“Yes, sir! He just cut in from the hill to the river. He—” Suddenly Johnny broke off to peer upstream.
“Something moving up there,” he whispered. “Maybe—”
But the otters had smelled the fox tracks and were off on swift tracking feet. Johnny bent over to examine those tracks.
“It’s the old fellow or his brother,” he murmured. “No other fox around here has such large feet. Boy! He’s a humdinger!”
Once more his keen eyes swept the upper reaches of the river. “Huh!” he grunted. “Whatever that was, it’s vanished now.”
“Might as well follow the otters,” Lawrence suggested.
They did follow. Soft-footed in silence they tracked on for a mile. Up banks and down again, over a ridge, back to the river. “Look at those feathers!” Lawrence whispered.
“Got a ptarmigan,” said Johnny. “After that he should have made a bee line for his lair.”
That was just what the fox had done. Straight as an arrow he had returned to the stream, then he had sped away along its course until he came to a huge gray rock. There the trail ended. And beneath this rock, according to the verdict of the two singing otters, he must still lie fast asleep.
“Good old otters!” Lawrence exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.