Of course they laughed with her as they came to view her discovery upon the sand.  It was the mark of a human foot.

“And no savage, I’ll be bound,” said Helen.  “That is the mark of a mighty brogan.  A white man’s foot-covering, no less.  See!  There is another footprint.”

“He certainly was going away from here,” Jennie Stone observed.  “Who do you suppose he is?”

“I wonder if his eyes are blue and if he has a moustache?” queried Helen, languishingly.

“Bet he has whiskers and chews tobacco.  I known these Western men.  Bah!”

“Jennie takes all the romance out of it,” said Ruth, laughing.  “Now I don’t care to meet my Man Friday at all.”

They ate a picnic lunch before they rode out of the lovely canyon.  Mr. Hammond was always good company, and he exerted himself to be interesting to the three girls on this occasion.

“My!” Helen remarked to Jennie, “Ruth does make the nicest friends, doesn’t she?  See how much fun—­how many good times—­we have had through her acquaintanceship with Mr. Hammond.”

Jennie agreed.  But her attention was attracted just then to something entirely different.  She was staring up the cliff path that Mr. Hammond had praised as being just the natural landmark needed for the scene the company wished to picture.

“Did you see what I saw?” drawled the plump girl.  “Or am I thinking too, too much about mankind?”

“What is the matter with you?” demanded Helen.  “I didn’t see any man.”

“Not up that rocky way—­there!  A brown coat and a gray hat.  Did you see?”

“Ruth’s Man Friday!” ejaculated Helen.

“I shouldn’t wonder.  But we can’t prove it because we haven’t the size of yonder gentleman’s boot.  Humph I he is running away from us, all right.”

“Maybe he never saw us,” suggested Helen.

They called to Ruth and told her of the glimpse they had had of the stranger.

“And what did he run away for, do you suppose?” demanded Jennie.

“I am sure you need not ask me,” said Ruth.  “What did he look like?”

“I did not see his face,” said Jennie.  She repeated what she had already said to Helen about the stranger’s gray hat and brown coat.

Ruth looked somewhat troubled and made no further comment Of course, the coat and hat were probably like the coat and hat of numberless other men in the West.  But the last time Ruth had seen Dakota Joe Fenbrook, that individual had been wearing a broad-brimmed gray sombrero and a brown duck coat.

CHAPTER XXIII

REALITY

Ruth Fielding was not a coward.  She had already talked so much about Dakota Joe that she was a little ashamed to bring up the subject again.  So she made no comment upon the man in the brown coat and gray hat that Jennie Stone declared she had seen climbing the path up the canyon wall.