'Not necessarily,' maintained Longstreet eagerly. 'Reasoning from
the scant evidence before us, a man would say that while the stranger
may have left his camp to hurry on, he may on the other hand have just
dodged back when he heard us coming and hidden somewhere close by.'

Again Howard pondered briefly.

'There are other signs you did not see,' he said in a moment. 'The
soil where he had his horse staked out shows tracks, and they are the
tracks of a horse going some from the first jump. Horse and man took
the straightest trail and went ripping through a patch of mesquite that
a man would generally go round. Then there's something else. Want to
see?'

They went with him, the professor with alacrity, Helen with a studied
pretence at indifference. By the spring where Helen had found the
willow rod and the bluebird feather, Howard stopped and pointed down.

'There's a set of tracks for you,' he announced triumphantly. 'Suppose
you spell 'em out, professor; what do you make of them?'

The professor studied them gravely. In the end he shook his head.

'Coyote?' he suggested.

Howard shook his head.

'No coyote,' he said with positiveness. 'That track shows a foot four
times as big as any coyote's that ever scratched fleas. Wolf? Maybe.
It would be a whopper of a wolf at that. Look at the size of it, man!