The High School Boys' Fishing Trip Part 41

"Even if our strange fellow was here, he is here no longer, and moreover, he has succeeded in getting away without leaving any trace," young Holmes continued. "So I'm going to join the delegation that returns to camp."

Only d.i.c.k and Dave were left standing there by the cleft rock.

The sun had sunk below the horizon, but the light was still strong.

"If you fellows had taken it easily, as I asked," complained Dave, "we might have gotten hold of that elusive chap. To me he looked hungry. I thought he was eyeing our camp longingly, as though he'd like to stroll down and ask us for food. But that startling charge of the light brigade must have bewildered or frightened him---and so he went up in smoke, as he has always done when we've sighted him.

"It wouldn't surprise me if we could find which way he has gone,"

whispered Prescott.

"What do you mean?"

"Look where I'm pointing with the toe of my boot," d.i.c.k went on.

"I'm looking."

"Do you see anything?"

"The earth."

"Look harder!"

Down went Darry to his knees.

"Look out," warned d.i.c.k, "or you'll obliterate it."

"And I was bragging of my good eyesight," grunted Darry. "Why, this is a footprint, and none of our crowd saw it."

"Besides, it's the print of a bare foot," Prescott went on. "You see the way in which it is pointing?"

"Yes; toward that patch of low bushes yonder. But our chap couldn't have run through those low bushes, or we'd have seen him."

"Yes; if he had been holding himself erect."

"Or even had he crouched and run," Dave affirmed.

"Dave Darrin, you've played baseball, if my recollection serves me correctly."

"Of course."

"Did you ever slide for a base?"

"What-----"

"Or see anyone else slide for base?"

"Then our man-----"

"He held himself low and ran as far as the bushes," d.i.c.k went on. "Then he fell and slid for it through the low bushes. See, here's the second print of a bare foot, and the direction is the same."

"Don't tell our mutton-head chums about it," Darrin begged. "Let's follow it up ourselves."

"All right," nodded d.i.c.k; "but if we find our fellow, don't let him suspect that we've reached his hiding place and know it.

We'll just see what we can find out, and not give ourselves away."

"Go ahead," begged Darry.

"Remember, I'm not certain that we can find the fellow's hiding place before dark. It may be some distance from here. We'll try, though, and hope for luck."

d.i.c.k sauntered easily along in the direction indicated by the two footprints.

As they entered the patch of low bushes both boys noted the fact that the ground had been slightly disturbed, as it might have been by the sliding of a human body over it.

d.i.c.k, whose eyes were keener, easily followed the marks on the ground. Indeed, he did so without appearing to pay much heed to the earth under his feet.

Then the trailers pa.s.sed three trees, behind which the escaping man might have found good cover.

A hundred yards further on Dave and d.i.c.k entered the edge of a grove of trees. Here there were also several rather thick tangles of brush and bush.

Well inside of one clump Dave, with a start, fancied he saw something that looked like a wall woven of green leaves. But d.i.c.k was trudging on ahead. Prescott continued in the lead for another quarter of a mile before he turned.

"You pa.s.sed the one real sign," murmured Darry at last.

"I know I did," agreed d.i.c.k, "and we're going back wide of that place. You mean the jungle where you saw a bit of what looked like the brush-woven wall of a bush hut?"

"Yes," a.s.sented Darrin.

"It's a well-hidden place," declared d.i.c.k, "and I don't so much wonder that we didn't find it before. But now we'll go back to camp."

"And what next?"

"I don't know," Prescott confessed, looking puzzled. "We really haven't any right to pounce on the man unless we catch him doing something. Anyone has a right to lead the wild life in the woods, unless he's a criminal or a lunatic."

"My vote is that our chap is a lunatic," suggested Darry.

"If he is, then he's a harmless one, anyway. Let's go back, by a roundabout way, and tell the fellows."

"There are four pin-heads in this camp," was Tom Reade's decision, when he heard the report brought back by the others. "Only two of us have brains enough to see anything that's written right on the face of the earth."

"But what are we going to do about our man?" asked Greg.

"That's what we must figure out," d.i.c.k replied. "I don't see that we can do anything except send word to the authorities down in the village, and let them act as they see fit."

"What authorities are there in the village?" Dave inquired.

"I don't know. That we'll have to find out. We-----"

d.i.c.k paused suddenly, listening keenly.