A whistle brought the rest of the party to his side. A cave always holds possibilities, if nothing else. Blackstock spread his men out again, at intervals of three or four paces, and all went cautiously up the steep, converging on the entrance. Blackstock, in the centre, shielding himself behind a knob of rock, peered in.
The place was empty. It was hardly a cave, indeed, being little more than a shallow recess beneath an overhanging ledge. But it was well sheltered by a great branch which stretched upwards across the opening. Blackstock sniffed critically.
“A bear’s den,” he announced, stepping in and scrutinizing the floor.
The floor was naked rock, scantily littered with dead leaves and twigs. These, Blackstock concluded, had been recently disturbed, but he could find no clue to what had disturbed them. From the further side, however—to Blackstock’s right—a palpable trail, worn clear of moss and herbage, led off by a narrow ledge across the face of the knoll. Half a dozen paces further on the rock ended in a stretch of stiff soil. Here the trail declared itself. It was unmistakably that of a bear, and unmistakably, also, a fresh trail.
Waving the rest to stop where they were, Blackstock followed the clear trail down from the knoll, and for a couple of hundred yards along the level, going very slowly, and searching it hawk-eyed for some sign other than that of bear. At length he returned, looking slightly crestfallen.
“Nawthin’ at all but bear,” he announced in an injured voice. “But that bear seems to have been in a bit of a hurry, as if he was gittin’ out o’ somebody’s way—Black Dan’s way, it’s dollars to doughnuts. But where was Black Dan, that’s what I want to know?”
“Ef you don’t know, Tug,” said MacDonald, “who kin know?”
“Jim!” said the Deputy, rubbing his lean chin and biting off a big “chaw” of “blackjack.”
“Jim’s sure some dawg,” agreed MacDonald. “That was the only fool thing I ever know’d ye to do, Tug—sendin’ Jim after Black Dan that way.”
Blackstock swore, softly and intensely, though he was a man not given to that form of self-expression.