“Why, this is as plain as a strip of carpet!” muttered

Bob to himself.  “If this is his idea of a dim trail, I’d like to see a good one!”

He had not ridden far, however, before, in crossing a tiny trickle of water, he could not fail to notice a clear-cut, recent hoof print.  The mark was that of a barefoot horse.  Bob stared at it.

“Now if I were real good,” he reflected, “like old what-you-may-call-him—­the Arabian Sherlock Holmes—­I’d be able to tell whether this horse was loose and climbing for pasture, or carrying a rider, and if so, whether the rider had ever had his teeth filled.  There’s been a lot of travel on this trail, anyway.  I wonder where it all went to?” He paused irresolutely.  “It isn’t more than two jumps back to the rock,” he decided; “I’ll just find out what direction they take anyway.”

Accordingly he retraced his steps to the bald rock, and commenced an examination of its circumference to determine where the trail led away.  He found no such exit.  Save from the direction of his own camp the way was closed either by precipitous sides or dense brush.  The conclusion was unavoidable that those who had travelled the trail, had either ended their journeys at the bald rock or actually taken to the bed of the river.

“Well,” concluded Bob, “I’m enough of a sleuth to see that that barefoot horse had a rider and wasn’t just looking pasture.  No animal in its senses would hike uphill and then hike down again, or wade belly deep up a stream.”

Puzzling over this mystery, he again took his way down the trail.  He found it easy to follow, for it had been considerably travelled.  In some places the brush had been cut back to open easier passage.  Examining these cuttings, Bob found their raw ends only slightly weathered.  All this might have been done by the men who had staked the mineral claims, to be sure, but even then Bob found it difficult to reconcile all the facts.  In the first place, the trail had indubitably been much used since the time the claims were staked.  In the second place, if the prospector had wished to conceal anything, it should have been the fact of his going to the Basin at all, not his whereabouts after arriving there.  In other words, if desiring to keep his presence secret, he would have blinded the beginning of the trail rather than its end.

He kept a sharp lookout.  Near the entrance to the canon he managed to discover another clear print of the barefoot horse, but headed the other way.  Clearly the rider had returned.  Bob had hunted deer enough to recognize that the track had been made within the last twenty-four hours.

At Sycamore Flats he was treated to further surprises.  Martin, of whom he bought his supplies, at first greeted him with customary joviality.

“Hullo! hullo!” he cried; “quite a stranger!  Out in camp, eh?”

“Yes,” said Bob, “they’ve got us working for a change.”