r I'll get after him before a
train comes in," thought Dave. "Well, I'll catch him anyway, unless he
takes to the woods."

What Dave had surmised was correct. Ward Porton had thought to get on
a train that would stop at Barnett inside of the next ten minutes.
Now, however, he realized that to go to the depot and hang around
until the cars took their departure would probably mean capture.

"Confound the luck! How did he manage to get on my trail so quickly?"
muttered the former moving-picture actor to himself. "Now I'll have to
lay low and do my best to sneak off to some other place. I wish it
wasn't so cold. When I stop running I'll be half frozen. But, anyway,
I had the satisfaction of giving him one in the ear with that rock and
another in the shoulder with my foot," and he smiled grimly, as he
placed his handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

By the time Dave reached the lane between the houses, Porton was
nowhere in sight. There were a number of footprints in the snow, and
following these Dave passed a barn and some cow-sheds. From this point
a single pair of footprints led over a short field into the very woods
where the encounter had taken place.

"He's going to hide in the woods, sure enough," reasoned our hero. "Or
else maybe he'll try to get back to Clayton, or Bixter."

"Hi! What's going on here?" cried a voice from the cow-shed, and a man
showed himself, followed by two well-grown boys.

"I'm after a fellow who just ran across that field into the woods,"
explained Dave, quickly. "He's a thief. I want to catch him and have
him locked up."

"Oh, say! I thought I saw somebody," exclaimed one of the boys. "I
thought it might be Tom Jones goin' huntin'."

In as few words as possible Dave explained the situation to the farmer
and his two sons, and they readily agreed to accompany him into the
woods.

"But you'll have a big job trying to locate that chap in those woods,"
was the farmer's comment. "The growth back here is very thick, and my
boys have been lost in it more than once."

"Huh! we always found our way out again," grumbled the older of the
sons, who did not like this statement on his parent's part.

"Yes, Billy, but the woods are mighty thick," returned his brother.
"If that feller don't look out he may get lost and get froze to death
to-night, unless he knows enough to make a fire."

It was easy enough to follow the footprints to the edge of the woods.
But once there, the brushwood and rocks w