Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Erle Stanley Gardner The Clue of the Screaming Woman

Frank Ames surveyed the tumbling mountain torrent and selected the rock he wanted with great care.

It was on the edge of the deep water, a third of the way across the stream, about sixty feet below the little waterfall and the big eddy. Picking his way over halfsubmerged stepping stones, then across the fallen log to the rounded rock, he made a few whipping motions with his fishing rod to get plenty of free line. He knew only too well how much that first cast counted.

Up here in the high mountains the sky was black behind the deep blue of interstellar space. The big granite rocks reflected light with dazzling brilliance, while the shadows seemed deep and impenetrable. Standing down near the stream, the roar of the water kept Frank Ames’ cars from accurately appraising other sounds, distorting them out of all semblance to reality.

The raucous abuse of a mountain jay sounded remarkably like the noise made by a buzz saw ripping through a pine board, and some peculiar vagary of the stream noises made Frank Ames feel he could hear a woman screaming.

Ames made his cast. The line twisted through the air, straightened at just the right distance above the water and settled. The Royal Coachman came to rest gently, seductively, on the far edge of the little whirlpool just below the waterfall.

For a moment the fly reposed on the water with calm tranquillity, drifting with the current. Then there was a shadowy dark streak of submerged motion. A big trout raised his head and part of his body up out of the water.

The noise made by the fish as it came down hard on the fly was a soul-gratifying “chooonk.” It seemed the fish had pushed its shoulders into a downward strike as it started back to the dark depths of the clear stream, the Royal Coachman in its mouth.

Ames set the hook and firmed his feet on the rock. The reel sounded like an angry rattlesnake. The line suddenly stretched taut. Even above the sound of the mountain stream, the hissing of the wire-tight line as it cut through the water was plainly audible.

The sound of a woman’s scream again mingled with the stream noises. This time the scream was louder and nearer.

The sound knifed through to Frank Ames’ consciousness. It was as annoying, as much out of place, as the ringing of a telephone bell at four o’clock in the morning. Frank desperately wanted that trout. It was a fine, big trout with a dark back, beautiful red sides, firm-fleshed from ice-cold, swift waters, and it was putting up a terrific fight.

That first time there had been some doubt as to the sound Ames had heard. It might have been the stream-distorted echo of a hawk crying out as it circled high in the heavens. But as to this second noise there could be no doubt. It was the scream of a woman, and it sounded from the trail along the east bank of the stream.

Ames turned to look over his shoulder, a hurried glance of apprehensive annoyance.

That one moment’s advantage was all the trout needed. With the vigilance of the fisherman relaxed for the flicker of an eyelash, the trout made a swift rush for the tangled limbs of the submerged tree trunk on the far end of the pool, timing his maneuver as though he had known the exact instant the fisherman had turned.

Almost automatically Ames tightened on the rod and started reeling in, but he was too late. He felt the sudden cessation of the surging tugs which come up the line through the wrist and into the arm in a series of impulses too rapid to count, but which are the very breath of life to the skilled fisherman. Instead, the tension of the line was firm, steady and dead.

Knowing that his leader was wrapped around a submerged branch. Ames pointed the rod directly at the taut line, applied sufficient pressure to break the slender leader, and then reeled in the line.

He turned toward the place from which the scream had sounded.

There was no sign of animation in the scenery. The high mountain crags brooded over the scene. A few fleecy clouds forming over the east were the only break in the tranquil blue of the sky. Long sweeps of majestic pines stretched in a serried sequence up the canyons, their needles oozing scent into the pure, dry air.

Ames, slender-waisted, long-legged, graceful in his motions, was like a deer bounding across the fallen log, jumping lightly to the water-splashed stepping stones.

He paused at the thin fringe of scrub pine which grew between the rocky approach to the stream and the winding trail long enough to divest himself of his fishing creel and rod. Then he moved swiftly through the small pines to where the trail ran in a north and south direction, roughly paralleling that of the stream.

The decomposed granite dust of the trail held tracks with remarkable fidelity. Superimposed over the older horse and deer tracks that were in the trail were the tracks made by a woman who had been running as fast as she could go.

At this elevation of more than seven thousand feet above sea level, where even ordinary exertion left a person breathless, it was evident either that the woman could not have been running far, or that she had lived long enough in this country to be acclimated to the altitude.

The shoes she was wearing, however, were apparently new cowboy boots, completely equipped with rubber heels, so new that even the pattern of the heel showed in the downhill portion of the trail.

For the most part, the woman had been running with her weight on her toes. When she came to the steep downhill pitch, however, her weight was back more on her heels, and the rubber heel caps made distinct imprints. After fifty yards, Ames saw that the tracks faltered. The strides grew shorter. Slowly, she had settled down to a rapid, breathless walk.

With the unerring instinct of a trained hunter. Ames followed those tracks, keeping to one side of the trail so that his tracks did not obliterate those of the hurrying woman. He saw where she had paused and turned, the prints of her feet at right angles to the trail as she looked back over her shoulder. Then, apparently more reassured, she had resumed her course, walking now at a less rapid rate.

Moving with a long, lithe stride which made him glide noiselessly, Frank Ames topped a rise, went down another short, steep pitch, rounded a turn in the pine trees and came unexpectedly on the woman, standing poised like some wild thing. She had stopped and was looking back, her startled face showing as a white oval.

She started to run, then paused, looked back again, stopped, and, as Ames came up, managed a dubious and somewhat breathless smile.

“Hello,” Ames said with the casual simplicity of a man who has the assurance of complete sincerity.

“Good afternoon,” she answered, then laughed, a short, oxygen-starved laugh. “I was taking — a quick walk.” She paused to get her breath, said, “Trying to give my figure some much-needed discipline.”

Another pause for breath. “When you rounded the bend in the trail, you — you startled me.”

Ames’ eyes said there was nothing wrong with her figure, but his lips merely twisted in a slow grin.

She was somewhere in the middle twenties. The frontier riding breeches, short leather jacket, shirt open at the front, the bandanna around her neck, held in place with a leather loop studded with brilliants, showed that she was a “dude” from the city. The breeches emphasized the slenderness of her waist, the smooth, graceful contours of her hips and legs. The face was still pale, but the deep red of sunburn around the open line of the throat above the protection of the bandanna was as eloquent as a complete calendar to Frank’s trained eyes.

The sunburned skin told the story of a girl who had ridden in on a horseback pack trip, who had underestimated the powerful actinic rays of the mountain sun, who had tried too late to cover the sunburned V-shaped area with a scarf. A couple of days in the mountains and some soothing cream had taken some of the angry redness out of the skin, but that was all.

He waited to see if there would be some explanation of her scream or her flight. Not for worlds would he have violated the code of the mountains by trying to pry into something that was none of his business. When he saw she had no intention of making any further explanation, he said casually, “Guess you must have come up the trail from Granite Flats about Sunday. Didn’t you, ma’am?”

She looked at him with sudden apprehension. “How did you know?”

“I had an idea you might have been in the mountains just about that long, and I knew you didn’t come up from this end because I didn’t see the tracks of a pack train in the trail.”

“Can you follow tracks?” she asked.

“Why, of course.” He paused and then added casually, “I’m headed down toward where your camp must be. Perhaps you’d let me walk along with you for a piece.”

“I’d love it!” she exclaimed, and then with quick suspicion, “How do you know where our camp is?”

His slight drawl was emphasized as he thought the thing into words. “If you’d been camped at Coyote Springs, you’d need to have walked three miles to get here. You don’t look as though you’d gone that far. Down at Deerlick Springs, there’s a meadow with good grass for the horses, a nice camping place and it’s only about three quarters of a mile from here, so I—”

She interrupted with a laugh which now carried much more assurance. “I see that there’s no chance for me to have any secrets. Do you live up here?”

Frank wanted to tell her of the two years in the Japanese prison camp, of the necessity of living close to nature to get his health and strength back, of the trap line which he ran through the winter, of the new-found strength and vitality that were erasing the disabilities caused by months of malnutrition. But when it came to talking about himself, the words dried up. All he could say was, “Yes, I live up here.”

She fell into step at his side. “You must find it isolated.”

“I don’t see many people,” he admitted, “but there are other things to make up for it — no telephones, no standing in line, no exhaust fumes.”

“And you’re content to be here always?”

“Not always. I want a ranch down in the valley. I’m completing arrangements for one now. A friend of mine is giving me a lease with a contract to purchase. I think I can pay out on it with luck and hard work.”

Her eyes were thoughtful as she walked along the trail, stepping awkwardly in her high-heeled cowboy riding boots. “I suppose really you can’t ask for much more than that — luck and hard work.”

“It’s all I want,” Frank told her.

They walked for some minutes in the silence of mutual appraisal, then rounded a turn in the trail, and Deerlick Meadows stretched out in front of them. And as soon as Frank Ames saw the elaborate nature of the camp, he knew these people were wealthy sportsmen who were on a de luxe trip. Suddenly awkward, he said, “Well, I guess I’d better turn—” And then stopped abruptly as he realized that it would never do to let this young woman know he had been merely escorting her along the trail. He had told her he was going in her direction. He’d have to keep on walking past the camp.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly, and then added laughingly, “Mine’s Roberta Coe.”

“Frank Ames,” he said uncomfortably, knowing she had asked him his name so abruptly because she intended to introduce him to her companions.

“Well, you must come in and have a cup of coffee before you go on,” she said. “You’d like to meet my friends and they’d like to meet you.”

They had been seen now and Ames was aware of curious glances from people who were seated in folding canvas chairs, items of luxury which he knew could have been brought in only at much cost to the tourist and at much trouble to both packer and pack horse.

He tried to demur, but somehow the right words wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t let himself seem to run away. Even while he hesitated, they entered the camp, and he found himself meeting people with whom he felt awkwardly ill at ease.

Harvey W. Dowling was evidently the business executive who was footing the bills. He, it seemed, was in his tent, taking a siesta and the hushed voices of the others showed the fawning deference with which they regarded the man who was paying the bills. His tent, a pretentious affair with heating stove and shaded entrance, occupied a choice position, away from the rest of the camp, a small tributary stream winding in front, and the shady pine thicket immediately in the back.

The people to whom Ames was introduced were the type a rich man gathers around him, people who were careful to cultivate the manners of the rich, who clung tenaciously to their contacts with the wealthy.

Now these people, carefully subdued in voice and manner, so as not to disturb the man in the big tent, had that amused, patronizing tolerance of manner which showed they regarded Frank Ames merely as a novel interlude rather than as a human being.

Dick Nottingham had a well-nourished, athletic ease of manner, a smoothly muscled body and the calm assurance of one who is fully conscious of his eligibility. Two other men, Alexander Cameron and Sam Fremont, whose names Ames heard mentioned, were evidently downstream fishing.

The women were young, well-groomed and far more personal in their curiosity. Eleanor Dowling relied on her own beauty and her father’s wealth to display a certain arrogance. Sylvia Jessup had mocking eyes which displayed challenging invitation as she sized up Frank’s long, rangy build.

Conscious of his faded blue shirt and overalls with the patched knees, Frank felt distinctly ill at ease, and angry at himself because he did. He would have given much to have been articulate enough to express himself, to have joined in casual small talk; but the longer he stayed the more awkward and tongue-tied he felt, and that in turn made him feel more and more conspicuous.

There was good-natured banter. Sylvia Jessup announced that after this she was going to walk in the afternoons and see if she couldn’t bag a little game, veiled references to open season and bag limit; then light laughter. And there were casually personal questions that Ames answered as best he could.

Whenever they would cease their light banter, and in the brief period of silence wait for Frank Ames to make some comment, Frank angrily realized his tongue-tied impotence, realized from the sudden way in which they would all start talking at once that they were trying to cover his conversational inadequacy.

Sam Fremont, camera in hand, came into camp almost unnoticed. He had, he explained, been hunting wildlife with his camera, and he grinningly admitted approaching camp quietly so he could get a couple of “candid camera” shots of the “sudden animation.”

He was a quick-eyed opportunist with a quick wit and fast tongue, and some of his quips brought forth spontaneous laughter. After one particularly loud burst of merriment, the flap of the big tent parted and Harvey W. Dowling, scow ling sleepily at the group, silenced them as effectively as would have been the case if some grim apparition had suddenly appeared.

But he came down to join them, a figure of heavy power, conscious of the deference due him, boomingly cordial to Frank, and with regal magnanimity saying nothing of the loud conversation which had wakened him.

A few moments later Alexander Cameron came stumbling up the trail, seeming to fall all over his heavy leather boots, boots that were stiff with newness. He seemed the most inexperienced of them all, and yet the most human, the one man who seemed to have no fear of Dowling.

There were more introductions, an abrupt cessation of the banter, and a few minutes later Ames found himself trudging angrily away from the camp, having offered the first excuse which came to his tortured mind, that he must inspect a site for a string of traps, knowing in his own mind how utterly inane the reason sounded, despite the fact that these people from the city would see nothing wrong with it.

Once clear of the camp, Frank circled up Deerlick Creek and cut back toward the main trail of the North Fork, so that he could retrieve his rod and creel.

He knew that it was too late now to try any more fishing. The white, woolly clouds had grown into great billowing mushrooms. Already there was the reverberation of distant thunder echoing from the high crags up at the divide and ominous black clouds were expanding out from the bases of the cloud mushrooms.

The thunderstorm struck just as Ames was crossing the top of the ridge which led down to the main trail.

The first patter of heavy raindrops gave a scant warning. A snake’s tongue of ripping lightning dissolved a dead pine tree across the valley into a shower of yellow splinters. The clap of thunder was almost instantaneous, and, as though it had tom loose the inner lining of the cloud, rain deluged down in torrents until the sluicing streams forging their way down the slope were heavy with mud.

Knowing better than to seek shelter under a pine tree. Ames ran along the base of a granite ridge until he found the place where an overhanging rock, sandblasted by winds and worn by the elements, offered a place where he could crawl in and stretch out.

The lightning glittered with greenish intensity. The thunder bombarded the echoing crags and rain poured in cascades from the lip of the rock under which Ames had taken shelter.

Within ten minutes the heaviest pan of the rain had ceased. The thunder began to drift sullenly to the south, but the rain continued steadily, then intensified into a clearing-up shower of cloudburst proportions and ceased abruptly. Half a minute later a venturesome shaft of afternoon sunlight explored its way into the glistening pines.

Ames crawled from under his protecting rock and resumed his way down the slippery slope to the main trail.

The soaking rain had obliterated the tracks in the trail. In fact, the ditchlike depression in the center of the trail still held puddles of water, so Ames, so far as he was able, kept to one side, working his way between rocks, conscious of the sudden chill in the atmosphere, conscious also of the fact that the clouds were gathering for another downpour, one that could well last all night.

Ames found his fishing rod and creel where he had left them. He slipped the soggy strap of the creel over his shoulder, started to pick up the rod, then stopped. His woodsman’s eyes told him that the position of the rod had been changed since he had left it. Had it perhaps been the wind which accompanied the storm? He had no time to debate the matter, for once more raindrops began to patter ominously.

Picking up his rod, he swung into a long, rapid stride, the rain whipping against his back as he walked. He knew that there was no use trying to wait out this show. This would be a steady, sodden rain.

By the time Frank Ames reached his cabin he was wet to the skin.

He put pine-pitch kindling and dry wood into the stove, and soon had a roaring fire. He lit the gasoline lantern, divested himself of his wet clothes, took the two medium-sized fish from the creel and fried them for supper. He read a magazine, noticed casually that the rain on the cabin roof stopped about nine-thirty, listened to the news on the radio and went to bed. His sleep was punctuated with dreams of women who screamed and ran aimlessly through the forest, of shrewd-eyed city men who regarded him with patronizing cordiality, of snub-nosed, laughing-eyed women who pursued him with pronged spears, their mouths giving vent to sardonic laughter.

Ames was up with the first grayness of morning. The woodshed yielded dry wood, and, as the aroma of coffee filled the little cabin, Ames poured water into the jar of sour dough, thickened the water with flour, beat it to just the right consistency and poured out sour-dough hot cakes.

He had finished with the breakfast dishes and the chores, and was contemplating the stream which danced by in the sunlight just beyond the long shadows of the pine trees, when his eyes suddenly rested with startled disbelief on the two rounded manzanita pegs which had been driven into holes drilled in the wall of the log cabin.

The .22 rifle, with its telescopic sight, was missing.

The space immediately below, where his .30-.30 rifle hung suspended from pegs, was as usual, and the .30-.30 was in place. Only the place where the .22 should have been was vacant.

