An enemy reconnaissance element breaks contact at first light in dry foothill country, and Gresham's tracker team is put on the ground to answer a different question than usual: not where the men went, but what they were protecting.
Banner takes a clean line and runs it beautifully for two hours. Every yard of it is false. The enemy walked a morning north to be followed, then walked back down their own prints — and the proof is under a bamboo slab, one boot going out and coming back in the same impression.
Continuous trailing dies as a method. What replaces it is bounded casting, four casts to a working day, and a dog whose margin is running out on open ground in the heat.
Below the saddle, burdened sign proves the objective was never the six men at all.
