Don't need to find a direct quote from Rodge in the book- Why did he stop Bob from leaving him alone at Bluff Creek?
There were three sizes of tracks found on Blue Creek Mountain Road. They thought hers were the middle-sized ones and that the larger male might be in the area. He referred to possibly spotting the other one when they decided to follow:
"W: Now, how far did you follow her?
R: I really didn't follow her any much further than when my camera run out of film and I knew that it was out, and Bob got on his horse and went after her then, and from that point he seen her more than I did, I never seen her again .
W: How far were you able to follow her?
B: I watched her until she went up the road about 300 yards, and she went around a bend in the road and that was the last I seen of her.
W: Now, after all this too dreadful excitement what did the pair of you do? Here you've, after all these hundreds of years of rumours and sightings and all the rest of it all up and down the Pacific Northwest and Michigan and Wisconsin and everywhere else, what did you do when you're standing there, you've recovered from the shock, with a camera full of film? I mean just tell me precisely what you did at that time. What did you say to each other?
R: Well I, when Bob come back, I yelled to him and I said, "Bob, come back," because at this point my horse was I didn't know where and the pack horse was gone, my scabbard, and my rifle was in the scabbard, on the horse, and the tracks before, down in there that we had heard about, were in a set of three, and there was a bigger one there, and I thought that possibly there was a male in close in ....
W: You were getting nervous.
R: I was getting nervous.
W: You were on foot there without the rifle.
R: I was on foot without anything, and I yelled to Bob to come back and we would think the thing over and ...
W: Was that just about the time you broke off the chase, you might say?
B: Right, that was, when I last seen her go round the curve. And at that time I went back and proceeded to gather up Roger's horses, his horse that he was riding and the pack horse, and after ....
W: Then what?
B: After chasing them up and down the road for a little while and finally catching them, well we talked it over and I said I'd check around and see if maybe that I could find some tracks where she had come into this area and possibly sight the other one, so I took the camera while he gathered up his stuff and ..
W: You scouted around for a while did you? Well when did you ..were you able to identify specifically the tracks you had made while you were following her?
R: Yes, because immediately after we went across the creek and immediately after I called Bob back we looked at the tracks and they were, the tracks were there .
W: These are the tracks we saw in the movie tonight.
R: That's right.
W: The tracks for which you have the plaster casts tonight.
R: Right.
W: How come you had plaster casts with you. uh plaster with you?
R: We didn't have plaster, 'cause we went, we had to go back to the, to the truck and get plaster and come up and cast them.
W: How long would that take you, to leave the scene, go back to the truck and come up again?
R: We were at that point about two, what, maybe two miles from that area then?
B: Not two miles, I'd say. By the road it was just about an even two miles, across the hill that way it was a little shorter but we went ...
W: Now, okay, so you then gave up and you took the plaster tracks. How deep were these tracks by the way, in inches? Inch and a quarter or ....
B: Some of them were down as far as three and a half inches deep into the softer soil. These particular ones we took here were, weren't quite so deep because they were flatter tracks."
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/interviews/radiopatterson.htm
