Finding an Old Friend

It's a beautiful sunny morning. The two boys join the men for an early breakfast and they all set out on the trip in high spirits. They have sleeping bags and camping gear for the stay overnight, and enough provisions and gadgetry to do whatever appeals to them in the way of fishing, hunting, or hiking.

None of them are seasoned riders, and the trail is not a well used one; it's almost overgrown. They have to constantly lean back and forth to avoid tree limbs, and that gets very tiresome. Jack has difficulty understanding how he and his friends could have done this so many times, and it didn't seem so long or so hard.

They arrive at the stopover point in plenty of time, however. And the boys take the opportunity to do some exploring before dark. They run around looking for animals, and for tracks and spoor.

They find a place where some creature must have slept. There is a flattened space in the grass about four feet round, with broken twigs, and bits of hair, and what look like bone splinters scattered about.

The senior partners are quickly called in, and they don't know what to make of this finding. They're all scrounging around looking for more clues, when Victor finds some droppings. The droppings obviously belong with the bedding lair, but they look for all the world like human stool.

Siem, "Well, I've never seen anything like that before, have you? Some demented savage? A wild boy, a wolf boy?"