“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 any place 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.”