Ames heard steps outside the door. A masculine voice called, “Hello! Anyone home?”

“Who is it?” Ames called, whirling.

The form of Sheriff Bill Eldon was framed in the doorway.

“Howdy,” he said. “Guess I should drop in and introduce myself. I’m Bill Eldon, sheriff of the county.”

Ames took in the spare figure, tough as gristle, straight as a lodgepole pine, a man who was well past middle age, but who moved with the easy, lithe grace of a man in his thirties, a man who carried not so much as an ounce of unnecessary weight, whose eyes, peering out from under shaggy eyebrows, had the same quality of fierce penetration which is so characteristic of the hawks and eagles, yet his manner and voice were mild.

“I’m camped up the stream a piece with a couple of head of pack stock,” the sheriff said, “just riding through. This country up here is in my county and I sort of make a swing around through it during the fishing season. I was up here last year, but missed you. They said you were in town.”

Ames stretched out his hand. “Come right in, sheriff, and sit down. Ames is my name. I’m mighty glad to know you. I’ve heard about you.”

Bill Eldon thanked him, walked over to one of the homemade chairs built from pine slabs and baling wire, settled himself comfortably, rolled a cigarette. “Been up here long?”

“Couple of years. I run a trap line in the winters. I have a small allowance and I’m trying to stretch it as far as possible so I can build up health and a bank account at the same time — just enough for operating capital.”

Eldon crossed his legs, said, “Do you get around the country much?”

“Some.”

“Seen the folks camped down below?”

“Yes. I met some of them yesterday. I guess they came in the other way.”

“That’s right. Quite an outfit. Know any of the people camped up above?”

“I didn’t know there were any.”

“I didn’t know there were either,” the sheriff said, and then was quiet.

Ames cocked an eyebrow in quizzical interrogation.

“Seen anybody up that way?” Eldon asked.

“There are some folks camped up on Squaw Creek, but that’s six miles away. A man and his wife.”

“I know all about them,” the sheriff said. “I met them on the trail. Haven’t seen anything of a man about thirty-five, dark hair, stubby, close-cut mustache, gray eyes, about a hundred and sixty pounds, five feet, eight or nine inches tall, wearing big hobnail boots with wool socks rolled down over the tops of the boots — new boots?”

Ames shook his head.

“Seems as though he must have been camped up around here somewhere,” the sheriff said.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Mind taking a little walk with me?” the sheriff asked.

Ames, suddenly suspicious, said, “I have a few chores to do. I—”

“This is along the line of business,” the sheriff answered, getting up out of the chair with the casual, easy grace of a wild animal getting to its feet.

“If you put it that way, I guess we’ll let the chores go,” Ames said.

They left the cabin and swung up the trail. Ames’ long legs moved in the steady rhythm of space-devouring strides. The sheriff kept pace with him, although his shorter legs made him take five strides to the other man’s four.

For some five minutes they walked silently, walking abreast where the trail was wide; then as the trail narrowed, the sheriff took the lead, setting a steady, unwavering pace.

Abruptly Bill Eldon held up his hand as a signal to halt. “Now from this point on,” he said, “I’d like you to be kind of careful about not touching things. Just follow me.”

He swung from the side of the trail, came to a little patch of quaking asp and a spring.

A man was stretched on the ground by the spring, lying rigid and inert.

Eldon circled the body. “I’ve already gone over the tracks,” he said. And then added dryly, “There ain’t any, except the ones made by his own boots, and they’re pretty faint.”

“What killed him?” Ames asked.

“Small-caliber bullet, right in the side of the head,” the sheriff said.

Ames stood silently looking at the features discolored by death, the stubby mustache, the dark hair, the new hobnail boots with the wool socks turned down over the tops.

“When — when did it happen?”

“Don’t rightly know,” the sheriff said. “Apparently it happened before the thunderstorm yesterday. Tracks are pretty well washed out. You can see where he came running down this little slope. Then he jumped to one side and then to the other. Didn’t do him no good. He fell right here. But the point is, his tracks are pretty indistinct, almost washed out by that rainstorm. If it hadn’t been for the hobnails on his new boots, I doubt if we’d have noticed his tracks at all.

“Funny thing is,” the sheriff went on, “you don’t see any stock. He must have packed in his little camp stuff on his back. Pretty husky chap but he doesn’t look like a woodsman.”

Ames nodded.

“Wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?” the sheriff asked.

Ames shook his head.

“Happened to be walking down the stream yesterday afternoon just a little bit before the rain came up,” the sheriff said. “Didn’t see this fellow’s tracks anywhere in the trail and didn’t see any smoke. Wouldn’t have known he had a camp here if it hadn’t been for—”

Abruptly the sheriff ceased speaking.

“I was fishing yesterday,” Ames said.

“I noticed it,” the sheriff said. “Walked by your cabin but you weren’t there. Then I walked on down the trail, caught the glint of sunlight from the reel on your fishing rod.”

Eldon’s silence was an invitation.

Ames laughed nervously and said, “Yes, I took a hike down the trail and didn’t want to be burdened with the rod and the creel.”

“Saw the leader was broken on the fishing rod,” the sheriff commented. “Looked as though maybe you’d tangled up with a big one and he’d got away — leader twisted around a bit and frayed. Thought maybe you’d hooked on to a big one over in that pool and he might have wrapped the leader around some of the branches on that fallen tree over at the far end.”

“He did, for a fact,” Ames admitted ruefully.

“That puzzled me,” the sheriff said. “You quit right there and then, without even taking off the broken leader. You just propped your fishin’ rod up against the tree and hung your creel on a forked limb, fish and all. Tracks showed you’d been going pretty fast.”

“I’m a fast walker.”

“Uh-huh,” Eldon said. “Then you hit the trail. There was tracks made by a woman in the trail. She was running. I saw your tracks following.”

“I can assure you,” Ames said, trying to make a joke of it, “that I wasn’t chasing any woman down the trail.”

“I know you weren’t,” Eldon said. “You were studying those tracks, kind of curious about them, so you kept to one side of the trail where you could move along and study them. You’d get back in the trail once or twice where you had to and then your tracks would be over those of the woman, but for the most part you were sort of trailing her.”

“Naturally,” Ames said. “I was curious.”

“I didn’t follow far enough to see whether you caught up with her,” the sheriff said. “I saw the rain clouds piling up pretty fast and I hightailed it back to my camp and got things lashed down around the tent. Of course,” the sheriff went on, “I don’t suppose you know how close you were to that running woman?”

“The tracks looked fresh,” Ames said.

“Thought you might have seen her as she went by,” the sheriff said. “Thought that might have accounted for the way you went over to the trail in such a hurry. You were walking pretty fast. Then I went back to the place where you must have been standing on that rock where you could get a good cast, up by the eddy below the waterfall, and darned if you could see the trail from there! It runs within about fifty yards, but there’s a growth of scrub pine that would keep you from seeing anyone.”

Ames was uncomfortable. Why should he protect Roberta Coe? Why not tell the sheriff frankly what he had heard? He realized he was playing with fire in withholding this information, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to come right out and say what he knew he should be saying.

“So,” the sheriff said, “I sort of wondered what made you drop everything in such a hurry and go over to the trail and start taking up the tracks of this woman. Just a lot of curiosity. Sort of felt I was snooping, but, after all, snooping is my business.”

Once more the sheriff s silence invited confidence from Frank Ames.

“Well,” the sheriff went on after a few moments, “I got up this morning and thought I’d stop down and pay you a visit, and then coming down the trail I saw a long streak down the side of the hill. It had been rained on but you could see it was a fresh track where someone had dragged something. I looked over here and found this camp. He’d dragged in a big dead log that he was aiming to chop up for firewood. Thought at first it might have been a sort of a tenderfoot trick because he only had a little hand ax, but after looking the camp over, I figured he might not have been quite so green as those new boots would make you think. Evidently he intended to build a fire under the middle of this log and as the two ends burned apart he’d shove the logs up together — make a little fire that way that would keep all night. He didn’t have any tent, just a bedroll with a good big tarp. It’s pretty light weight but it would turn water if you made a lean-to and was careful not to touch it anyplace while it was raining.”

“You — you know who he is?” Ames asked.

“Not yet, I don’t,” the sheriff admitted. “So far I’ve just looked around a bit. I don’t want to do any monkeying with the things in his pockets until I get hold of the coroner. Too bad that rain came down just when it did. I haven’t been able yet to find where the man stood that did the shooting.”

“How long ago did you find him?”

“Oh, an hour or two, maybe a little longer. I’ve got to ride over to the forest service telephone and I thought I’d go call on you. Now that you’re here, I guess the best thing to do is to leave you in charge while I go telephone. You can look around some if you want to, because I’ve already covered the ground, looking for tracks, but don’t touch the body and don’t let anyone else touch it.”

Ames said, “I suppose I can do it if — if I have to.”

“Isn’t a very nice sort of a job to wish off on a man,” the sheriff admitted, “but at a time like this we all of us have to pull together. I’ve got to go three, four miles to get to that ranger station and put a call in. My camp’s up here about three quarters of a mile. I’ve got a pretty good saddle horse and it shouldn’t take long to get up there and back.”

“I’ll wait,” Ames said.

“Thanks,” the sheriff told him, and without another word turned and swung silently down the slope to the trail and vanished...

Ames, his mind in a turmoil, stood silently contemplating the scenery with troubled eyes that were unable to appreciate the green pines silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky, the patches of brilliant sunlight, the dark, somber segments of deep shadow.

A mountain jay squawked raucously from the top of a pine, teetering back and forth as though by the very impetus of his body muscles he could project his voice with greater force.

The corpse lay stiff and still, wrapped in the quiet dignity of death. The shadow of a nearby pine marched slowly along until it rested on the dead man’s face, a peaceful benediction.

Ames moved restlessly, at first aimlessly, then more deliberately, looking for tracks.

His search was fruitless. There were only the tracks of the sheriff’s distinctive, high-heeled cowboy boots, tracks which zigzagged patiently around a complete circle. Whatever previous tracks had been on the ground had been washed out by the rain. Had the murderer counted on that? Had the crime been committed when the thunderheads were piled up so ominously that he knew a deluge was impending?

Ames widened his circle still more, suddenly came to a halt as sunlight glinted on blued steel. He hurriedly surveyed the spot where the gun was lying.

This was quite evidently the place where the murderer had lain in ambush, behind a fallen pine.

Here again there were no tracks because the rain had washed them away, but the .22 caliber rifle lay in plain sight. Apparently the sheriff had overlooked it. He doubted that he himself would have seen the gun had it not been for that reflecting glint cast by the sunlight.

The fallen log offered an excellent means of approach without leaving tracks.

Ames stepped carefully on the dead roots which had been pulled up when the tree was blown over, worked his way to the top of the log, then moved silently along the rough bark.

The gun was a .22 automatic with a telescopic sight, and the single empty shell which had been ejected by the automatic mechanism glinted in the sunlight a few feet beyond the place where the gun was lying.

Ames lay at length on the log so he could look down at the gun.

There was a scratch on the stock, a peculiar indentation on the lock where it had at one time been dropped against a rock. The laws of probability would not admit of two weapons marked exactly like that.

For as much as five minutes Ames lay there pondering the question as to what he should do next. Apparently the sheriff had not as yet discovered the gun. It would be a simple matter to hook a forked stick under the trigger guard, pick the gun up without leaving any trace, put it in some safe place of concealment, then clean the barrel and quietly return it to the wall of his own cabin.

Ames pondered the matter for several minutes, then pushed himself up to his hands and knees, then back to his feet and ran back down the log, afraid that the temptation might prove too great for him. He retraced his steps back to a position where he could watch both the main trail and the spot where the body lay.

Some thirty minutes later Ames heard the sound of voices, a carefree, chattering babble which seemed oddly out of place with the tragic events which had taken place in the little sun-swept valley.

Ames moved farther back into the shadows so as to avoid the newcomers.

Ames could hear a voice which he thought was that of Dick Nottingham saying quite matter-of-factly, “I notice a couple of people are ahead of us on the trail. See the tracks? Let’s wait a minute. They turn off right here. They look like fresh tracks — made since the rain. Hello, there!”

One of the girls laughed nervously. “Do you want reinforcements, Dick?”

“Just good woodcraft,” Nottingham said in a tone of light banter. “Old Eagle Scout Nottingham on the job. Can’t afford to lead you into an ambush. Hello, anyone home?”

Ames heard him coming forward, the steps alternately crunching on the patches of open decomposed granite and then fading into nothing on the carpeted pine needles. “I say,” Nottingham called, “is anyone in here?”

Ames strove to make his voice sound casual. “I wouldn’t come any farther.”

The steps stopped, then Nottingham’s cautious voice, “Who’s there?”

“Frank Ames. I wouldn’t come any farther.”

“Why not?”

“There’s been a little trouble here. I’m watching the place for the sheriff.”

Nottingham hesitated a moment. Then his steps came forward again so that he was in full view.

“What happened?” he asked.

“A man was shot,” Ames said in a low voice. “I don’t think it’s a good place for the women and I think your party had better stay on the trail.”

“What is it, Dick?” someone called softly, and Ames felt a sudden thrill as he identified Roberta Coe’s voice.

“Apparently there’s some trouble in here. I guess we’d better get back to the trail,” Nottingham called out. “A man’s been shot.”

Eleanor Dow ling said, “Nonsense. We’re not babies. The woman who needed her smelling salts went out of fashion years ago. What is it?”

Ames walked over to the trail. “Hello,” he said self-consciously.

They acknowledged his salutation. There was a certain tension of awkward restraint, and Ames briefly explained what had happened.

“We were just taking a walk up the trail,” Nottingham said. “We saw your tracks and then they turned off. There was someone with you?”

“The sheriff,” Ames said.

Nottingham said, “Look here, old man, I’m sorry, but I think you owe us a little more explanation than that. We see the tracks of two men up the trail. Then we find one man standing alone and one man dead. You tell us that the sheriff has been with you, but we should have a little more than your word for it.”

“Take a look for yourself,” Ames said, “but don’t try to touch the body. You can look at the dead man’s shoes. They’re full of hobnails.”

Roberta Coe held back, but Nottingham, Eleanor Dowling and Sylvia Jessup pushed forward curiously.

“No closer than that!” Ames said.

“Who are you to give us orders?” Nottingham flared, circling the body.

“The sheriff left me in charge.”

“Well, I don’t see any badge, and as far as I’m concerned, I—”

He stepped forward.

Ames interposed himself between Nottingham and the inert figure. “I said to keep back.”

Nottingham straightened, anger in his eyes. “Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice, you damned lout!”

“Just keep back,” Ames said quietly.

“Why, you poor fool,” Nottingham blazed. “I used to be on the boxing team in college. I could—”

“You just keep back,” Ames interrupted quietly, ominously.

Sylvia Jessup, acting as peacemaker, said, “I’m sure you’ll understand Mr. Ames’ position, Dick. He was left here by the sheriff.”

“He says he was. I’m just making certain. Where did the sheriff go?”

Ames remained silent.

Sylvia pushed Nottingham to one side. “Where did the sheriff go, Mr. Ames?”

“He went to phone the coroner.”

“Were you with him when the body was discovered?”

“No, the sheriff found the body, then came and got me, and then went to the ranger station to telephone.”

Nottingham’s voice and manner showed his skepticism. “You mean the sheriff discovered the body, then he walked away and left the body all alone to go down and get you at your cabin, and then after all that, went to notify the coroner?”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Ames asked.

“Everything,” Nottingham said, and then added, “Frankly, I’m skeptical. While I’m on vacation right now, I’m a lawyer by profession, and your story doesn’t make sense to me.”

Ames said quietly, “I don’t give a damn whether it makes sense to you or not. If you don’t think the sheriff’s actions were logical, take it up with the sheriff, but don’t try to argue with me about it because in just about a minute you’re going to have to do a lot of backing up.”

Nottingham said, “I don’t back up for anyone,” but his eyes were cautious as he sized up Frank Ames as a boxer sizes up an opponent in the ring.

There was contrast in the two types; Nottingham well-fed, heavily muscled, broad of shoulder; Frank Ames slender, lithe with stringy muscles. Nottingham had well-muscled weight; Ames had rawhide endurance.

Abruptly the tension was broken by steps and H. W. Dowling called out from the trail, “What’s everyone doing over there?”

“There’s been a murder, father,” Eleanor said.

Dowling pushed his way through the scrub pines. “This damned altitude gets me. What’s the trouble?”

Eleanor explained the situation.

