hoard, looking to the time when he thinks he will have enough saved to go back home with. And he has made a secret trail from where he left his bear to this hiding place.”
“Yes, but while that sounds all to the good, Hugh,” protested Billy, “why should he stay away so long?”
“We’ll hope to find that out before we’re done,” Hugh told them; “that is, fellows, if you don’t say you’ve had enough of this tracking game, and want to call it off.”
Both the others immediately vigorously protested that they were not dreaming of such a thing; that they stood ready to back the scout master up, even if they had to continue this rambling around up and down among the rough places of the mountain until dark set in.