It was known just where Williams and his companions expected to spend their first night, having started at noon, so none of them felt any necessity for trying to follow the trail until that point had been reached. All through the morning they moved on, and as noon approached drew near the place where the camp had been mapped out. "That much is settled, Dick, you see!" ventured Roger, as he pointed to where the dead ashes of a fire were visible, there having been no high wind to blow them broadcast. "Yes, they spent the first night here," admitted the other, "and so they must have just two and a half days the jump of us." "That's a long start," grumbled Roger. "Well, we expect to keep on the move each day longer than they will," explained the other. "Then again, they may find some place so much to their liking they would conclude to spend a couple of days there hunting or trapping. Jasper is always one to say a 'bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'; and those stories about the wonderful valley that is haunted by the spirits may turn out to be fairy tales after all." "And now the real work begins, when we have to follow this trail," added Roger, who acted as though he did not want to lose a single minute. "That is not going to be such a hard problem, I should think," Dick told him. "In the first place, they will not try to hide their trail very much, because they do not expect hostile Indians to follow them; though at night, of course, they will take every precaution against a surprise. And then again, Roger, we know something about trailing, while Mayhew, here, has not his equal in our camp, so Captain Clark told me." Mayhew did not hear this, for he was busy looking around the camp, examining the cold ashes, and in various ways picking up little details that an ordinary person would never have been able to discover. "Unless--well, I might as well own up, Dick," said Roger. "I've been wondering whether after all that tricky Lascelles would be satisfied to go away from here after destroying our paper. He might know about Jasper Williams's trip to the Wonderland the Indians tell about, and try to capture him, so as to keep him from signing another paper for us." Dick shook his head as though he did not believe such a thing could be possible. "It _might_ happen that way, Roger, but I feel pretty sure we're well rid of that rascal. Let us keep the one thing before us to find Jasper, and fetch him back to camp again in time to start afresh." "There, Benjamin is beckoning to us, Dick; he is ready to start off," and Roger eagerly obeyed the finger of the guide, for he was anxious to be on the move. They did not even stop to make a fire and cook anything at noon, but munched some food that had been brought along with them. Roger begrudged even a ten-minute stop, when it was not absolutely necessary.