“All right,” Dowling said, “let’s keep away from the place.” He paused to catch his breath. “We don’t want to get mixed up in any of this stuff.” Again he paused for breath. “Who’s the sheriff?”

“Bill Eldon,” Ames said. “I think he visited your camp.”

“Oh, yes,” Dowling said, and his patronizing smile was as eloquent as words. “Dehydrated old coot. Where’s he gone?”

“To notify the coroner.”

“Well, I want everyone in my party to keep away from that body. That includes you, Dick. Understand?”

“Yes, H. W.,” Nottingham said, suddenly meek.

“And,” Dowling went on, “under the circumstances, I think we’ll wait.” He paused for two or three breaths, then added, “Until the sheriff gets back.” His eyes swiveled to glower at Ames. “Any objection, young man?”

“Not in the least,” Ames said. “Just so you don’t mess up the evidence.”

“Humph,” Dowling said, and sat down, breathing heavily.

More voices sounded on the trail. A carefree, casual, man’s laugh sounded garishly incongruous.

Dowling raised his voice and called out, “We’re in here, Sam.”

Crunching steps sounded on the decomposed granite, and Alexander Cameron and Sam Fremont came to join the party.

The abrupt cessation of their conversation, the startled consternation on their faces as they saw the body seemed to revive the shock of the others. A period of uncomfortable silence spread over the group.

Alexander Cameron, his equipment stiff and new, from the high-topped boots to the big sheath knife strapped to his belt, seemed about to become ill. Sam Fremont, quickly adjusting himself to the situation, let his restless eyes move in a quick survey from face to face, as though trying to ferret out the secret thoughts of the others.

Roberta Coe moved over to Frank Ames’ side, drew him slightly away, said in a whisper, “I suppose it’s too much to ask, but — could you — well — give me a break about what happened yesterday?”

“I’ve already covered for you,” Frank Ames said, a note of anger showing in his voice, despite the fact that it was carefully lowered so the others could not hear. “I don’t know why I did it, but I did. I stuck my neck out and—”

“Roberta!” Dowling said peremptorily. “Come over here!”

“Yes, H. W. Just a moment.”

Dowlings eyes were narrowed. “Now!” he snapped. “I want you.”

The tension was for a moment definitely noticeable to all. Roberta Coe’s hesitancy, Dowling’s steady, imperative eyes boring into hers, holding her in the inflexible grip of his will.

“Now,” Dowling repeated.

“Yes, H. W.,” Roberta Coe said, and moved away from Frank Ames.

Sheriff Bill Eldon, squatting on his heels cowboy fashion on the side of the ridge, kept to the concealing shadows of the pine fringe just in front of the jagged rock backbone. John Olney, the ranger, sat beside him.

Here the slope was carpeted by pine needles and deeply shaded. Fifty yards back the towering granite ridge reflected the sunlight with such blinding brilliance that anyone looking up from below would see only the glaring white, and unless he happened to be a trained hunter, could never force his eyes to penetrate into the shadows.

The sheriff slowly lowered his binoculars.

“What do you see?” Olney asked.

Bill Eldon said, “Well, he ain’t going to walk into our trap. He found the gun all right, looked it over and then let it lay there. Now all these other folks have come up and it looks like they aim to stick around.”

“It’s his gun?”

“I figure it that way — sort of figured that if he had been mixed up in it, he’d try to hide the gun. He wouldn’t know we’d found it and he’d figure the safest thing to do would be to hide it.”

“I still think he’ll do just that,” Olney said.

The sheriff said, “Nope, he’s lost his chance now. Somehow I just can’t get that gun business straight. If Ames had done the killing and it’s his gun, you’d think he’d either have hidden it or taken it back home. The way it is now, somebody must have wiped it clean of fingerprints, then dropped it, walked off and left it. That someone had to be either pretty lucky or a pretty fair woodsman; knew that a storm was coming up and knew a heavy rain would wash out all the tracks. Hang it, I thought Ames would give us a lead when he found that gun. Guess we’ve got to figure out a new approach. Well, let’s go on back and tell him we’ve phoned the coroner.”

“When do you reckon Coroner Logan will get here?”

“Going to take him a while,” the sheriff said. “Even if he gets a plane, he’s got a long ride.”

“We just going to wait?”

“Not by a damn sight,” Eldon said cheerfully. “We ain’t supposed to move the body or take anything out of the pockets until the coroner gets here, but I’m not going to sit on my haunches just waiting around. Let’s be kind of careful sneaking back to our horses. We wouldn’t want ’em to know we’d been watching! There’s a lot more people down there now.”

“City guys,” Olney said, snorting.

“I know, but they all have eyes, and the more pairs of eyes there are, the more chance there is of seeing motion. Just take it easy now. Keep in the shadows and back of the trees.”

They worked their way back around the slope carefully.

Bill Eldon led the way to the place where their horses had been tied. The men tightened the cinches and swung into their saddles. “We don’t want to hit that trail too soon,” Sheriff Eldon announced. “Some of those people might be smart enough to follow our tracks back a ways.”

“Not those city folks,” Olney said, and laughed.

“Might not be deliberately backtracking us,” Bill Eldon said, “but they might hike back up the trail. If they do, and should find they ran out of horse tracks before they got very far, even a city dude might get suspicious. Remember when they came walking up the trail, that chap in the sweater stopped when he came to the point where the tracks led up to the place we found the body. He’s probably been around the hills some.”

“Been around as a dude,” Olney said scornfully, “but perhaps we’d better ride up a mile or so before we hit the trail.”

“How do you figure this Ames out?” asked the sheriff.

Olney put his horse into a jog trot behind the sheriff’s fast-stepping mount. “There’s something wrong with him. He broods too much. He’s out there alone and— Well, I always did think he was running away from someone. I think maybe he’s on the lam. I’ve stopped in on him a few times. He’s never opened up. That ain’t right. When a man’s out here in the hills all alone he gets lonesome, and he should talk his head off when he gets a chance to visit with someone.”

Sheriff Eldon merely grunted.

“I think he’s running away,” Olney insisted.

The ridge widened and the ranger put his horse alongside the sheriff.

“Sometimes people try running away from themselves,” the sheriff said. “They go hide out someplace, thinking they’re running away. Then they find — themselves.”

“Well, this man, Ames, hasn’t found anything yet.”

“You can’t ever tell,” Bill Eldon rejoined. “When a man gets out with just himself and the stars, the mountains, the streams and the trees, he sort of soaks up something of the eternal bigness of things. I like the way he looks you in the eye.

“When you’re figurin’ on clues you don’t just figure on the things that exist. You figure on the people who caused ’em to exist.” And Bill Eldon, keeping well to one side of the trail, gently touched the spurs to the flanks of his spirited horse and thereby terminated all further conversation.

The sheriff reined the horse to a stop, swung from the saddle with loose-hipped ease, dropped the reins to the ground and said easily, “Morning, folks.”

He was wearing leather chaps now, and the jangling spurs and broad-brimmed, high-crown hat seemed to add to his weight and stature.

“This is John Olney, the ranger up here,” he said by way of blanket introduction. “I guess I know all you folks and you know me. We ain’t going to move the body, but we’re going to look things over a little bit. Coroner’s not due here for a while and we don’t want to lose any more evidence.”

The spectators made a tight little circle as they gathered around the two men. Sheriff Eldon, crouching beside the corpse, spoke with brisk authority to the ranger.

“I’m going to take a look through his pockets, John. I want to find out who he was. You take your pencil and paper and inventory every single thing as I take it out.”

Olney nodded. In his official olive-green, he stood quietly efficient, notebook in hand.

But there was nothing for the ranger to write down.

One by one the pockets in the clothes of the dead man were explored by the sheriff’s fingers. In each instance the pocket was empty.

The sheriff straightened and regarded the body with a puzzled frown.

The little circle stood watching him, wondering what he would do next. Overhead an occasional wisp of fleecy white cloud drifted slowly across the sky. The faint beginnings of a breeze stirred rustling whispers from the pine trees. Off to the west could be heard, faintly but distinctly, the sounds of the restless water in the North Fork, tumbling over smooth-washed granite boulders into deep pools rippling across gravel bars, plunging down short foam-flecked stretches of swift rapids.

“Maybe he just didn’t have anything in his pockets,” Nottingham suggested.

The sheriff regarded Nottingham with calmly thoughtful eyes. His voice when he spoke withered the young lawyer with remorseless logic. “He probably wouldn’t have carried any keys with him unless he’d taken out the keys to an automobile he’d left somewhere at the foot of the trail. He might not have had a handkerchief. He could have been dumb enough to have come out without a knife, and it’s conceivable he didn’t have a pen or pencil. Perhaps he didn’t care what time it was, so he didn’t carry a watch. But he knew he was going to camp out here in the hills. He was carrying a shoulder pack to travel light. The man would have had matches in his pocket. What’s more, you’ll notice the stain on the inside of the first and second fingers of his left hand. The man was a cigarette smoker. Where are his matches? Where are his cigarettes? Not that I want to wish my problems off on you, young man. But since you’ve volunteered to help, I thought I’d point out the things I’d like to have you think about.”

Nottingham flushed.

Dowling laughed a deep booming laugh, then he said, “Don’t blame him, sheriff. He’s a lawyer.”

The sheriff bent once more, to run his hands along the man’s waist, exploring in vain for a money belt. He ran his fingers along the lining of the coat, said suddenly to the ranger, “Wait a minute, John. We’ve got something here.”

“What?” the ranger asked.

“Something concealed in the lining of his coat,” the sheriff answered.

“Perhaps it slipped down through a hole in the inside pocket,” Nottingham suggested.

“Isn’t any hole in the pocket,” Eldon announced. “Think I’m going to have to cut the lining, John.”

The sheriff’s sharp knife cut through the stitches in the lining with the deft skill of a seamstress. His fingers explored through the opening, brought out a Manila envelope darkened and polished from the friction of long wear.

The sheriff looked at the circled faces. “Got your pencil ready, John?”

The ranger nodded.

The sheriff opened the flap of the envelope and brought out a photograph frayed at the corners.

“Now, what do you make of that?” he asked.

“I don’t make anything of it,” Olney said, studying the photograph. “It’s a good-looking young fellow standing up, having his picture taken.”

“This is a profile view of the same man,” the sheriff said, taking out another photograph.

“Just those two pictures?” Olney asked.

“That’s all. The man’s body kept ’em from getting wet.”

Ames, looking over the sheriff’s shoulder, saw very clear snapshots of a young man whom he judged to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven, with a shock of wavy dark hair, widespread intelligent eyes, a somewhat weak vacillating mouth, and clothes which even in the photograph indicated expensive tailoring.

Quite evidently here was a young man who was vain, good-looking and who knew he was good-looking, a man who had been able to get what he wanted at the very outset of life and had then started coasting along, resting on his oars at an age w hen most men were buckling down to the grim realities of a competitive existence.

The picture had been cut off on the left, evidently so as to exclude some woman who was standing on the man’s right, but her left hand rested across his shoulder, and, seeing that hand. Ames suddenly noticed a vague familiarity about it. It was a shapely, delicate hand with a gold signet ring on the third finger.

Ames couldn’t be absolutely certain in the brief glimpse he had, but he thought he had seen that ring before.

Yesterday, Roberta Coe had been wearing a ring which was startlingly like that.

Ames turned to look at Roberta. He couldn’t catch her eye immediately, but Sylvia Jessup, deftly maneuvering herself into a position so she could glance at the photographs, caught the attention of everyone present by a quick, sharp gasp.

“What is it?” the sheriff asked. “Know this man?”

“Who?” she asked, looking down at the corpse.

“The one in the picture.”

“Heavens no. I was just struck by the fact that he’s — well, so good-looking. You wonder why a dead man would be carrying his photograph.”

Sheriff Eldon studied her keenly. “That the only reason?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“Humph!” Bill Eldon said.

The others crowded forward. Eldon hesitated a moment, then slipped the photographs back into the envelope.

“We’ll wait until the coroner gets here,” he said.

Frank Ames caught Roberta Coe’s eye and saw the strained agony of her face. He knew she had had a brief glimpse of those photographs, and he knew that unless he created some diversion her white-faced dismay would attract the attention of everyone.

He stepped forward calmly. “May I see those photographs?” he asked.

The sheriff turned to look at him, slipped the Manila envelope down inside his jacket pocket.

“Why?” he asked.

“I want to see if I know the man. He looked like a man who was a buddy of mine.”

“What name?” Bill Eldon asked.

Frank Ames could see that his ruse was working. No one was looking at Roberta Coe now. All eyes were fastened on him.

“What name?” the sheriff repeated.

Ames searched the files of his memory with frantic haste. “Pete Ingle,” he blurted, giving the name of the first man whom he had ever seen killed; and because it was the first time he had seen a buddy shot down, it had left an indelible impression on Frank’s mind.

Sheriff Eldon started to remove the envelope from his jacket pocket, then thought better of it. His eyes made shrewd appraisal of Frank Ames’ countenance, said, “Where is this Pete Ingle now?”

“Dead.”

“Where did he die?”

“Guadalcanal.”

“How tall?”

“Five feet, ten inches.”

“What did he weigh?”

“I guess a hundred and fifty-five or sixty.”

“Blond or brunette?”

“Brunette.”

“I’m going to check up on this, you know,” Bill Eldon said, his voice kindly. “What color eyes?”

“Blue.”

Eldon put the picture back in his pocket. “I don’t think we’ll do anything more about these pictures until after the coroner comes.”

Ames flashed a glance toward Roberta, saw that she had, in some measure, recovered her composure. It was only a quick fleeting glance. He didn’t dare attract attention to her by looking directly at her.

It was as he turned away that he saw Sylvia Jessup watching him with eyes that had lost their mocking humor and were engaged in respectful appraisal, as though she were sizing up a potential antagonist, suddenly conscious of his strong points, but probing for his weak points.

By using the Forest Service telephone to arrange for horses, a plane, and one of the landing fields maintained by the fire-fighting service, the official party managed to arrive at the scene of the crime shortly before noon.

Leonard Keating, the young, ruthlessly ambitious deputy district attorney, accompanied James Logan, the coroner.

Sheriff Bill Eldon, John Olney the ranger, Logan the coroner, and Keating the deputy district attorney, launched an official investigation, and from the start Keating’s attitude was hostile. He felt all of the arrogant impatience of youth for anyone older than forty, and Bill Eldon’s conservative caution was to Keating’s mind evidence of doddering senility.

“You say that this is Frank Ames’ rifle?” Keating asked, indicating the .22 rifle with the telescopic sight.

“That’s right,” Bill Eldon said, his slow drawl more pronounced than ever. “After the other folks had left, Ames took me over here, showed me the rifle, and—”

“Showed you the rifle!” Keating interrupted.

“Now don’t get excited,” Eldon said. “We’d found it before, but we left it right where it was, just to see what he’d do when he found it. We staked out where we could watch.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. Later on he showed it to me after the others had left.”

“Who were the others?”

“This party that’s camped down here a mile or so at the Springs.”

“Oh, yes. You told me about them. Vacationists. I know Harvey W. Dowling, the big-time insurance man. You say there’s a Richard Nottingham with him. That wouldn’t be Dick Nottingham who was on the intercollegiate boxing team?”

“I believe that’s right,” the sheriff said. “He’s a lawyer.”

“Yes, yes, a good one too. I was a freshman in college when he was in his senior year. Really a first-class boxer, quicker than a streak of greased lightning and with a punch in either hand. I want to meet him.”

“Well, we’ll go down there and talk with them. I thought you’d want to look around here. There was nothing in his pockets,” the sheriff said. “But when we got to the lining of the coat—”

“Wait a minute,” Keating interrupted. “You’re not supposed to look in the pockets. You’re not supposed to touch the body. No one’s supposed to move it until the coroner can get here.”

“When those folks wrote the lawbooks,” the sheriff interrupted, “they didn’t have in mind a case where it would take hours for a coroner to arrive and where it might be necessary to get some fast action.”

“The law is the law,” Keating announced, “and it’s not for us to take into consideration what was in the minds of the law makers. We read the statutes and have no need to interpret them unless there should be some latent ambiguity, and no such latent ambiguity seems to exist in this case. However, what’s done now is done. Let’s look around here.”

“I’ve already looked around,” the sheriff said.

“I know,” Keating snapped, “but we’ll take another look around the place. You say it rained here yesterday afternoon?”

“A little before sundown it started raining steady. Before then we’d had a thunderstorm. The rain kept up until around ten o’clock. The man was killed before the first rain. I figure he was killed early in the afternoon.”

