Through a series of improbable connections (i.e. a horse head mask and some “pink crystals” found by chance at an abandoned campsite) Rusty Holmes … er, … Rusty Trail concludes they were left behind by a former TV star-turned-new-age-survivalist. Rusty may not have the right of it, but he knows how to uncover obscure information.

Still, Mark’s unfounded suspicion of a person in distress seems to be getting more unintended support from Rusty’s research. Will Mark go hunting the next day, only to find a lost, emaciated camper reduced to drinking his own urine because he couldn’t follow a path that Mark and the boys had clearly used?

Art Dept: While we suffer more puns, it’s been clear for some time that depictions of Mark and other people seen from a distance (e.g., panel 3) do not come across well, as if a digital image has been pixilated through reduction.