After a quick breakfast provided by the still apologetic Noddy, Frodo returned to the inn to fetch his own pony from the stable there. While at the inn, he wrote a quick note to Sam that said only "I am following their trail," and left it with the innkeeper to be mailed.
In return, the innkeeper told him that a letter had been delivered by courier for Pippin after they'd gone last night. Would Mr. Baggins give it to him?
As Frodo accepted the letter, he looked at the handwriting on the direction, and smiled. It confirmed what he'd already guessed. When he left the inn, he rode westward down the Stock Road.
Few travelers were on the road through Green Hill Wood that morning, so that the path left by the four young hobbits' ponies remained clear. They had not once left the road to conceal themselves among the walls of evergreens and silvery, bare birch trees on either side--Frodo was sure of that. The snow was four to six inches deep in most places, except where the wind had piled it into deeper drifts. The sunlight glittered brightly upon it, giving the surface an icy crust but not warming it enough to melt it. These conditions made the journey a slow one, but Frodo hoped the snow would impede the others as well. It disturbed him when he saw far-spaced hoof-prints, indicating that the young hobbits were trying to ride more swiftly than was safe in order to keep ahead of him.
About twenty miles from Noddy's farm and not far from the fork to Woodhall, he found signs that one of the ponies had indeed slipped on the icy road and tumbled its rider into a drift. He could see the hollow made by the body landing in the snow, with outflung hands and knees that made deep, round dents going down to the bare ground. Footprints of various sizes were gathered around this spot, indicating that more than one hobbit had dismounted to help their companion; from the small size of one of these in comparison with the other two, Frodo felt sure it was one of the girls who had tumbled. It must have been Diantha. She was the more likely of the two to ride recklessly and, besides, he saw no traces of heavy folds of cloth accompanying the imprint of the rider's legs, as long skirts would have done. No serious injury had befallen the rider--there was no blood on the snow. As Frodo went on, however, he observed that one pony trod more lightly with its left forefoot; these tracks did not sink so deeply into the snow as the others.
At the fork in the road, he found a surprise: Two of the ponies had gone on down the road toward Stock, but the other two had taken the other road, to Woodhall. Frodo stopped and stared at the divergent paths before him while he tried to decide which to follow.
Woodhall was closer than Stock. If one of their ponies had been lamed, they might decide to take it there rather than continue to ride it. But Woodhall was a private manor, with only a few tenant cottages in the woods around it. The hobbits there were a reclusive lot and, as far as Frodo knew, no particular friends of Pippin's lived among them. The Woodhall family might not have a pony to lend to strangers in place of their injured one. Also, the road to Woodhall was a dead end. Unless they meant to stay there or travel on foot through the deep gullies of Woody End--both ridiculous choices--then the two who had gone that way would have to come back up this same road. Would they dare risk meeting him after taking such a detour?
Frodo got down from his own pony to examine the two trails more closely, and discovered another more curious thing: the limping pony hadn't gone to Woodhall, but had gone on the road toward Stock. For a moment, Frodo was perplexed. Why then had two of the party headed for Woodhall? It made no sense...
Then he laughed out loud. Of course! With their tracks so clear in the snow and the injured pony slowing them down so they no longer had a hope of outracing him to their destination, they would surely try some sort of trick. The road to Woodhall was their only plausible opportunity.
Frodo took the road toward Stock. He hadn't ridden more than a mile before he saw the tracks of two ponies emerging from a creek that ran through the birch wood to the south, joining the pair he was already following. The creek must also cross the Woodhall road, and those other tracks that led that way would have disappeared if he'd followed them.
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