Keating looked at him.

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, he’d been hiking, and he was trying to establish an overnight camp here. Now, I’ve got a hunch he came in the same way you did — by airplane, only he didn’t have any horses to meet him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well,” the sheriff said, “he brought in what stuff he brought in on his back. There’s a pack board over there with a tumpline, and his roll of blankets is under that tree. His whole camp is just the way he’d dropped it. Then he’d gone up to get some wood, and the way I figure it, he’d wanted to get that big log so he could keep pushing the ends together and keep a small fire going all night. He didn’t have a tent. His bedroll is a light down sleeping bag, the whole thing weighing about eight pounds. But he had quite a bit of camp stuff, maybe a thirty-five pound pack.”

“What does all that have to do with the airplane?” Keating asked impatiently.

“Well, now,” Eldon said, “I was just explaining. He carried this stuff in on his back, but you look at the leather straps on that pack board and you see that they’re new. The whole outfit is new. Now, those leather straps are stained a little bit. If he’d had to bring that stuff in from up the valley, he’d have done a lot of sweating.”

“Humph,” Keating said. “I don’t see that necessarily follows. Are there no roads into this back country?”

The sheriff shook his head. “This is a primitive area. You get into it by trails. There aren’t any roads closer than twenty miles. I don’t think that man carried that camp outfit on his back for twenty miles uphill. I think he walked not more than three or four miles, and I think it was on the level. I’ve already used Olney’s telephone at the ranger station to get my under-sheriff on the job, checking with all charter airplanes to see if they brought a man like this into the country.”

Keating said, “Well, I’ll look around while the coroner goes over the body. There’s a chance you fellows may have overlooked some clues that sharper — and younger — eyes will pick up.”

Logan bent over the body. Keating skirmished around through the underbrush, his lean, youthful figure doubled over, moving rapidly as though he were a terrier prowling on a scent. He soon called out.

“Look over here, gentlemen. And be careful how you walk. The place is all messed up with tracks already, but try not to obliterate this piece of evidence.”

“What have you got?” Olney asked.

“Something that has hitherto been overlooked,” Keating announced importantly.

They bent over to look, and Keating pointed to a crumpled cloth tobacco sack which had evidently been about a quarter full of tobacco when the drenching rain had soaked through to the tobacco, stiffening the sack and staining it all to a dark brown which made it difficult to see against the ground.

“And over here,” Keating went on, “just six or eight inches from this tobacco sack you’ll find the burnt ends of two cigarettes rolled with brown rice paper, smoked down to within about an inch of the end and then left here. Now I’m no ex-cattleman,” and he glanced meaningly at Bill Eldon, “but I would say there’s something distinctive about the way these cigarettes are rolled.”

“There sure is,” Bill Eldon admitted ruefully.

“Well,” Keating said, “that’s my idea of a clue. It’s just about the same as though the fellow had left his calling card. Here are those cigarettes, the stubs showing very plainly how they’re rolled and folded. As I understand it, it’s quite a job to roll a cigarette, isn’t it, sheriff, that is, to do a good job?”

“Sure is,” Bill Eldon observed, “and these were rolled by a man who knew his business.”

“Don’t touch them now,” Keating warned. “I want to get a photograph of them just the way they were found, but you can see from just looking at this end that the paper has been rolled over and then there’s been a trick fold, something that makes it hold its shape when it’s rolled.”

“That’s right,” Olney said — there was a new-found respect in his voice.

“Let’s get that camera, coroner,” Keating announced, “and take some pictures of these cigarettes. Then we’ll carefully pick this evidence up so as not to disturb it. Then I think we’d better go check on the telephone and see if there are any leads to the inquiries Sheriff Eldon put out about someone bringing this chap in by airplane. I have an idea that’s where we are going to get a line on him.”

“What do you make of this evidence, Bill?” the ranger asked Eldon.

It was Keating who answered the question. “There’s no doubt about it. The whole crime was deliberately premeditated. This is the thing that the layman might overlook. It’s something that shows its true significance only to the legal mind. It establishes the premeditation which makes for first-degree murder. The murderer lay here waiting for his man. He waited while he smoked two cigarettes.”

“How do you suppose the murderer knew the man was going to camp right here?” Bill Eldon asked.

“That’s a minor matter,” Keating said “The point is, he did know. He was lying here waiting. He smoked two cigarettes. Probably the man had already made his camp here and then gone up the hill for firewood, dragging that log down the hill along the trail that you pointed out.”

Eldon’s nod was dubious.

“Don’t you agree with that?” Keating demanded truculently.

“I was just wondering if the fellow that was killed wasn’t pretty tired from his walk,” Eldon said.

“Why? You said he only had to walk three or four miles from an airfield and it was pretty level ground all the way.”

“I know,” Eldon said, “but if he’d already established his camp here and then gone up the hill to get that firewood and dragged it down, the murderer must have moved into ambush after the man went up to get that log.”

“Well?”

“The victim certainly must have been aw fully tired if it took long enough getting that log for the murderer to smoke two cigarettes.”

“Well, perhaps the murderer smoked them after the crime, or he may have been waiting for his man to get in just the right position. There’s no use trying to account for all these little things.”

“That’s right,” Eldon said.

“This evidence,” Keating went on significantly, “would have been overlooked if I hadn’t been prowling around, crawling on my hands and knees looking for any little thing that might have escaped observation.”

“Just like a danged bloodhound,” Olney said admiringly.

“That’s right,” Bill Eldon admitted. “Just like a bloodhound. Don’t see anything else there, do you, son?”

“How much else do you want?” Keating flared impatiently “And let’s try and retain something of the dignity of our positions, sheriff. Now, if you’ve no objection, we’ll go to the telephone and see what we can discover.”

“No objection at all,” Eldon said. “I’m here to do everything I can.”

Information was waiting for them at the Forest Service telephone office.

The operator said, “Your office left a message to be forwarded to you, sheriff. A private charter plane took a man by the name of George Bay, who answers the description you gave over the telephone, into forest landing field number thirty-six, landing about ten o’clock yesterday morning. The man had a pack and took off into the woods. He said he was on a hiking trip and wanted to get some pictures. He told a couple of stories which didn’t exactly hang together and the pilot finally became suspicious. He thought his passenger was a fugitive and threatened to turn the plane around and fly to the nearest city to report to the police. When George Bay realized the pilot meant business, he told him he was a detective employed to trace some very valuable jewels which had been stolen by a member of the military forces while he was in Japan. He showed the pilot his credentials as a detective and said he was on a hot lead, that the jewels had been hidden for over a year, but the detective felt he was going to find them. He warned the aviator to say nothing to anyone.”

Bill Eldon thanked the operator, relayed the information to the others.

“Well,” Keating said, “I guess that does it.”

“Does what?” the sheriff asked.

“Gives us our murderer,” Keating said. “It has to be someone who was in the Army during the war, someone who was in Japan. How about this man Ames? Isn’t he a veteran?”

“That’s right. I think he was a prisoner in Japan.”

“Well, we’ll go talk with him,” Keating said. “He’s our man.”

“Of course,” Eldon pointed out, “if this dead man was really a detective, it ain’t hardly likely he’d tell the airplane pilot what he was after. If he said he was after Japanese gems, he’s like as not looking for stolen nylons.”

“You forget that the pilot was calling for a showdown,” Keating said. “He forced this man’s hand.”

“Maybe. It’d take more force than that to get me to show my hand on a case.”

“Well, I’m going to act on the assumption this report is true until it’s proven otherwise,” Keating said.

Sheriff Bill Eldon said, “Okay, that’s up to you. Now my idea of the way to really solve this murder is to sort of take it easy and...”

“And my idea of the way to solve it,” Keating interrupted impatiently, “is to lose no more time getting evidence and lose no time at all getting the murderer. It’s the responsibility of your office to get the murderer; the responsibility of my office to prosecute him. Therefore,” he added significantly, “I think it will pay you to let me take the initiative from this point on. I think we should work together, sir!”

“Well, we’re together,” Bill Eldon observed cheerfully. “Let’s work.”

Roberta Coe surveyed the little cabin, the grassy meadow, the graveled bar in the winding stream, the long finger of pine trees which stretched down the slope.

“So this is where you live?”

Frank Ames nodded.

“Don’t you get terribly lonely?”

“I did at first.”

“You don’t now?”

“No.”

He felt at a loss for words and even recognized an adolescent desire to kick at the soil in order to furnish some outlet for his nervous tension.

“I should think you’d be lonesome all the time.”

“At first,” he said, “I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I wasn’t physically able to meet people or talk with them. They exhausted me. I came up here and lived alone because I had to come up here and live alone. And then I found that I enjoyed it. Gradually I came to learn something about the woods, about the deer, the trout, the birds, the weather. I studied the different types of clouds, habits of game. I had some books and some old magazines sent me and I started to read, and enjoyed the reading. The days began to pass rapidly and then a tranquil peace came to my mind.” He stopped, surprised at his own eloquence.

He saw her eyes light with interest. “Could you tell me more about that, and aren’t you going to invite me in?”

He seemed embarrassed. “Well, it’s just a bachelor’s cabin, and, of course, I’m alone here and—”

She raised her eyebrows. Her eyes were mocking. “The conventions?”

He would have given much to have been able to meet the challenge of her light, bantering mood, but to his own ears the words seemed to fairly blurt from his mouth as he said, “People up here are different. They wouldn’t understand, in case anyone should—”

“I don’t care whether they understand or not,” she said. “You were talking about mental tranquillity. I could use quite an order of that.”

He said nothing.

“I suppose you have visitors about once a month?”

“Oh, once every so often. Mr. Olney, the ranger, rides by.”

She said, “And I presume you feel that your cabin is a mess because you’ve been living here by yourself and that, as a woman, I’d look around disapprovingly and sniff. Come on, let’s go in. I want to talk with you and I’m not going to stand out here.”

Silently he opened the door.

“You don’t even keep it locked?”

He shook his head. “Out here I never think of it. If Olney, for instance, found himself near this cabin and a shower was coming up, he’d go in, make himself at home, cook up a pot of tea, help himself to anything he wanted to eat, and neither of us would think anything of it. The only rule is that a man’s supposed to leave enough dry wood to start a fire.”

“What a cute little place! How snug and cozy!”

“You think so?” he asked, his face showing surprised relief.

“Heavens, yes. It’s just as neat and spick-and-span as — as a yacht.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about yachts.”

“Well, what I meant was that — well, you know, everything shipshape. You have a radio?”

“Yes, a battery set.”

“And a gasoline reading lamp and a cute little stove and bookshelves. How wonderful!”

He suddenly found himself thoroughly at ease.

Abruptly she said, “Tell me more about this mental tranquillity. I want some of that.”

“You can’t saw it off in chunks, wrap it up in packages and sell it by the pound.”

“So I gathered. But would you mind telling me how one goes about finding it? Do you find it at outcroppings and dig it up, or do you sink shafts, or...?”

“I guess it’s something that’s within you all the time. All you do is relax and let it come to the surface. The trouble is,” he said, suddenly earnest, “that it’s hard to understand it because it’s all around you. It’s a part of man’s heritage, but he ignores it, shuts it out.

“Look at the view through the window. There’s the mountain framed against the blue sky. The sunlight is casting silver reflections on the ripples in the water where it runs over the rapids by the gravel bar. There’s a trout jumping in the pool just below the bar. The bird perched on the little pine with that air of impudent expectancy is a Clark jay, sometimes called a camp robber. I love him for his alert impudence, his fearless assurance. Everything’s tranquil and restful and there’s no reason for inner turmoil.”

Her eyes widened. “Say, when you warm up to something, you really talk, don’t you?”

He said, “I love these mountains and I can talk when I’m telling people about them. You see, lots of people don’t really appreciate them. During hunting season, people come pouring in. They come to kill things. If they don’t get a deer, they think the trip has been a failure. What they see of the mountains is more or less incidental to killing.

“Same way with the fishing season crowd. But when you come to live in the mountains, you learn to get in time with the bigness of it all. There’s an underlying tranquillity that finally penetrates to your consciousness and relaxes the nerve tension. You sort of quiet down. And then you realize how much real strength and dignity there is in the calm certainty of your own part in the eternal universe.

“These mountains are a soul tonic. They soothe the tension out of your nerves and take away the hurt in one’s soul. They give strength. You can just feel them in their majestic stability. Oh, hang it, you can’t put it in words, and here I am trying!”

The interest in her eyes, the realization of his own eloquence made him suddenly self-conscious once more.

“Mind if I smoke?” she asked.

“Certainly not. I’ll roll one myself.”

He took the cloth tobacco sack from his pocket, opened a package of cigarette papers.

She said, “Won’t you try one of mine?”

“No thanks. I like to roll my own. I—” He broke off and said, “Something frightened those mountain quail.”

He held a match for her cigarette, rolled his own cigarette and had just pinched the end into shape when he said, “I knew something frightened them. Hear the horses?”

She cocked her head to one side, listening, then nodded, caught the expression on Frank Ames’ face and suddenly laughed. “And you’re afraid I’ve compromised your good name.”

“No. But suppose it should be your companions looking for you and...”

“Don’t be silly,” she said easily. “I’m free to do as I please. I came up here to explain to you about yesterday. I–I’m sorry.”

The riders came up fast at a brisk trot. Then the tempo of hoofbeats changed from a steady rhythm to the disorganized tramping of horses being pulled up and circling, as riders dismounted and tied up. Ames, at the door, said, “It’s the sheriff, the ranger, and a couple of other people.

“Hello, folks,” he called out. “Won’t you come in?”

“We’re coming,” Bill Eldon said.

Frank Ames’ attitude was stiffly embarrassed as he said, “I have company. Miss Coe was looking over my bookshelf.”

“Oh, yes,” the sheriff said quite casually. “This is James Logan, the coroner, and Leonard Keating, the deputy district attorney. They wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Keating was patronizingly contemptuous as he looked around the interior of the neat little cabin, found that the only comfortable chair was that occupied by Roberta Coe, that the others were homemade stools and boxes which had been improvised into furniture “Well,” he said, “we won’t be long. We wanted to get all the details, everything that you know about that murder, Ames.”

“I told the sheriff everything I know about it.”

“You didn’t see anything or hear anything out of the ordinary yesterday afternoon?”

“No. That is, I—”

“Yes, go ahead,” Keating said.

“Nothing,” Ames said.

Keating’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t up around that locality?”

“I was fishing downstream.”

“How far below here?”

“Quarter of a mile, I guess.”

“And the murder was committed half a mile upstream?”

“I guess that distance is about right.”

“You weren’t fishing upstream at all?”

“No. I fished downstream.”

Keating’s eyes showed a certain sneering disbelief. “What are you doing up here, anyway?”

“I’m— Well, I’m just living up here.”

“Were you in the Army?”

“Yes.”

“In Japan?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“I was a prisoner of war for a while and then I was held there a while before I was sent home.”

“Picked up some gems while you were there, didn’t you?”

“I had a pearl and— What do you mean I picked up gems?”

Keating’s eyes were insolent in their contemptuous hostility. “I mean you stole them,” he said, “and you came up here to lie low and wait until things blew over. Isn’t that about it?”

“That’s definitely not true.”

“And,” Keating went on, “this man who was killed was a detective who was looking for some gems that had been stolen from Japan. He looked you up yesterday afternoon and started questioning you, didn’t he?”

“No!”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Ames was suddenly on his feet. “Damn you!” he said. “I’m not lying to you and I don’t have to put up with this stuff. Now, get out of here!”

Keating remained seated, said, “Sheriff, will you maintain order?”

Bill Eldon grinned. “You’re doing the talking, Keating.”

“I’m questioning this man. He’s suspect in a murder case.”

“I’m suspect?” Ames exclaimed.

“You said it,” Keating announced curtly.

“You’re crazy, in addition to the other things that are wrong with you,” Ames told him “I don’t have to put up with talk like that from you or from anyone else.”

Keating said, “We’re going to look around here. Any objection?”

Ames turned to Bill Eldon. “Do I have to—”

Roberta Coe said very firmly and definitely, “Not unless you want him to, Frank; not unless he has a search warrant. Don’t let them pull that kind of stuff. Dick Nottingham is an attorney. If you want, I’ll get him and—”

“I don’t want a lawyer,” Ames said. “I haven’t any money to pay a lawyer.”

“Go ahead. Get a lawyer if you want,” Keating said, “but I think I have enough evidence right now to warrant this man’s arrest. Would you mind letting me see that cigarette, Mr. Ames.”

