The boys walked slowly along until Bob spotted a track in the bare earth near the rim of the ski slope. He pulled out a paperback wildlife manual that he’d found at the inn, and turned to the chapter on animal tracks. Kneeling down, he compared the print in the earth with the drawing of a bear track in the book, then shrugged. “It’s a bear, all right,” he told Jupe and Pete. “That’s exactly what you would expect to find up here.”
“It isn’t what we’re looking for,” said Jupiter.
“What are we looking for?” asked Pete. “Also, do we really want to find it?”
“Something different,” declared Jupe. “Some kind of track that isn’t in that manual.”
“I hope we only find the track,” said Pete. “Not the thing that made it.”
The wind gusted across the meadow, rustling the grass and making the trees whisper. Suddenly, from behind the boys, there came a soft, inquisitive whimper.
Pete jumped.
Jupiter Jones turned. “Oh, no!” he said.
Pete heard something scamper and he felt a sniffing at his ankle. He looked down. A bear cub, only a few months old, stared up at him with bright, friendly eyes.
“Where… where’s the mother?” Pete quavered.
“Right behind the baby!” cried Bob. “Run for it!”
There was an angry bawling. The bear cub scooted in one direction and the boys dashed in another, toward the ski slope.
Pete reached the slope first. He jumped, then let himself roll and tumble until he was twenty yards down the incline. Bob and Jupe came slipping and sliding after him. The three crouched on the dry, stony hillside and listened to the mother bear scolding the cub. The cub yelped sharply.
“She’s probably giving it a cuff on the ear,” guessed Bob.
“We’ll be okay,” said Jupe. “So long as we don’t threaten the cub, she won’t bother us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of threatening her cub.” said Pete warmly. “Rule number one: Never get too near a bear cub when the mother’s around. I only wish someone had told the cub about it.”
“It knows now,” Bob assured him.
The three waited for a while. When no more growls or yelps were heard from the meadow above them, they climbed back up. They were in time to see the mother bear and her baby disappear into the woods on the west side of the meadow.
Jupiter Jones took off his knapsack. “They probably won’t come back,” he said. “However, this is one place where Mr. Smathers would say we were the intruders, and he would be right. The bears were here first and they’re still here, so we’d better watch our steps.”
“I plan to,” said Pete. “In fact, I may just watch my steps taking me back down to the inn!”
“You don’t want to find out what Havemeyer’s hunting with his tranquilizer gun?” asked Bob.
“Yes, I guess I do,” admitted Pete. “Only I don’t think I want to meet it face to face!”
From his knapsack, Jupe took three small devices. “We can cover the ground faster if we separate,” he said. “But we had better not get out of touch with each other. We don’t really know what we’re looking for or what we might meet, so I brought along the directional signal and emergency alarm units. I packed them at home because I thought they’d come in handy on a hike, and indeed they will.”
Pete sighed. “They’re better than nothing,” he said. He took one of the devices from Jupiter and turned it over in his hands. “You sure it’s working okay?” he asked. “I’d hate to get marooned up here and not be able to call for help.”
“I tested all three signals before we left Rocky Beach,” said Jupiter. “They’re in perfect order. You remember how they work?”
“Like most of your inventions, they work just fine,” said Bob.
It was true. Jupiter Jones had a way of putting together salvaged bits of machinery or electronic equipment and turning out devices which served The Three Investigators well while they worked on many of their cases. The directional signal and emergency alarm was smaller than the walkie-talkies which the boys sometimes used, but it was still effective. Each unit broadcast a signal — a beep — which could be picked up by every other unit, and which got louder and faster the nearer one approached it. Each of the units also had a dial to indicate the direction a beep was coming from.
In addition to being a sending and receiving set for electronic beeps, each unit had a special alarm — a red light which could be activated by voice alone. When one of The Three Investigators was in trouble or wanted the others to come to him, he had only to say the word “help” near his set, and the red lights flashed on the other units.
“Now, here’s what I suggest we do.” Jupiter paused and scanned the woods which rimmed the meadow. “I think it unlikely that we’ll find many footprints here in the open,” he said. “The grass is too thick. Besides, if there is some strange animal here, it must be sheltered back away from the meadow or we’d have seen it by now. Yet we know it has come out into the open, because Joe Havemeyer told Anna he saw it on the meadow. That means it had to come through the trees to get here. The ground is clear under those trees; there isn’t any grass. If we’re going to pick up any strange tracks, that’s where we’ll find them.”
“Makes sense,” said Bob.
“So why don’t I search the woods on the north side of the meadow?” said Jupiter. “I can work my way west from the ski slope. Pete, you could take the woods to the west. You might start at the big white stone and go south. Bob, do you want to go over the ground on the south side? You could start from here and keep going until you meet Pete. Every few minutes we can signal one another on our directional finders, and if something looks threatening or especially interesting, we’ll activate the alarms.”
“I’ll sure do that,” promised Pete.
Jupiter put his knapsack on his shoulders, saluted his friends with one hand, and went off to the right. Pete grinned, as if to show he was really not scared, and headed west through the long grass. Bob hesitated a moment, listening to the lonely sound the wind made on the quiet mountain. Then, holding his directional signal in one hand, he trudged to the south.
He looked back once. Jupiter had vanished among the trees on the north side of the meadow. He could see Pete, who had almost reached his section of the woods. Bob activated his directional signal. An answering beep came from Jupiter. Another beep came from Pete, who turned and waved across the meadow.
When he reached the woods on the south side of the field, Bob paused. In the open, under the blue sky, the early morning sun had been bright and warm. But the woods looked very dim and very dense. There was a pungent carpet of pine needles under the trees.
Bob began to walk west, not quite venturing in under the trees. He watched the ground as he went, stopping every few seconds to listen. He heard a jay cry out from some hidden place. A squirrel scampered along a branch.
Then he saw it. It was a faint depression, a place where some large creature had tramped down the earth under the trees and dislodged a few pine needles.
Bob touched the signal on his directional device. After a second, there was an answering beep from the north, and a second from the northwest. He considered shouting for help, to bring Jupe and Pete running to see his find, but there was nothing distinct about the track. He knew it was very likely another bear, or perhaps even a smaller animal. He decided to search farther in, under the trees, to see if he could find a better print.