Jiminetty, but it was some wild place, all right. We had to go single file and tear away the brush so that we could get through. Tom Slade went ahead, because he can find a trail if there is one, and even if there isn’t he always knows how to go. The farther up we went, the worse it got. We couldn’t see the road at all on account of the thick woods below us. Gee, it was so still up there that it was sort of spooky. “I guess no white man ever trod this solemn wilderness before, as our young friend Scout Harris observed,” Harry said; “it gets worser and worser.” Just then Tom Slade stopped and we all stopped in his path. In about a jiffy he was down on the ground. Gee whiz, I knew what that meant, for I knew Tom Slade. “It’s a footprint,” he said. Just then we heard a sound right near us, just like branches crackling, and in a couple of seconds one of those bloodhounds from the Uncle Tom’s Cabin show came dashing up through the bushes. He pushed Tom Slade right out of the way and began sniffing that footprint. He was so excited that he didn’t notice us. XI—A MYSTERIOUS FOOTPRINT First it seemed kind of as if that bloodhound was just scooping; that means using something that another scout has found. If I should find a robin’s nest and then another scout should stalk there, that would be scooping. Gee whiz, that’s a mean thing to do. Up at Temple Camp a scout will get himself disliked for doing that. But it’s all right to stalk the cooking-shack. Pee-wee thinks he’s the only one who has a right to hang out there—I should worry. Anyway that has nothing to do with the bloodhound. Tom got out of his way, and we all stood about while the dog sniffed around the footprint, awful excited like. There wasn’t another footprint anywhere in sight. Brent said in that funny way of his, “Well, I guess we’re up against the real thing at last. I guess old Snoozer here is on the track of Eliza. Listen and maybe we’ll hear her baby crying. She always carries a baby with her when she puts one over on the bloodhounds, doesn’t she?” “You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted; “she always crosses the ice. Didn’t you see that big roll of canvas they’ve got? That’s got ice painted on it. They spread that on the stage and she runs across it with har—what-d’ye-call-it—her infant child.” “Her which?” Harry said. “I think she takes a thermos bottle, too, and an aluminum cooking set,” Brent said. Harry said, “Well, anyway, she has given old Snoozer the slip this time.” “That’s a man’s footprint,” Pee-wee said; “there’s a mystery up here.” “Let’s see it,” Rossie Bent said; “where is it?” “You make me sick!” the kid shouted. “How can you _see_ a mystery?” “You smell it, according to Snoozer,” Harry said; “this dog will have a fit in a minute.” By that time the dog was pushing every which way in among the bushes and every few seconds coming back to the footprint. “He seems to be kind of rattled.” That’s what Harry said.