“What cigarette?”

“The one you just put in the ash tray. Thank you.”

Keating inspected the cigarette, passed the tray silently to the sheriff.

“What’s strange about the cigarette?” Ames asked.

“The cigarette,” Keating said, “is rolled in a peculiarly distinctive manner. Do you always roll your cigarettes that way?”

“Yes. That is, I have for years. I pull one edge of the paper over and then make a little crimp and fold it back before I start rolling. That helps hold the cigarette in shape.”

Keating took a small pasteboard box from his pocket. This box was lined with soft moss and on the moss were two cigarette stubs. “Would you say these were rolled by you?”

Ames leaned forward.

“Don’t touch them,” Keating warned. “Just look at the ends.”

“I don’t think you’d better answer that, Frank,” Roberta Coe said.

“I have nothing to conceal,” Ames said. “Certainly those are my cigarettes. Where did you find them?”

“You rolled those?”

“Yes.”

Keating stood up and dramatically pointed his finger at Frank Ames. “I accuse you of the murder of George Bay, a private detective.”

Ames’ face flushed.

“Will you take him into custody, sheriff? I order you to.”

“Well, now,” the sheriff said in a drawl, “I don’t know as I have to take anybody into custody on the strength of your say-so.”

“This man is to be arrested and charged with murder,” Keating said. “A felony has been committed. There is reasonable ground to believe this man guilty. It is not necessary to have a warrant of arrest under those circumstances, and, as a member of the district attorney’s office, I call on you as the sheriff of this county to take that man into custody. If you fail to do so, the responsibility will be entirely on your shoulders.”

“Okay,” Bill Eldon said cheerfully, “the responsibility is on my shoulders.”

“And I want to look around here,” Keating said.

“As long as you’re halfway decent, I’m willing to do anything I can to cooperate,” Ames told him, “but you’re completely crazy if you accuse me of having anything to do with that murder.”

“It was your gun that killed him, wasn’t it?”

“My gun was at the scene of the crime — near the scene of the crime.”

“And you don’t know how it got there?”

Ames said, “Of course I don’t. Do you think I’d be silly enough to go out and kill a man and then leave my rifle lying on the ground? If I’d killed him, I’d have taken my gun to the cabin, cleaned it, and hung it up on those pegs where it belongs.”

“If you were smart, you wouldn’t,” Keating sneered. “You’d know that the officers would recover the fatal bullet and shoot test bullets from all the .22 rifles owned by anyone in these parts. Sooner or later you would have to face the fact that the man was killed with a bullet from your gun. You were smart enough to realize it would be a lot better to have the gun found at the scene of the murder and claim it had been stolen.”

“I wouldn’t let them search this cabin, Frank,” Roberta Coe said in a low voice. “I’d put them all out of here and lock the cabin up and make certain that no one got in until they returned with a search warrant, and then you could have your attorney present when the search was made. How do you know they aren’t going to plant something?”

Keating turned to regard her with hostile eyes. “You’re doing a lot of talking,” he said. “Where were you when the murder was committed?”

Her face suddenly drained of color.

“Were you up here yesterday in this cabin?”

“No.”

“Anywhere near it?”

“No.”

“Go past here on the trail?”

“I–I took a walk.”

“Where did you walk?”

“Up the trail.”

“Up to the point where the murder was committed?”

“No, not that far. I turned back. I don’t know. Quite a bit downstream from here.”

“See this man yesterday?”

Roberta tightened her lips. “Yes.”

“Where?”

“I met him on the trail. He was walking down toward the place where I was camped.”

“Why was he walking down there?”

“I didn’t ask him. He overtook me on the trail, and we exchanged greetings and then walked together down the trail to the place where I’m camped, and I introduced him to the others.”

“And then he turned back?”

“No. He said he was going on.”

“Well, now isn’t that interesting! I thought you said he was fishing yesterday afternoon, sheriff.”

“He’d been fishing. I found his rod and creel where he’d left it, apparently when he walked down the trail.”

“Well, well, well, isn’t that interesting,” Keating sneered. “So he went fishing and then left his rod and creel by the water. Just laid them down, I presume, and walked away.”

“No, he propped the rod up against the tree and hung the creel over a forked limb.”

“And then what?”

“Apparently he walked on down the trail.”

“What was the idea, Ames?” Keating asked.

Frank said, “I wanted to look over some of the country. I–I walked on down the trail and met Miss Coe.”

“I see. Went as far as her camp with her?”

“Well, I walked on a ways below camp.”

“How far?”

“Oh, perhaps two hundred yards.”

“Then what?”

“Then I turned back.”

“Back up the trail?”

“No, I didn’t. I made a swing.”

Roberta Coe, rushing to his assistance, said, “He was looking over the country in order to find a site for some traps this winter.”

“Oh, looking for traps, eh?”

“A place to put traps,” Roberta Coe said acidly.

“Which way did you turn, Ames? Remember now, we can check on some of this.”

Ames said, “I turned up the draw, crossed over the divide and then the rainstorm overtook me, and I lay in a cave up there by the ridge.”

“You turned east?” the ranger asked, suddenly interested, and injecting himself into the conversation.

“Yes.”

“Looking for a trap-line site?” Olney asked, incredulously.

“Well, I was looking the country over. I had intended to look for a trap-line site and then—”

“What are you talking about?” Olney said. “You know this country as well as you know the palm of your hand. Anyhow, you wouldn’t be trapping up there. You’d be trapping down on the stream.”

Ames said, “Well, I told Miss Coe that I— Well, I was a little embarrassed. I wanted to walk with her but I didn’t want her to think I–It was just one of those things.”

“You mean you weren’t looking for a trap site?” Keating asked.

“No. I wanted to walk with her.”

“In other words, you lied to her. Is that right?”

Ames, who had seated himself once more on a box, was up with cold fury. “Get out of here,” he said.

“And don’t answer any more questions, Frank,” Roberta Coe pleaded. “You don’t have to talk to people when they are that insulting.”

Keating said, “And I’m going to give you the benefit of a little investigation too, Miss Coe.”

Ames, his face white with fury, said, “Get out! Damn you, get out of my cabin!”

Bill Eldon grinned. “Well, Keating, you wanted to do the questioning. I guess you’ve done it.”

“That’s it,” Keating said grimly. “I’ve done it, and I’ve solved your murder case for you.”

“Thanks,” Bill Eldon said dryly.

They filed out of the cabin.

Once more Keating said, “I order you to put that man under arrest.”

“I heard you,” Bill Eldon said.

Keating turned to Olney. “What sort of title does this man have to this property?”

“Well, he’s built this cabin under lease from the Forestry Service—”

“And the Forestry Service retains the right to inspect the premises?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“All right,” Keating said, “let’s do some inspecting.”

Frank Ames stood in the doorway, his heart pounding with anger, and the old nervous weakness was back, making the muscles of his legs quiver. He watched the men moving around in front of the cabin, saw the ranger suddenly pause. “This chopping block has been moved,” Olney said. “It was over there for quite a while. You can see the depression in the ground. Why did you move it, Ames?”

Ames, suddenly surprised, said, “I didn’t move it. Someone else must have moved it.”

Olney tilted the chopping block on edge, rolled it back to one side. Keating said, “Someone has disturbed this earth. Is there a spade here?”

Olney said, “Here’s one,” and reached for the shovel which was standing propped against the cabin.

Keating started digging under the place where the chopping block had been.

Ames pushed forward to peer curiously over Bill Eldon’s shoulder.

Roberta Coe, standing close to him, slipped her hand into his, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“What’s this?” Keating asked.

The spade had caught on a piece of red cloth.

Keating dropped to his knees, pulled away the rest of the loose soil with his fingers, brought out a knotted red bandanna, untied the knots and spread on the ground the assortment of things that were rolled up in it.

Ames, looking with incredulous eyes, saw a leather billfold, a card case distended from cards and documents, a fountain pen, a pencil, a notebook, a knife, some loose silver, a white handkerchief, a package of cigarettes, a folder of matches and a small, round waterproof match case.

Keating picked up the card case, opened it to show the cards of identification, neatly arranged in hinged cellophane pockets.

The first card showed a picture of a man with thick hair, a close-clipped dark mustache, and, even in the glimpse he had of it, Frank Ames could see it was the photograph of the murdered man.

“Deputy license of George Bay,” Keating announced. “Here’s another one. Identification showing George Bay licensed as a private detective. Here’s a credit card, Standard Oil Company, made out to George Bay. Some stuff that’s been in here is missing. You can see this card case has been distended with cards that were in the pockets. They’re gone now. What did you do with them, Ames?”

Ames could only shake his head.

“You see,” Keating said triumphantly, turning to Eldon. “He thought he could keep anyone from finding out the identity of the murdered man, so he removed everything that could have been a means of identification.”

The sheriff shook his head sadly. “This murderer is making me plumb mad.”

“You don’t act like it,” Keating said.

“Thinking we’d be so dumb we couldn’t find all the clues he planted unless he was so darned obvious about it,” the sheriff went on sadly. “It’s just plumb insultin’ to our intelligence. He was so darned afraid we wouldn’t find all that stuff he even moved the choppin’ block. I’d say that man just don’t think we’ve got good sense.”

“You mean you’re going to try to explain away this evidence?” Keating asked.

Bill Eldon shook his head. “I’m not explaining a thing. It’s just plumb insultin’, that’s all.”

Roberta Coe, her mind in a turmoil, followed a tributary of the main stream, walking along a game trail, hardly conscious of where she was going or of her surroundings, wanting only to get entirely away from everyone.

She could keep silent, protect her secret and retain her position in her circle of friends, or she could tell what she knew, help save an innocent man — and bring the security of her life, with all of its pleasant associations, tumbling down in ruins. After all, the sheriff had not specifically asked her to identify those photographs.

It was not an easy decision.

Yet she knew in advance what her answer was to be. She had sought the vast, rugged majesty of the mountains, the winding trail along the talkative stream, to give her strength.

If she had been going to take refuge in weakness, she would have been in camp with her companions, a highball glass in her hand, talking, joking, using the quick-witted repartee of her set to shield her mind from the pressure of her conscience.

But she needed strength, needed it desperately. Frank Ames had managed to get spiritual solace from these mountains. If she could only let some of their sublime indifference to the minor vicissitudes of life flow into her own soul.

Then it would be easy. Now it was—

Suddenly Roberta sensed something wrong with a patch of deep shadow to the left of the trail. There was the semblance of solidity about that shadow, and then, even as her eyes tried to interpret what she saw, the figure that was almost hidden in the shadow moved.

Roberta screamed.

Bill Eldon, who had been sitting motionless, squatting on his heels cowboy-fashion, straightened himself with sinewy case.

“Now, don’t be frightened, ma’am,” he said. “I just wanted to talk with you.”

“You— You— How did you — find me here?”

“Now, take it easy,” Bill Eldon said, his eyes smiling. “I just thought you and I should have a little talk.”

“But how did you know where I was — where you could find me — where I was going to be? Why, even I didn’t know where I was going.”

Eldon said, “Figure it out, ma’am. This game trail follows the stream. The stream follows the canyon, and the canyon winds around. When I cut your tracks back there in the trail, I knew I only had to walk up over that saddle and come down here to gain half a mile on you. Now, suppose you sit down on that rock there and we just get sociable-like for a little while.”

“I’m sorry, sheriff, but I don’t feel like—”

“You’ve got to tell me what frightened you yesterday,” the sheriff insisted, kindly but doggedly.

“But I wasn’t frightened.”

Bill Eldon settled back on his heels once more. Apparently he was completely at case, thoroughly relaxed.

With the peculiar feeling that she was doing something entirely against her own volition, Roberta sat down.

Bill Eldon said, “Lots of people make a mistake about the mountains. When they’re out in the wilds with no one around they feel they’re hidden. They’re wrong. Wherever they go, they leave tracks.”

Roberta Coe said nothing.

When Bill Eldon saw she was not going to speak, he went on. “Now, you take that trail yesterday, for instance. It carried tracks just like a printed page. I came along that trail and saw where you’d been running. I saw where Frank Ames had put down his fishing rod and his creel and hurried after you. The way I figure it, you must have screamed and run past the hole where he was fishing just about the time he had a big one on.

“By getting up on the bank, looking down in the pool, I could see the submerged branches of that dead tree. Sure enough, on one of those branches was part of a leader, just wrapped around the snag, and a hook was on the end of the leader. Because I was curious, I took off my clothes, worked my way down into the water and got that fly out. Gosh, it was cold.”

The sheriff reached in his pocket, took out a little fly book, opened it, and showed a section of leader and a Royal Coachman fly.

“Same kind Frank Ames uses,” he said. “You can see a little piece of the fish’s lip still stuck on the hook. The way I figure it, Ames hadn’t hooked him too solid, but he had him hooked well enough to land, but as soon as the fish got in that submerged tangle of branches and wrapped the line around a branch, he only had to give one jerk to tear the hook loose. Now, Ames wouldn’t have let that fish get over in the submerged branches unless something had distracted his attention. That something must have been something he heard, because his eyes were busy looking at the water.”

Abruptly Bill Eldon turned to look at her. “What made you scream?”

She pressed white knuckles against her lips. “I’m going to tell you,” she said.

“I’ve known that, ever since I — ever since I left Frank Ames. I was just walking to — well, the mountains seem to do so much for him — I wish I could feel about them the way he does. Sometimes I think I’m beginning to.

“I was just out of college,” she continued, “a naive little heiress. This man was working for Harvey Dowling. He was both a secretary and general assistant. His name was Howard Maben. He was fascinating, dashing. Women simply went wild over him. And I fell in love with him.”

“What happened?”

“We were secretly married.”

“Why the secrecy?”

“It was his idea. We ran away across the state line to Yuma, Arizona. Howard said he had to keep it secret.”

“Did you know Harvey Dowling then?”

“Yes. Harvey, and Martha, his wife. It was her death that caused the scandal.”

“What scandal?”

She said, “I don’t know if I can explain Howard to you so you’ll understand him. He’s a dashing, high-pressure type of man who was a great favorite with women. He loved to sell things, himself included. I mean by that he liked to make a sale of his personality. I don’t think there’s any question but what he’d get tired of home life within the first thirty days.

“Well, anyway, I guess — it’s something I don’t like to talk about, but — well, I guess Howard had been— Well, Martha Dowling was attractive. She was an older woman. Harvey was always busy at the office, terribly intent on the deals he was putting across, and— Well, they fooled H. W. and they fooled me.

“Apparently Howard started going with Martha Dowling. They were very discreet about it, pretty cunning, as a matter of fact. They’d never go except when Harvey Dowling was out of town, and — well, I guess they stayed at motor courts. It was a mess.”

“Go ahead,” Bill Eldon said.

“Harvey Dowling was on a two weeks’ trip. He was in Chicago, and Howard made certain he was in Chicago, because he’d talked with him that morning on long-distance telephone. Then he and Martha went out. They looked over some property that Harvey Dowling wanted a report on, and then — well, they went to an auto camp. They didn’t like to be seen in restaurants. Howard had brought a little camp kit of dishes and cooking utensils, one of those outfits that folds up to fit into a suitcase.”

“Go ahead.”

“Martha Dowling got sick, some form of an acute gastroenteric disturbance. Well, naturally, they didn’t want to call a doctor until after she got home. She died in Howard’s car on the road home. Of course, Howard tried to fix up a story, but the police began to investigate and put two and two together. Harvey was called from Chicago by his wife’s death and talked with the servants and — well, you can see what happened.”

“What did happen?”

“Howard knew the jig was up. It seems he’d been left in charge of Dowling’s business. He was already short in his accounts. So he embezzled everything he could get his hands on and skipped out.

“Dowling left no stone unturned to get him. He spent thousands of dollars. The police finally caught Howard and sent him to prison. No one knows that I was married to him. I was able to get the marriage annulled. I was able to prove fraud, and — well, of course, I’d been married in Arizona, so I went there and I had a friendly judge and a good lawyer and — there you are. There’s the skeleton in my closet.”

“I still don’t know what made you scream,” the sheriff said.

“I saw Howard. You see, his sentence has expired. He’s out.”

“Now, then,” Bill Eldon remarked, “we’re getting somewhere. Where was he when you saw him?”

“In the deep shadows of a clump of pines, well off the trail. I saw just his head and shoulders. He turned. Then he whistled.”

“Whistled?”

