Page:The Boy Land Boomer.djvu/138

128 and can run it putty good. You go ahead with the regular trail."

The trail left by Yellow Elk ran down along the edge of the stream for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, then it came out on a series of flat rocks and was lost to view.

Pawnee Brown came to a halt. Had Yellow Elk crossed the stream, or doubled on the trail and gone back?

Dismounting, he got down upon his hands and knees and examined the last hoofprints with extreme care.

The examination lasted for fully ten minutes. No white man could follow a trail better than this leader of the boomers, yet for the time being he was baffled.

Yellow Elk had led the horses into the water, but the trail did not extend across the stream.

"He's an artful dodger!" mused Pawnee Brown, when of a sudden he became silent.

A faint scratching, as of tree bark, had come to his ears. The noise was but a short distance away.

"Some animal," he thought. "No human being would make such a sound as that."

Another ten seconds of painful silence followed. The scratching sound had just been resumed when Bonnie Bird wheeled about as if on a pivot.