he identified the weapon as having been the one used by Ned Rector.

The course he was taking, if followed, would eventually take him out
of the mountains into the open country. Perhaps through some
instinct, the boy understood this and was seeking to gain the open
where he would soon get food and directions for continuing his
journey.

They found no other trace of the one they were looking for, however.

All that day and the next they drew the net slowly over that portion
of the Ozark range that cut through the southwestern part of the
state.

"I guess we shall have to give it up," confided the leader to Tad.

"Oh, no, we can't do that," objected the lad hastily. "We simply must
find Ned and the Professor."

"If you can show me the way how or where, I wish you would then. We
are only a few miles from the mining camp. I'll wager a jack rabbit
couldn't have gotten through our lines, so we'd have been pretty
likely to have rounded up a man on a pony or a boy on foot. Don't you
think so?"

Tad was forced to admit that this was true.

"It's my idea that neither of them is in the range now, at all. If
they are, they're below the Red Star--gone by the place entirely."