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 eat 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 eat ’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.