“It means the trail runs through here,” I said; “and that crazy fool of an Uncle Tom’s Cabin dog can’t follow the scent across that bare place. He’s just an actor, that’s all that bloodhound is. All he’s good for is chasing Eliza.” Tom just took the rag from me and looked at it. “Well then, if the trail runs through here, where are the footprints?” he asked me. “And the dog doesn’t seem to think it’s worth bothering about,” he said. “You admit somebody went through here?” I shouted at him. “Oh, somebody went through here, all right,” he said. “And didn’t leave any footprints and didn’t leave any scent,” I came back at him. “Only a rag,” he said. By that time the fellows had reached the place where we were. “What’s the big idea?” Harry said. “What have you got there?” Brent said, “As I _live_, it’s a piece of Eliza’s dress. The plot grows thicker.” “There isn’t a footprint here,” I told them. “She must have slid on the ice,” Brent said. “I’m going to drag that dog over here by the collar,” Rossie spoke up. “It’s a mystery,” Pee-wee shouted; “it’s a deep, dark mystery. We’ve got to solve it—I mean penetrate it.” Gee whiz, that kid was more excited than the dog. XII—A DISCOVERY We all just stood there not knowing what to think. I could tell that Tom Slade had some kind of an idea, but you never catch that fellow shouting out about anything till he’s sure. Even when he was a tenderfoot in the troop he was that way. It seemed mighty funny that we should find just one footprint in those bushes, but maybe there weren’t any more across that open space because it was hard and rocky. Anyway, the scent led out into that open space, that was sure. Then on the opposite side of the open space the bushes were broken and there was a rag hanging to one of them. Yet we couldn’t get that dog to go all the way across and take up the scent where we found the rag. That was the funny thing. It was funny that there weren’t any footprints under those bushes where the rag was hanging, too. Believe _me_, Pee-wee was right, it was a mystery. Pretty soon the dog began following the scent back and Will Dawson went after him. In about ten minutes he came up again and said that the dog had followed it as far as a brook where there was a willow tree. He said the dog got rattled there just the same as he did on the summit. So he studied the place carefully and saw that there was a branch of the tree that stuck out over the water and he swung himself across and then back again by that. So he decided that was probably what the man had done on his way up the mountain. So you see that trail was cut in two places.