After I had gone a little further, I came plunk on a whole line of them along the path. I wasn’t exactly scared, but anyway, they made me feel sort of funny, because they were so big and printed so plain. The animal that made those tracks must have been a pretty big animal, I knew that. Then, all of a sudden, I discovered something else. Some of the prints had five toe marks and some of them only four. Maybe that means the animal was lame, I said to myself, and doesn’t make a full print with one of its feet. But in a minute I had sense enough to see that wasn’t the way it was, because there were always two of one kind pretty close together and then two of the other kind pretty close together. This is the way it was; there was a five toe print then another one about a foot in back of it, then about three or four feet in back of that a couple more about a foot apart with only four toe marks. Good night! I They had me all flabbergasted. Pretty soon they left the path altogether and I looked in the bushes for hairs, but I couldn’t find a single one. “Anyway,” I said to myself, “one thing sure, that animal has five toes on his front feet and only four on his hind feet and I never saw any tracks like that before or even pictures of them.” I wasn’t exactly scared, but just the same I was kind of glad when I got to the village. CHAPTER VII I MEET THE STRANGER Anyway, that was the smallest village I ever saw to have such big tracks right near it. All I could see was two houses and the post office, and the post office was so small that you could almost put your arm down the chimney and open the front door. But, one thing sure, you could buy everything you wanted in that post office. You could buy a plough or a lollypop or anything. It smelled kind of like corn inside. I got some lead sinkers and some crackers and a couple of chops for Charlie Seabury, because it makes him thirsty to eat fish—that’s what he says. The man didn’t have any mosquito dope, but there were some boxes of fly paper on the counter and I just happened to think that if we stayed in our bivouac camp the next morning, it might be good to have some on account of the flies at dinner time. So I bought a box full. Then I said to the man, “I guess there are wild animals around here.” He said, “Wall, I reckon thar daon’t be many no more. Yer ain’t expectin’ ter catch ’em with fly paper, be yer?” “Just the same,” I told him, “I saw the tracks of one that must be big enough to eat this whole village. You’d better put the village in the safe before you go home. Safety first.” You can bet I know how to jolly if it comes to jollying. “I want to get some rope, too,” I told him. He just leaned back and pushed his great big straw hat to the back of his head and looked over his spectacles and began to grin. He kept his spectacles ’way down near the end of his nose.