He had told Tom that if he only once found a trail, nothing would stop him--_nothing_.

Very fine.

All that talk about there being something higher than the Eagle award was nonsense, and Tom Slade knew it was nonsense.

"He said I'd do it, and I'm going to," Hervey muttered to himself.
Hervey had no patience with obstacles, he must be always moving, so now he began frantically scrutinizing the ground to see if he could find some sign of the marks which had eluded him.

Since he could no longer distinguish the stream bed, he looked for some sign of those marks outside the stream bed.
And presently he was rewarded by the discovery of tracks, animal tracks sure enough, without any ribbon, so to speak, printed between them.
There they were upon the hard, bare earth, two lines of claw marks, continuing to a point where they disappeared again at the edge of a close cropped field.