“That’s right. Howard had a peculiar shrill whistle we used to have as a signal when he wanted me to know he was near the house where I stayed. I’d let him in by the side door. It was a peculiar whistle that set my teeth on edge. It affected me just like the sound of someone scraping his nails along rough cloth. I hated it. I asked him to use some other signal, but he only laughed and said someone else might imitate any other call, but that whistle was distinctively his. It was harsh, strident, metallic. When he whistled yesterday, I felt positively sick at my stomach — and then I turned and ran just as fast as I could go.”

“You aren’t mistaken?”

“In that whistle? Never!”

“See his face?”

“Not clearly. The man was standing in the deep shadows. It was Howard. He had a rifle.”

“Who else knows Howard Maben — that is, in your party?”

“Mr. Dowling is the only one; but that girl, Sylvia — I think she went back to dig up some of the old newspaper files. She’s made remarks about Mrs. Dowling’s death — well, questions. You understand, it’s a subject that’s taboo in Dowling’s crowd.”

“How was your ex-husband dressed when you saw him?”

“I only had a quick glimpse. I couldn’t say.”

“Wearing a hat?”

“Yes, a big Western hat.”

“Now, then, try and get this one right,” the sheriff said. “Had he been shaved lately?”

“Heavens, I couldn’t tell that. He was in the shadows, but he could see me plainly and that’s why he whistled for me to come to him.”

“I’m wondering whether he’d been sort of hanging around for a while, watching your camp, or whether he just came in yesterday. I’d certainly like to know if he was shaved.”

“I really couldn’t see.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone about this?”

“No.”

“Now, how much did Dowling know about you and Maben?”

“He knew that we were going together. I guess that’s one of the reasons Harvey Dowling didn’t suspect his wife. It was a nasty mess — well, you know how Dowling would feel. We’ve never talked much about it.”

“I know,” Bill Eldon said, his eyes looking off into space, “but there’s still something I don’t get about it.”

She said, “All right, I suppose I’ve been a sneak. I suppose I’m living a lie; but I didn’t want anyone to know about my marriage.”

“On account of Dick Nottingham?”

Her eyes snapped around in startled appraisal. “How did you—?”

“Sort of guessed from what I saw the other day. Having a little trouble?”

“You mean Sylvia?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you guessed that too.”

“How do you feel about Sylvia?”

“I’d like to cut her heart out. Not that I care about Dick anymore. He’s shown what a conceited boor he is. I’d like to have him at my feet just long enough to walk on him, though.”

“Just to show Sylvia?”

“And to show Dick. Sylvia doesn’t care about Dick. She’s a love pirate, one of the girls who have to satisfy their ego by stealing some man. And I’m well, I’m living a lie. I wish now I’d played my cards differently, but I can’t do it now. I’ve made my choice. To tell anyone now would make me out a miserable little liar. I don’t want to be ‘exposed,’ particularly with Sylvia to rub it in, and I think Sylvia suspects.”

“Never told Nottingham anything about this?”

“Nothing. Should I have done so?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Eldon answered.

The defiance melted from her face. “I was afraid you were going to be self-righteous,” she said.

Bill Eldon said nothing.

“The marriage was annulled,” she said “I’m living for the future. Suppose Dick Nottingham and I had married? Suppose I had told him? He’d have been magnanimous about it and all of that, but the thing would have been buried in his mind. Sometime, four or five years later, when I burned the biscuits or was slow in getting dressed to go to a bridge party, he’d flare up with some nasty remark about the grass widow of a jailbird. He’d be sorry the next day, but it would leave a scar.”

She paused. “I suppose I’ll have to repeat this to that deputy district attorney?”

“I don’t think so,” Eldon said “He’d do a little talking and the first thing you know, you’d be reading all about yourself in the newspapers. What is now just a plain murder would suddenly get a sex angle, and the big city papers would send reporters up to get pictures of you and write up a bunch of tripe. You’d have your past ‘exposed.’ You’d better go right ahead just the way you’re doing.”

“You mean you’re going to keep my secret?”

“I’m going to let you keep it.”

She remained silent.

The sheriff pulled an envelope from his pocket, took out the pictures removed from inside the lining of the coat of the murdered man.

“These pictures are of Howard — the man you married?”

She barely glanced at them, nodded.

“You recognized them when I first found them?”

“Yes, and that’s my hand on his shoulder. That ring is a signet ring my father gave me.”

“Any idea what this detective was doing with those pictures?”

“Howard’s sentence expired about two months ago. He’s after Dowling — or me. And the detective somehow got on Howard’s trail. And Howard, with all that fiendish cunning of his — well, he got the detective.”

The sheriff got to his feet, moving with a smooth ease. “Well, I’ve got work to do.”

Roberta Coe moved impulsively forward, said, “I don’t suppose you’d have any way of knowing that you’re a dear!” and kissed him.

“Oh,” she said in dismay, “I’ve ruined your face! Here, let me get that off.”

She took a handkerchief from her pocket. The sheriff grinned as she removed the lipstick. “Good idea,” he said. “That young deputy district attorney would think I’d been bribed. Hell, you can’t tell, maybe I have!”

Bill Eldon reined his horse to a stop, swung his left leg over the horse’s neck and sat with it crooked around the saddle horn.

“How are things coming?” he asked.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Leonard Keating said, “it’s an open-and-shut case. I’m ready to go back any time you’re ready to pick up the prisoner.”

Eldon said, “I want to look around the country a little bit before I start back. Got to check up on some of the homesteaders up here.”

“What are we going to do with Ames?” Keating demanded. “Let him run away?”

“He won’t get away.”

Keating said indignantly, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, he isn’t my responsibility.”

“That’s right,” Eldon said. “He’s mine.”

John Olney, the ranger, looked at the sheriff questioningly.

“Now then,” Bill Eldon went on, “we, all of us, have our responsibilities. Now, Keating, here, has got to prosecute the man.”

“There’s plenty of evidence to get a conviction of first-degree murder,” Keating said.

“And,” Bill Eldon went on, “part of the evidence you’re going to present to the jury is the evidence of those two cigarette stubs. That’s right, eh?”

“Those cigarette stubs are the most damning piece of evidence in the whole case. They show premeditation.”

“Nicely preserved, aren’t they?”

“They’re sufficiently preserved so I can identify them to a jury and get a jury to notice their distinctive peculiarities.”

“All right,” Eldon said cheerfully, and then added, “Of course, that murder was committed either during the rainstorm or just before the rainstorm. The evidence shows that.”

“Of course it does,” Keating said. “That cloth tobacco sack which was left on the ground had been soaked with rain. The tobacco had been moistened enough so that the stain from it oozed out into the cloth.”

“Sure did,” the sheriff said. “Now then, young man, when you get up in front of a jury with this ironclad, open-and-shut case of yours, maybe some smart lawyer on the other side is going to ask you how it happened that the tobacco got all wet, while those cigarette ends made out of delicate rice paper are just as dry and perfectly formed as the minute the smoker took them out of his mouth.”

The sheriff watched the expression on the deputy district attorney’s face. Then his lips twisted in a grin. “Well, now, son,” he said, “I’ve got a little riding to do. How about it, John? Think you got a little free time on your hands?”

“Sure,” the ranger said.

“What?” the deputy district attorney exclaimed. “Do you mean—?”

“Sure,” the sheriff said. “Don’t worry, buddy. Ames is my prisoner. I’m responsible for him. You just think out the answer to that question about the cigarette ends, because somebody’s going to ask it of you when you get in court.”

“There’s no reason why the murderer couldn’t have returned to the scene of the crime.”

“Sure, sure,” Eldon said soothingly. “Then he rolled cigarettes out of soggy, wet tobacco, and smoked ’em right down to the end. But somehow, I reckon, you’ve got to do better than that, young fellow.”

Bill Eldon nodded to the ranger. “Come on, John, you can do more good riding with me than—”

“But this is an outrage!” Keating stormed. “I protest against it. This man, Ames, was arrested for murder!”

“Who arrested him?” the sheriff asked.

“If you want to put it that way, I did,” Keating said. “As a deputy district attorney and as a private citizen, I have a right to take this man in custody for first-degree murder.”

“Go ahead and take him in custody then,” the sheriff grinned. “Then he’ll be your responsibility. Come on, John, let’s go riding.”

The sheriff swung his leg back over the horse’s neck and straightened himself in the saddle.

“You’ll have to answer for this,” Leonard Keating said, his voice quivering with rage.

“That’s right,” Eldon assured him cheerfully, “I expect to,” and rode off.

Bill Eldon and the ranger found a live lead at the second cabin at which they stopped.

Carl Raymond, a tall, drawling, tobacco-chewing trapper in his late fifties, came to the door of his cabin as soon as his barking dog had advised him of the approaching horsemen.

His eye was cold, appraising and uncordial.

“So, you folks are working together now,” he said scornfully. “I haven’t any venison hanging up, and I have less than half the limit of fish. As far as I’m concerned—”

Bill Eldon interrupted. “Now, Carl, I’ve never asked any man who lives in the mountains where he got his meat. You know that.”

Raymond swung his eyes to the ranger. “You ain’t riding alone,” he said to the sheriff.

“This is other business,” the sheriff said. “The ranger is with me. I’m not with him.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“A man’s been murdered down here, five or six miles over on the Middle Fork.”

Raymond twisted the wad of tobacco with his tongue, glanced once more at both men, then expectorated between tightly clenched lips. “What do you want?”

“A little assistance. Thought maybe you might have crossed some tracks of a man I might be looking for.”

“The mountains are full of tracks these days,” Raymond said bitterly. “You can’t get a hundred yards from your cabin without running across dude tracks.”

“These would be the tracks of someone that was living in the mountains, playing a lone hand,” the sheriff said.

“Can’t help you a bit,” Raymond told him. “Sorry.”

The sheriff said, “I’m interested in any unusually big fires, particularly any double fires.”

Raymond started to shake his head, then paused. “How’s that?”

The sheriff repeated his statement.

Raymond hesitated, seemed about to say something, then became silent.

At the end of several seconds Olney glanced questioningly at the sheriff, and Eldon motioned him to silence.

Raymond silently chewed his tobacco. At length he moved out from the long shadows of the pines, pointed toward a saddle in the hills to the west. “There’s a little game trail, works up that draw,” he said, “and goes right through that saddle. Fifty yards on the other side it comes to a little flat against a rocky ledge. There was a double fire built there last night.”

“Know who did it?”

“Nope. I just saw the ashes of the fire this morning.”

“What time?” asked the sheriff.

“A little after daylight.”

“Carl,” the sheriff said, “I think that’s the break we’ve been looking for. You’ve really been a help.”

“Don’t mention it,” Raymond said, turned on his heel, whistled to his dog, and strode into his cabin.

“Come on,” Bill Eldon said to Olney. “I think we’ve got something!”

“I don’t get it,” Olney said. “What’s the idea of the double fire?”

Eldon swung his horse into a rapid walk. “It rained last night. The ground was wet. A man who was camping out without blankets would build a big, long fire. The ground underneath the fire would get hot and be completely dry. Then when the rain let up and it turned cold, the man only needed to rake the coals of that fire into two piles, chop some fir boughs, and put them on the hot ground. In that way he’d have dry, warm ground underneath him, sending heat up through the fir boughs, and the piles of embers on each side would keep his sides warm. Then about daylight, when he got up, he could throw the fir boughs on the embers and burn them up. He’d put out the fire, after he’d cooked breakfast, by pouring water from the stream on the coals.”

“A man sleeping out without blankets,” Olney said musingly. “There’s just a chance,” he added, “that you know something I don’t.”

Bill Eldon grinned. “There’s just a chance,” he admitted, “that I do.”

Roberta Coe found Frank Ames in his cabin, pouring flour and water into the crusted crock in which he kept his sour dough. The door was ajar and from the outer twilight the illumination of the gasoline lantern seemed incandescent in its brilliance.

“Hello,” she called, “may I come in? I heard you were released on your own recognizance.”

“The sheriff,” Ames said, “has some sense. Come on in. Are you alone?”

“Yes. Why?”

“But you can’t be going around these trails at night. It’ll be dark before you can possibly get back, even if you start right now.”

“I brought a flashlight with me, and I’m not starting back right now. I just got here!”

“But, gosh, I—”

She crossed the floor of the cabin, to sit on one of the homemade stools, her elbows propped on the rustic table. “Know something?” she asked.

“What?”

“I told the sheriff about screaming and about how you came after me and all that. I realized I’d have to tell him sooner or later, but well, thanks for protecting me — for covering up.”

“You didn’t need to tell them. They’ve got no case against me, anyway.”

She felt that his tone lacked the assurance it should have.

“I told them anyway. What are you making?”

“Sour-dough biscuit.”

“Smells — terrible.”

“Tastes fine,” he said, grinning. “A man must eat even if the state is trying to hang him.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.”

“It is, as far as that deputy district attorney is concerned.”

“I hate him!” she said. “He’s intolerant, officious and egotistical. But — well, I wanted you to know I’d told the sheriff and there’s no reason why you should try to — to cover up for me anymore.”

“How much did you tell him?”

“Everything.”

For a moment his look was quizzical.

“You don’t seem to show much curiosity,” she said.

“Out here we don’t show curiosity about other people’s business.”

She said rather gaily, “I think I’m going to stay to supper — if I’m invited.”

“You’d better get back to your folks,” he said. “They’ll be worried about you.”

“Oh, no they won’t. I explained to them that I’m going to be out late. I told them I was conferring with the sheriff.”

“Look here,” he said, “you can’t do things like that.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because, for one thing, I’m here alone — and for another thing, you can’t wander around the mountains at night.”

“Are you going to invite me to supper?”

“No.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll stay anyway. What else are we going to have besides sour-dough biscuit?”

Watching her slip off her jacket and roll up her sleeves, he surrendered with a grin. “We’re going to have some jerked venison, stewed up with onions and canned tomatoes. You wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to cook it, so go over there and sit down and watch.”

Two hours later, when they had eaten and the dishes had been cleaned up and when they had talked themselves into a better understanding, Roberta Coe announced that she was starting back down the trail. She knew, of course, that Ames would go with her.

“Do you have a flashlight,” she asked, “so that you can see the trail when you come back?”

“I don’t need a flashlight.”

He walked over to the wall, took down the .30-.30 rifle, pushed shells into the magazine.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said, “sometimes we see deer, and fresh meat is—”

She laughed and said, “It’s illegal to shoot after sundown. The deer season is closed, and the hills are simply crawling with game wardens and deputy sheriffs. You must think I’m terribly dumb. However, I’m glad you have the rifle. Come on.”

They left the cabin, to stand for a moment in the bracing night air, before starting down the trail.

“You’re not locking the door?” she asked.

“No need to lock the barn door after the horse has been stolen.”

“Somehow I wish you would. You might — have a visitor.”

“I think I’d be glad to see him,” he said, swinging the rifle slightly so that it glinted in the moonlight.

“Do you want me to lead the way with the flashlight or to come behind?”

“I’ll go ahead,” he said, “and please don’t use the flashlight.”

“But we’ll need it.”

“No we won’t. There’s a moon that will give us plenty of light for more than an hour. It’s better to adjust your eyes to the darkness, rather than continually flashing a light on and off.”

He started off down the trail, walking with his long, easy stride.

The moon, not yet quite half full, was in the west, close to Venus, which shone as a shining beacon. It was calm and still, and the night noises seemed magnified. The purling of the stream became the sound of a rushing cascade.

The day had been warm, but now in the silence of the night the air had taken on the chill that comes from the high places, a windless, penetrating chill which makes for appreciation of the soft warmth of down-filled sleeping bags. The moon-cast shadows of the silhouetted pine trees lay across the trail like tangible barriers, and the silent, brooding strangeness of the mountains dwarfed Roberta Coe’s consciousness until her personality seemed to her disturbed mind to be as puny as her light footfalls on the everlasting granite.

There was a solemn strangeness about the occasion which she wished to perpetuate, something that she knew she would want to remember as long as she lived; so when they were a few hundred yards from camp, she said, “Frank, I’m tired. Can’t we rest a little while? You don’t realize what a space-devouring stride you have.”

“Your camp’s only around that spur,” he said. “They’ll be worrying about you and—”

“Oh, bother!” she said. “Let them worry. I want to rest.”

There was the trunk of a fallen pine by the side of the trail, and she seated herself on it. He came back to stand uncomfortably at her side, then, propping the gun against the log, seated himself beside her.

The moon was sliding down toward the mountains now, and the stars were beginning to come out in unwinking splendor. She knew that she would be cold as soon as the warmth of the exercise left her blood, but knew also that Frank Ames was under a tension, experiencing a struggle with himself.

