“Say, you sleepy-headed coot!” he roared, flinging an empty milk-can at the still sleeping Dig. “What d’ye mean—sleeping like this? You never woke me up.” “Ugh! Huh?” demanded Dig. “You ought to thank me for that, then.” “You’d make a nice soldier!” “Never claimed to be a soldier, and didn’t expect to go soldiering when I came out on the trail with you,” declared Dig belligerently. “I guess you’ll find everything all right. And you slept just as hard as I did.” “Sha’n’t trust you to keep watch again,” said Chet. “Well, that’s a good thing! By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! I don’t want to keep watch.” But Chet was serious. He saw that the horses and the calf were safe. But when he went into the thicket, he saw that the dead wolf had been dragged away to a distance and there torn to bits. Only red bones and bits of fur remained. Then he remembered the haunches of venison left hanging to cool. He ran to the spot. Only a single ham hung in the top of a sapling. The others had been torn down. The tops of the saplings were broken, supposedly by the wolves as they leaped for the meat. At Chet’s first cry Dig came running. “Now you can see what was done while you slept,” said young Havens, with disgust. “Whew! The miserable, thieving beasts!” burst out Dig. “Wish I’d caught ’em at it—” “You were snoozing your head off,” was his chum’s accusation. “That’s when this happened.” He suddenly became silent, however. He bent over and examined the disturbed ground underneath the spot where the lost meat had hung. Then he glanced keenly all about. “Hold on, Dig,” he said softly, waving his chum back. “Don’t step in any nearer.” “What’s the matter?” queried his surprised friend. “See a wolf print that you know? An old friend, for instance?” “Wait,” begged Chet again. “I see something besides wolf-paw prints.” “What, for goodness’ sake?” demanded the other, startled. “The print of boots—men’s boots.” “Get out!” “I tell you at least one man has been here.” “Pshaw! our own footprints! You gave me a scare, Chet.” “No,” Chet said earnestly. “I see our marks. But a person with a much bigger foot has been here. See that? and that? Some stranger. I—I’m not sure that we have been robbed by wolves, after all, Dig.” “By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland” gasped the other boy. “What do you mean? Who could have robbed us? I don’t understand, Chet.” “Neither do I,” returned young Havens. “Don’t come this way and foul the marks any more. Let’s see where this fellow came from, and where he went to.” CHAPTER XVII—A MYSTERY Chet Havens had been an apt pupil of old Rafe Peters, the hunter who was now mine foreman at the Silent Sue; nor had he missed much that had been told him by other plainsmen. Trailing and hunting was a hobby with the boy, and each vacation for several years past he had spent the most of his time on hunting trips.