AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT
Hervey picked his way among the rocks, looking here and there in the
crevices and upon the intervening ground as if he had lost something. A
more random quest could scarcely be imagined. Tom watched him for a few
minutes, then took the shorter way to camp with his little charge.
Hervey followed the rocky ledge for about fifty yards to a point where
the dry bed of a stream came winding down out of the mountain. It ran in
a tiny canyon between two rocks and so out upon the level fields to the
south where the camp lay.
The twilight was well advanced now, the last vivid patches were mellowed
into a pervading gray, which seemed to cover the rocks and woods like a
mantle. Clad in this somber robe, the wooded height which rose to the
north seemed the more forbidding. Not a sound was to be heard but the
voice of a whip-poor-will somewhere. Even Hervey's buoyant nature was
subdued by the solemn stillness.
Suddenly something between the two rocks caught his eye. The caked earth
looked as if a narrow board had been drawn over it. Bordering this broad
line, about half an inch from it on either side, were two narrow fancy
lines--or at least that is what Hervey called them. Examining these
carefully, he saw that they were made up of tiny, diagonal lines. In the
place where this ran between the rocks, in the deep shadow, these
singular marks were surprisingly legible, and bore not a little the
appearance of a border design. The big stones formed a sort of shadow
box, causing the markings to appear in bold relief.
Hervey knew nothing of the freakish influence of light on tracks and
trails, but he saw here something which he knew had been made by a
moving object. The continuous design was so nearly perfect that it
seemed like the work of human beings, but Hervey knew that it could
hardly be this.
What, then, was it?
Where the lines emerged from between the rocks the marking was less
regular and less clear, but plain enough in the damp, crusted earth
which covered the mud in the old stream bed.
With heart bounding with joy and elation, Hervey followed the bed of the
stream. The tracks, or whatever they were, were so clear that he could
keep to the side of the muddy area and still see them.
It was characteristic of him that having made this great discovery, he
did not trouble himself about the direction he was taking. In point of
fact he was going in a southwesterly direction toward the camp.
For perhaps a quarter of a mile the strange markings were clearly
legible in the dusk, running as they did in the yielding caked surface
of the stream bed. They were as clear as tracks in caked snow. Then the
path of the dried up waterway petered out in an area of rocks and
pebbles and beyond that there was no clearly defined way; the brook had
evidently trickled down into the lower land taking the path of least
resistance among the rocks.
No doubt Tom Slade could have followed that water path to its end, but
Hervey was puzzled, baffled. Yet the enthusiasm which carried him, as
though on wings, to his triumphs was aroused now. He had the prophecy of
Tom Slade to strengthen his determination. He must make good for Tom's
sake now, as well as for the sake of his troop. He had told Tom that if
he only once found a trail, nothing would stop him--_nothing_. Very
fine. All that talk about there being something higher than the Eagle
award was nonsense, and Tom Slade knew it was nonsense. "He said I'd do
it, and I'm going to," Hervey muttered to himself.
Hervey had no patience with obstacles, he must be always moving, so now
he began frantically scrutinizing the ground to see if he could find
some sign of the marks which had eluded him. Since he could no longer
distinguish the stream bed, he looked for some sign of those marks
outside the stream bed.
And presently he was rewarded by the discovery of tracks, animal tracks
sure enough, without any ribbon, so to speak, printed between them.
There they were upon the hard, bare earth, two lines of claw marks,
continuing to a point where they disappeared again at the edge of a
close cropped field. Evidently his mysterious predecessor had known just
where he wished to go and had forsaken the stream bed when it no longer
went in his direction. These were no aimless tracks, they were the
tracks of a creature that had particular business in the southwest, and
that knew how to get there.