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.
Part Two
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 when 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.