She moved slightly, her shoulder brushed against his, her hair touched his cheek, and the contact set off an emotional explosion. His arms were about her, his mouth strained to hers. She knew this was what she had been wanting for what had seemed ages.

She relaxed in the strength of his sinewy arms, her head tilting back so he could find her lips. Sudden pulses pounded in her temples. Then suddenly he had pushed her away, was saying contritely, “I’m sorry.”

She waited for breath and returning self-assurance. Glancing at him from under her eyelashes, she decided on the casual approach. She laughed and said, “Why be sorry? It’s a perfect night, and, after all, we’re human.” She hoped he wouldn’t notice the catch in her voice, a very unsophisticated catch which belied the casual manner she was trying to assume.

“You’re out of my set,” he said. “You’re — you’re as far above me as that star.”

“I wasn’t very far above you just then. I seemed to be — quite close.”

“You know what I mean. I’m a hillbilly, a piece of human flotsam cast up on the beach by the tides of war. Damn it, I don’t mean to be poetic about it and I’m not going to be apologetic. I’m—”

“You’re sweet,” she interrupted.

“You have everything: all the surroundings of wealth. You’re camped up here in the mountains with wranglers to wait on you. I’m a mountain man.”

“Well, good Lord,” she laughed, a catch in her throat, “you don’t need to plan marriage just because you kissed me.”

And in the constricted silence which followed, she knew that was exactly what he had been planning.

Suddenly, she turned and put her hand over his. “Frank,” she said, “I want to tell you something — something I want you to keep in confidence. Will you?”

“Yes.” His voice sounded strained.

She laughed. “I just finished promising the sheriff I’d never tell this to anyone.” And then, without further preliminaries, she told him about her marriage, about the scandal, the annulment of her marriage.

When she had finished, there was a long silence. Abruptly she felt a nervous reaction. The cold, still air of the mountains seemed unfriendly. She felt terribly alien, a hopelessly vulnerable morsel of humanity in a cold, granite world which gave no quarter to vulnerability.

“I’m glad you told me,” Frank Ames said simply, then jackknifed himself up from the log. “You’ll catch cold sitting here. Let’s move on.”

Angry and hurt, she fought back the tears until the lighted tents of her camp were visible.

“I’m all right now,” she said hastily. “Good-by — thanks for the dinner.”

She saw that he wanted to say something, but she was angry both at him and at herself, thoroughly resentful that she had confided in this man. She wanted to rush headlong into the haven of her lighted camp, escaping the glow of the campfire, but she knew he was watching, so she tried to walk with dignity, leaving him standing there, vaguely aware that there was something symbolic in the fact that she had left him just outside the circle of firelight.

She would have liked to reach her tent undiscovered, but she knew that the others were wondering about her. She heard Dick Nottingham’s voice saying, “Someone’s coming,” then Sylvia Jessup calling, “Is that you, Roberta?”

“In person,” she said, trying to make her voice sound gay.

“Well, you certainly took long enough. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow,” she said. “I’m headed for my sleeping bag. I’m chilled.”

Eleanor Dowling said, “I’ll bring you a hot toddy when you get in bed, honey.”

She knew they wanted to pump her, knew they wanted to ask questions about the sheriff, about her supposed conference. And she knew that she couldn’t face them — not then.

“Please don’t,” she said. “I’m all in. I have a beastly headache and I took two aspirin tablets coming down the trail. Let me sleep.”

She entered the tent, conscious as she did so of Frank Ames’ words about how she was waited on hand and foot. They had kept a fire going in the little sheet-metal stove. The tent was warm as toast. A lantern was furnishing mellow light. The down interior of her sleeping bag was inviting. Not only did she have an air mattress, but there was a cot as well.

“Oh, what a fool I was!” she said. “Why did I have to go baring my soul. The big ignoramus! He’s out of my world. He — he thinks I’m second-hand merchandise!”

Roberta Coe’s throat choked up with emotion. She sat on the edge of the cot there in her little tent, her head on her hands. Hot tears trickled between her fingers.

She realized with a pang how much that moment had meant to her, how much it had meant when Frank Ames’ arms were around her, straining, eager and strong.

Sylvia Jessup’s voice sounded startlingly close. “What’s the matter, darling?” she asked. “Has something happened—”

Roberta looked up quickly, realizing now that the damage had been done, that the lantern was in such a position that her shadow was being thrown on the end of the tent. Sylvia, sitting by the campfire, had been able to see silhouetted dejection, to see the shadow of Roberta seated on the cot, elbows on her knees, face in her hands.

“No thanks, it’s all right,” Roberta said, jumping up and bustling about, “I just got a little over-tired coming down the trail. I think it’s the elevation.”

“You don’t want me—”

“No, thank you,” Roberta said with a tone of finality which meant that the conversation was terminated.

Roberta crossed over to the lantern, turned it out, and the tent was in warm darkness, save for little ruddy spots which glowed on the canvas where small holes in the wood stove gave shafts of red light from the glowing embers.

Sylvia hesitated a moment, then Roberta could hear her steps going back toward the campfire. Sylvia undoubtedly was bursting with curiosity. She realized that Roberta would hardly have walked back alone over the mountain trail at night, and Sylvia was a prying little sneak as far as Roberta was concerned.

But somehow that momentary interlude, that flare of feeling against Sylvia Jessup, made Roberta Coe reappraise herself and the situation.

She knew instinctively that Frank Ames would not be back. Perhaps his coolness had not been because he had learned of her prior marriage. Perhaps — it could have been that it had made no difference to him. His constrained attitude, his abrupt departure might have been merely the result of what he had said previously — that they were worlds apart.

The doubt, the reaction, left her with the most devastating loneliness she had ever experienced.

Almost without thinking, she put her coat back on, quickly glanced around the tent to see that she was leaving no telltale shadow, then she slipped to the flap and out into the night, detouring so that she kept the tent between her and the campfire until she had reached the circle of scrub pine which surrounded the camp.

Once or twice she stumbled in the shadows. There was no moonlight here in this little valley, and the light from the campfire served only to make the terrain more deceiving, but Roberta kept moving rapidly, heedless of the natural obstacles, stumbling over roots and little hummocks until she was able to skirt the sheltering rim of pines and come to the main trail.

The cold, crisp air of the mountain night seemed like a stimulus which enabled her to rush along the trail. In the starlight, the trail showed as a faint gray thread, and Roberta, feeling as weightless as some gliding creature of the woods, buoyed up by surging hope, moved rapidly along this faint thread.

But after a few minutes the strange exhilaration left her. All at once her body mechanism asserted itself, and her laboring lungs told her all too plainly that she needed air. The unaccustomed effort of running, the steady upgrade, the elevation, all contributed to a breathlessness which made the strength drain out of her legs.

She knew she couldn’t make it. Frank Ames had had too much of a headstart on her, and his own hurt pride would make for an emotional unrest which would demand some physical outlet. He would be swinging along up the trail, with his long legs devouring the space.

“Frank!” she called, and there was desperate pleading in her voice.

She had not brought her flashlight. The moon had now settled almost to the mountains. Only occasionally, where there was a break in the pines, was there a field of weak illumination over the trail.

She could hear steps ahead of her. She wanted to call out again, but her laboring lungs had barely enough air for breath. Her pounding heart threatened to push itself out of her chest.

“Frank!” she called with the very last bit of breath that she could muster. And then her laboring heart gave a wild surge as she saw motion in the shadow ahead.

But the figure that stepped out to meet her was not that of Frank Ames. A shrill, metallic whistle, harsh as the strum of an overtaxed taut wire, knifed her eardrums. Cold horror gripped her.

“No— No!” she half sobbed.

She turned, but there was no more strength left for flight. Her feet were like heavy rocks, the legs limber.

The figure moved swiftly.

Sheriff Bill Eldon, down on hands and knees, poked slowly around the two parallel piles of ashes. Undoubtedly these two campfires marked the spot where some man had been camping the night before, a man who was a seasoned veteran of the woods, who had spent a cold night without blankets, yet without inconvenience.

John Olney, standing a little to one side, watching with keen interest, was careful not to disturb the ground so that any remaining tracks would be obscured. The long western slant of the sunlight built up shadows, gave a transverse lighting which made tracks far more easy to see than would have been the case during the middle of the day.

The sheriff’s forefinger pointed to slight disturbances in the ground that would have escaped the attention of any except the most skilled tracker. “Now here,” he said, “is where Carl Raymond came along. Raymond was hunting deer. You can see that he skirted the edge of the plateau, keeping in the shadows, hoping he’d catch something still feeding in this little meadow.

“Anything out there would have been most apt to be a doe with a fawn, a spike buck, or perhaps a good fat barren doe. So you can figure Raymond was hunting for meat.

“Now, he got to this place right here and then could see where the campfire had been, so he moved over to investigate. Now that accounts for Raymond’s tracks.”

Olney nodded. The ground to that point was to him as plain as a blueprint to an architect.

“Now then, these two fires,” the sheriff went on, “tell quite a story. The man used wood from that dead pine over there. Then he cut fir boughs, raked the coals to one side, slept on the warm ground with a fire on each side of him, and early in the morning threw the fir boughs on the flames. You can see where the stuff caught into instant flame and burnt up until it left only the naked branches. Those were still green and didn’t burn easily. The man didn’t try to burn them at all. He simply brought water over here from that little spring and doused the fire and covered it up, so as to eliminate that much of the fire hazard. He certainly didn’t want the faintest wisp of smoke to show when it came daylight.”

Again Olney nodded.

“So the fir boughs must have been burned up pretty early, probably just as it started to turn daylight. Now, notice the way these boughs are cut. They’re not cut through with a single clean stroke. Every one of them has taken two or three cuts, but the cuts are clean.

“Our man wasn’t carrying a hatchet, but he was carrying a big knife and it was razor-sharp.”

Again Olney nodded.

“You can see his tracks around here,” the sheriff went on. “He’s wearing a good sensible boot, a wide last, with a composition cord sole and heel. That man could move through the forest without making any noise at all. He could be as quiet as a panther. Now then, he had to have something to carry the water from the spring to put out this fire. What do you suppose it was?”

“His hat?” Olney asked.

“Could have been,” the sheriff said, “but somehow I doubt it. Notice the number of trips he made here to the spring. He’s worn a regular trail up there, and the place where the little trickle of water has carried the charcoal down from the fire shows that he was using something that didn’t hold much water. Let’s sort of look around over here in the brush. Wait a minute!”

The sheriff stood up by the edge of the blackened space, made throwing motions in several different directions, said, “Over here is the best place to look. There’s no high ground here. He could have thrown a can farther this way than in any other direction.”

The sheriff and the ranger moved over to a place where the brush was lower and the ground sloped away from the fire.

“Getting dark,” the sheriff said. “We’re going to have to move along fast if we’re going to find what we— Here it is.”

With the deft swiftness of a cat pouncing on a gopher, the sheriff dove into a little clump of mountain manzanita and came out triumphantly bearing a soot-covered can. The top of the can showed an irregular, jagged crosscut, indicating that it had been opened by a few thrusts with a wide-bladed knife.

“Well,” the sheriff said, “we’re beginning to find out something about him. He has a knife with a blade a little over an inch wide. It’s razor-sharp, but he’s using it for opening cans as well as cutting brush. Therefore, he must have some pocket whetstone that he’s using to keep the edge in shape.

“Now this can has been on the fire. The label is all burned off, but from what you can see on the inside, it must have been a can of baked pork and beans. It doesn’t look as though he had a spoon to cat it with but whittled himself out a flat piece of wood that he used for a spoon. I s’pose we’d better hold that can for fingerprints, but it tells me a story without using any magnifying glass. He didn’t carry that can of beans in here with him, John. He must have stolen it someplace.”

The ranger nodded.

“He’s traveling light and fast, and he knows the mountains,” the sheriff went on. “He can move as silent as a cat, and he’s broken into a cabin and stolen a few provisions and a rifle.”

“A rifle?” Olney asked.

“Sure,” the sheriff told him. “Come on over here and I’ll show you.”

In the fading light, the sheriff took the ranger back to the place where a pine tree was growing straight and slim within some twenty feet of the place where the fire had been made.

“He put the rifle down here,” Bill Eldon said, “while he was cutting the branches for his bed. You can see where the butt of the rifle rested in the ground. Now, John, just as sure as shooting that was after it had quit raining. You can still see the little cross-checks from the shoulder plate on the stock. The ground was soft and — well, that’s the way it is.”

“You don’t suppose he could have made camp before it started to rain and then put the rifle here while he was getting breakfast, do you?”

“I don’t think so,” Eldon said. “This is the place where he would naturally have propped the rifle while he was getting those fir boughs. It’s just about the right distance from the fire and a nice place to stand the rifle. When he was getting breakfast he’d let the fire get down to coals — of course, he could have had the canned beans for supper instead of breakfast. Anyhow, it was after it’d quit raining. I’ve had a hunch he made this camp after the rain had quit.

“Now, the rain didn’t quit until after dark. A man wouldn’t have blundered onto this little spring here in the dark, particularly on a rainy night. No, John, this is some fellow that not only knows the mountains, but he knows this particular section of the country. He’s able to move around pretty well at night and when he left here early this morning he was smart enough to try and cover his tracks as much as possible. You see, he took off up that rocky ridge. My best guess is he kept to the rocks and the timber all day and kept holed up where he could watch, while he was waiting for dark.”

The sheriff pursed his lips thoughtfully, looked at the streak of fading daylight over the Western mountains, said, “He’s probably trying to get out of the mountains. But there just ain’t any telling just what he has in mind. If he’s the one that killed the detective, he planted that evidence by Ames’ cabin. He might be intending to do another job or two before he gets out of the mountains — and he may be sort of hard to stop. Let’s see if we can look around a bit before it gets slap dark.”

The men reined their horses down the trail. Suddenly, Bill Eldon pulled up and urged his horse into the fringe of light brush. “Take a look at that, John.”

The ranger peered down at a light-brown pile on the ground. “That’s the beans,” he said in astonishment.

Eldon nodded.

“Why did he open a can of beans, cook ’em over a campfire and then dump ’em all out?” the ranger asked.

Bill Eldon considered that question for a space of seconds, then said, “There has to be only one answer, John. He didn’t want to cat ’em.”

“But why?”

Bill Eldon touched the reins. “Now,” the sheriff said, “we know where we’re going. But we’re going to have to sort of wait around after we get there, until this man we want makes the first move. Come on, John.”

Trying her best to make time, Roberta fled down the trail. Her lungs were laboring, her heart pounding, and the trail pulled at her feet, making each step an individual effort.

She realized this man behind her was not trying to catch her. He was running slowly, methodically, as though following some preconceived plan.

Roberta tried once more to scream, but her call for help sounded faint and puny, even to her own ears.

Her heavy feet failed to clear an outcropping of rock. She stumbled, tried in vain to catch herself, threw out her arms and at exactly that moment heard behind her the vicious crack of a rifle.

The wind made by the bullet fanned her hair as she went down in a huddled heap on the trail. Lying prone, she simply lacked the strength to struggle back to her feet. She knew that the man behind her could reach her long before she could get up, and this dispiriting knowledge drained the last of her strength.

She heard Frank Ames’ voice saying, “Drop that gun,” then the sound of another rifle crack arousing echoes through the mountain canyon.

Roberta got to her hands and knees, and seemed unable to get the strength to rise to her feet.

She heard Frank Ames saying, “Darling, are you all right? You’re not hurt? He didn’t get you?”

She heard voices from the direction of the camp, saw flashlights sending beams which crisscrossed in confusion, making lighted patches on the boulders and the pine trees.

She turned from her knees to a sitting position, laughed nervously, and felt a touch of hysteria in the laugh. She tried to talk, but was only able to say gaspingly,

“I’m — all right.”

She saw Frank Ames standing rigid, watchful, dimly silhouetted against a patch of starlit forest, then off to the left she saw an orange-red spit of flame, and another shot aroused reverberating echoes from the peaks. The bullet struck a tree within inches of Frank Ames’ head, and even in the dim gray of starlight, Roberta could see the swift streak on the trunk of the pine tree where the bullet ripped aside the bark.

Ames merely stood more closely behind the tree, his rifle at ready.

“Keep down, Roberta,” he warned, without even turning to look at her.

Roberta remained seated, her head slightly back so that she could get more oxygen into her starved lungs.

Lights were coming up the trail now, a procession of winding, jiggling fireflies, blazing momentarily into brilliance as the beam of some flashlight would strike her fairly in the eyes.

