“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 bum 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 any more.”
“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.”