Frank Ames called, “Put out the lights, folks. He’ll shoot at them.”

The rifle barked again, twice, one bullet directed at the place where Frank Ames was standing, the other at Roberta Coe, crouched on the trail. Both bullets were wide of the mark, yet close enough so the cracking pathway of the high-power bullet held vicious menace.

Roberta heard the sound of galloping horses, realized suddenly the precariousness of her position on the trail, and scrambled slightly to one side. She saw Frank Ames move, a silent, shadowy figure gliding through the trees, noticed, also, that the procession of flashlights had ceased.

The sheriff’s horse, which was in the lead, shied violently, as it saw Roberta Coe crouched by the trail. Roberta saw the swift glint of starlight from metal, heard the sheriff’s voice, hard as a whiplash, saying, “Get ’em up!”

“No, no!” Roberta gasped. “He’s back there, over to the left. He—”

The man betrayed his location by another shot, the bullet going high through the trees, the roar of the gun for a moment drowning out all other sounds. Then, while the gun echoes were still reverberating from the crags, the dropping of small branches and pine needles dislodged by the bullet sounded startlingly clear.

“What the heck’s he shooting at?” the sheriff asked.

Frank Ames said cautiously, “I’m over here, sheriff, behind this tree.”

“Swing around. Olney,” the sheriff said. “Cut off his escape. He’s up against a sheer cliff in back. We can trap him in here.”

By this time the others were trooping up from camp, and the sheriff stationed them along the trail. “I’m closing a circle around this place,” the sheriff said. “Just yell if you see him, that’s all.”

Bill Eldon became coldly efficient. “Where are you, Ames?”

“Over here.”

Eldon raised his voice. “Any of you from the camp got a gun on you?”

“I have,” one of the wranglers said.

“All right,” the sheriff announced. “That’s four of us. If we go in after that man, he can’t escape. He could make his way up that high cliff if he had time, but he’ll make a lot of noise doing it and expose himself to our fire. He’s only safe as long as he stays in this clump of trees. We have men stationed along the trail who can let us know if he breaks cover in that direction. The four of us can flush him out. Anyone have any objections? You don’t have to go, you know.”

“Not me,” the wrangler said. “I’ll ride along with you.”

The silence of the others indicated that the sheriff’s question could have had significance for only the wrangler.

“Let’s go,” Bill Eldon said. “Keep in touch with each other. Walk abreast. We’ll force him to surrender, to stand and fight it out, or to try climbing that steep cliff. When you see him, if he hasn’t got his hands up, shoot to kill.”

The sheriff raised his voice, said, “We’re coming in. Drop your gun, get your hands up and surrender!”

There was no sound from the oval-shaped thicket at the base of the big cliff which walled it in as something of an amphitheater.

Bill Eldon said to the ranger, “We’re dealing with a man who’s a tricky woodsman. Be on your toes; let’s go!”

A tense silence fell upon the mountain amphitheater where the grim drama was being played. Overhead the stars shone silent and steady, but within the thicket of pines was an inky darkness.

The men advanced for a few feet. Then Bill Eldon said, “We’re going to need a flashlight, folks.”

“Don’t try it. It’ll be suicide,” Ames said. “He’ll shoot at the flashlight and—”

“Just hold everything,” the sheriff said. “Hold this line right here.”

Eldon walked back to his saddlebags, took out a powerful flashlight which fastened on his forehead. A square battery hung over his back, held in place by a harness, leaving his hands free to work his rifle.

The sheriff said reassuringly, “If he starts shooting, I can switch this off.”

“Not after you’re dead, you can’t,” Frank Ames said.

“It’s a chance I have to take,” Eldon said. “That’s a part of my job. You folks keep back to one side.”

Eldon switched on the flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness into the pine trees a pencil of light, terminating in a splash of brilliance.

The sheriff kept slightly forward, away from the others, his rifle ready. He kept turning his head slowly, searching the long lanes of pine trees until at length he suddenly snapped the gun forward and held it steady.

The beam of the flashlight showed a gun, neatly propped against a tree.

“Now, what the heck do you make of that?” Olney asked.

“Reckon he’s going to give himself up,” the wrangler from the dude camp said, and called out, “Get your hands up or we’ll shoot!”

There was no answer.

They advanced to where the gun was leaning against the tree.

“Don’t touch it!” the sheriff said. “We’ll look it over for fingerprints. He must have been standing right behind that rock. You can see the empty shells around on the ground.”

“Have you got him?” a voice called from the trail.

“Not yet,” Eldon said.

“What the devil’s all this about?” stormed H. W. Dowling, crashing in behind the searching party. “I demand to know the reason for all these—”

“Get back out of the way!” Eldon said. “There’s a desperate man in here. You’ll be shot.”

“A sweet howdy-do,” Dowling said. “What the devil’s the matter with the law-enforcement officers in this county? Can’t I organize a camping trip into the mountains without having someone turn it into a Wild West show? My sleep’s gone for the night now. I— The whole camp pulled out on me. I had to run—”

Sheriff Eldon said grimly, “We can’t pick the places where murderers are going to strike. All we can do is try and capture the criminals so men like you will be safe. Okay, boys, let’s go. I think he’s out of shells. Do you remember, that last shot went high through the trees?”

“I’d been wondering about that,” Ames said. “What was he shooting at?”

“We’ll find out,” the sheriff said, “when we get him.”

They moved forward. Then, as the thicket of trees narrowed against the perpendicular cliff, they closed in compact formation until finally they had covered the entire ground.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” Olney said. “He’s managed to get up those cliffs.”

“Or out to the trail,” Eldon said.

He moved out from the protection of the trees, moved his head slowly so that his beam covered the precipitous mountainside. “Don’t see anything of him up there. Don’t hear anything,” he said. “I told you he was a clever woodsman. Let’s get over and see if anyone saw him cut across the trail.”

They moved back to the trail where the shivering dudes, the cook and the outfitter were spaced at regular intervals. “Anybody come through here?” the sheriff asked.

“No one,” they said. “We could see well enough—”

“He might have been pretty clever,” the sheriff said, “might have worked into the shadows.”

He moved slowly along, looking for tracks on the trail.

“What this country needs is more efficiency!” Dowling growled sullenly.

“Well, I missed him,” Eldon said resignedly. “Let’s go on back to camp. If he got through our lines, and abandoned an empty gun, it’s possible he’s planning to go down and raid your camp for another gun.”

Eldon untied his horse, swung into the saddle, said, “I’ll go on ahead on a gallop so as to beat him to it.”

Olney mounted his own horse, followed the sheriff.

“You folks come on,” Bill Eldon called over his shoulder.

The huddled group watched the shadowy figures gallop on down the trail.

Dowling said, “I want you boys to organize a guard for our camp tonight. I don’t like the idea of a murderer being loose. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Roberta and Frank managed by some unspoken understanding to wait behind until the others had gone.

“You’re not hurt?” Frank asked.

“No.”

“What happened? How did you run onto him?”

“He was — I don’t know, he was just loitering there in the shadows. I got a vague, indistinct glimpse of head and shoulders and—”

“I know,” Ames said. “I heard that peculiar whistle you were telling about, so I turned and came back. He shot and I saw you fall—”

“I fell just before he shot,” Roberta said. “I stumbled. The bullet grazed my hair.”

“What I don’t understand is how you happened to be out on the trail. You’d gone into your tent and blown out the candle,” Ames said.

“You were watching?” she asked, almost before she thought.

He waited for some five seconds before he answered. “Yes,” he said.

She said, “Frank, let’s not let foolish pride come between us. I thought — I thought you were going away — out of my life — because of my prior marriage — I started up the trail after you. I had to find out— I—”

“I was leaving because I knew you were too far above me. For a minute I thought — well, you acted as though— Oh, shucks, I love you! I love you!”

Bill Eldon sat by the big campfire, drinking coffee.

“If you ask me,” Nottingham protested, “this is about the fourth fool thing that’s been done tonight.”

“What?” Bill Eldon asked.

“Having us all gather around a campfire while we know there’s a desperate killer out in the hills. He can see our figures silhouetted against the blaze and—”

“I know,” the sheriff said, “but it takes a good man to shoot at night.”

“Well, I think this murderer is what you’d call a ’good man.’ Good enough to do just about as he pleases.”

The sheriff ignored the insult. “Funny thing about that murderer, now,” he said. “I’ve been sort of checking up with people about where everyone was when Frank Ames first came into this camp. It seems like there were two people missing, Alexander Cameron and Sam Fremont. Now, were you two boys together?”

“No, we weren’t,” Cameron said. “I went on downstream, fishing.”

“Downstream?”

“That’s right.”

“And you?” the sheriff asked Fremont.

“I went downstream a ways with Cameron and then I left him and started hunting for pictures of wildlife,” Fremont said. “I suppose you have the right to ask.”

“You got those pictures?” the sheriff asked.

“Certainly. They aren’t developed. I have two rolls of film.”

“Of course,” Nottingham pointed out, “those pictures wouldn’t prove a thing, because he could have gone downstream any time and taken a couple of rolls of film.”

“Don’t be so officious,” Fremont said, grinning. “When I came back the girls were all strutting sex appeal for the benefit of a newcomer. I stole a couple of pictures showing ’em all grouped around Ames. Those will be the last two pictures on the last roll.”

“How about the guides?” Sylvia asked. “They weren’t here. At least one of them was out—”

“Rounding up the horses,” the wrangler cut in. “And unless horses can talk, I haven’t any witnesses.”

“I was in my tent taking a siesta,” Dowling said. “The unusual chatter finally-wakened me.”

“Well, I was just checking up,” the sheriff said. “Were you in bed tonight when the shinning started, Dow ling?”

“Yes. I dressed and came barging up the trail as fast as I could. The others hadn’t turned in; they got up there well ahead of me.”

“You hurried right along?”

“Naturally. I was as afraid to stay in camp alone as I was to go up there where the shooting was taking place.”

The sheriff regarded his toes with a puzzled frown.

“You folks do whatever you want,” Dowling said indignantly, “but I’m going to get away from this fire.”

“I don’t think there’s the slightest danger,” the sheriff said.

“Well, I’m quite able to think for myself, thank you. I’m not accustomed to letting others do my thinking for me. You evidently didn’t think fast enough to keep him from shooting at Roberta.”

“That’s right,” Bill Eldon admitted. “I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t have quite as much to go on as I have now.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned,” Dowling said, “I’m going to get away from this campfire.”

“You seem to be pretty much of a woodsman,” the sheriff said.

“I did a little trapping in my younger days,” Dowling admitted.

“You know,” the sheriff drawled, “I think I know how that murderer got through our cordon. I think he climbed a tree until we went past.

“And,” the sheriff went on, “after we’d passed that tree a few steps, he dropped back down to the ground.”

“And ran away?” Nottingham asked.

“No, just mingled with us,” Eldon said. “You see, he was well known, so he only had to get through the line. I had that all figured out as soon as we came on the empty gun propped against the tree. That’s why I brought you all down here and built up a bright campfire. I wanted to see which one of you had pitch on his hands!”

In the second or two of amazed silence which followed, one or two of the men looked at their hands.

The others looked at the sheriff.

“The man who did the killing,” the sheriff went on, “went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that there was someone else running around the hills. He had practiced the whistle that was used by a certain man whose name we won’t mention at the moment. He went to a lot of trouble to make a bed of fir boughs that hadn’t been slept in, to open a can of beans that wasn’t eaten. He tried to kill Roberta Coe, but Ames showed up and spoiled his aim. Then he jumped into the thicket of pine trees, did a lot of shooting, dropped the gun, climbed a tree, waited for us to enter the brush, then came threshing around, indignantly demanding an explanation.”

“Indeed!” Dowling sneered. “I wonder if you’re asinine enough to be trying to implicate me.”

“Well,” the sheriff said, “there are some things that look a little queer. You were in your tent when the shooting started?”

“Fast asleep. I jumped up, dressed, grabbed my six-shooter and ran up the trail to join the others. Here’s my gun. Want to look at it?”

“Not right now,” Eldon said, casually taking his cloth tobacco sack from his pocket and starting to roll a cigarette. “But if you’d run all the way up the trail, you’d have been out of breath. Instead of which, you took time to curse my bucolic stupidity and you weren’t out of breath in the least. In fact, you strung quite a few words together.”

The sheriff used both hands to roll the cigarette. “And you have pitch on your hands and on your clothes, and somewhere in your tent I think we’ll find a pair of cord-soled shoes that will fit the tracks of—”

“Take a look at this gun now,” Dowling said, moving swiftly. “And take a look at the front end.”

The sheriff was motionless for a moment, then went on rolling his cigarette.

“I don’t want anyone to move,” Dowling said. “Keep right here in plain sight by this campfire and—”

Suddenly from the other side of the campfire came the swift flash of an explosion, the roar of a gun, and Dowling stood dazed, glancing incredulously at his bloody right hand from which the gun had disappeared.

The sheriff put the cigarette to his lips to moisten the paper, drew his tongue along the crease in the rice paper, and said in a low drawl, “Thanks for that, Ames, I sort of figured you’d know what to do in case I could talk him into making a break.”

The eastern sun had long since turned the crags of the big granite mountains into rosy gold. The shadows were still long, however, and the freshness of dawn lingered in the air.

Frank looked up as he heard the sound of the horse’s hoofs trampling the ground. Then Roberta’s voice called, “Ahoy, how are the hot cakes?”

“All eaten up,” Ames said, “and the dishes washed. Why don’t you city slickers get up before lunch?”

She laughed. “We did,” she said. “In fact, no one went to bed at all. The packers broke camp with daylight, and the sheriff has already taken Dowling out to stand trial. I thought you’d want to know all the latest. Bill Eldon certainly isn’t the slow-thinking hick he might seem. Howard Maben was released from the penitentiary two months ago, but he got in trouble again over some forged papers and is awaiting trial in Kansas right now. The sheriff got all that information over the phone.

“George Bay was free-lancing to see if he couldn’t clear up Mrs. Dowling’s death. He had an idea he could collect a reward from the insurance company if he showed it was murder.

“Bay didn’t have much to go on. But Bill Eldon has just about solved that case too. He found out that Howard and Mrs. Dowling had a picnic outfit in a suitcase. They carried powdered milk. She was the only one who took cream in her coffee.

“Dowling only had to put poison in the powdered milk and then leave on a business trip, where he’d have an alibi for every minute of the time. The picnic case, you see, was never used except when he was gone, and only his wife used the powdered milk.

“You should have heard Sheriff Eldon questioning Dowling. He soon had him floundering around in a mass of contradictory stories.

“He’d learned Bay was on his trail and decided to kill Bay so it would look as though Howard had done it. He knew Howard’s term had expired but didn’t know Howard had been rearrested and was in jail. Dowling had had his tent placed so the back was right up against that pine thicket. He’d pretend to be asleep, but he’d taken the pegs out of the back and he’d carry a change of shoes and prowl along the mountain trails. I guess he was pretty desperate, after getting all that wealth together, to be trapped by an old crime. He tried to frame it on you, of course, stealing your gun, then later even planting some of your cigarette stubs. He buried the things from his victim’s pockets at your place where officers would be sure to find them. But because he thought Sheriff Eldon was a doddering old man, he overdid everything.

“Well, that’s all the news, and I must skip. I’m supposed to be back in the main trail in ten minutes. The others are going to pick me up on the way out. I thought I’d just stop by and — leave you my address. I suddenly realized I hadn’t told you where you could reach me.”

She was standing in the door of the cabin, smiling, looking trim and neat in her leather riding skirt, cowboy boots and soft green silk blouse.

Frank Ames strode toward her, kicking a chair out of his way. “I know where to reach you,” he said.

Five minutes later she pushed herself gently back from his arms and said, “Heavens, I’ll be late! I won’t know how to catch up with them. I don’t know the trails.”

Ames’ circling arms held her to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You have just left lipstick smears all over one of the best guides in the mountains.”

“You mean we can catch up with the others?” she asked.

“Eventually,” Frank Ames said. “You probably don’t know it, however, but you’re headed for the County Clerk’s office.”

“The County Clerk’s office? Surely you don’t mean—?”

“I’m leaving just as soon as I can get a few things together,” he said. “You see, I want to record a claim. Up here in the mountains when we find something good, we file on it.”

“You — you’d better have it assayed first, Frank.”

“I’ve assayed ‘it,’ ” he said. “Underneath that raspberry lipstick there’s pure gold, and I don’t want anyone to jump my claim.”

“They won’t,” she assured him softly.