The sun, which was still high, was shining as only a Wyoming sun can shine, from out of a blue-vaulted canopy, flecked with fleecy clouds.

Swinging from the tops of the sagebrush, or an occasional cottonwood, yellow-breasted meadowlarks were singing sweetly. At intervals a flock of curlews circled above the rider, uttering their sharp, plaintive cries; then they would drop to the ground and run rapidly to and fro on their frail, stilt-like legs, their long ungainly bills darting from side to side in search of food.

Over the plains, from which Wade now turned, hundreds of red and white cattle, their hides as sleek as velvet, were grazing, singly and in scattered groups, as far as the eye could see. Toward its mouth, the valley was spotted with many fenced alfalfa fields, and traversed by irrigation ditches; while to the right, in the direction in which Wade now rode, rose the timber belt. A fresh, soft breeze, fragrant with the odor of clean, damp earth, rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods, some of which were of enormous size, as the horseman pushed his way farther into the shadow of the mountains.

After a careful scrutiny, which satisfied him that the vicinity harbored no enemies, he dismounted, but still actuated by caution, kept the bridle reins looped over his wrist, as he searched for further evidence of gold. Unlike Santry, the ranchman was not trained in the ways of prospecting, and he began to regret that he had not allowed the foreman to accompany him. He followed what he thought were promising signs deeper into the silence of the tall timber, and finally dropped on his knees to make sure of some outcroppings of quartz near the base of a huge bowlder. He was so crouched when a sudden movement of his horse warned him of danger; but he had not time to arise before a crushing blow on the head, delivered from behind, shook him to the very marrow of his spine. With a low groan, he toppled over onto his face, senseless.

"Have you got him?" Moran peered around the side of the bowlder, and smiled exultantly when he saw Wade's still figure. "Throw him across your saddle," he commanded, "and follow me."

CHAPTER XV

THE FIRST CLEW

"Let's see!" Trowbridge reined in his horse and meditated, when he and Dorothy had covered several miles of their ride back to Crawling Water.

"Jensen was shot around here somewhere, wasn't he?"

"I think it was over there." She pointed with her quirt in the direction of a distant clump of jack-pines. "Why?"

"Suppose we ride over and take a look at the spot." He smiled at her little shudder of repugnance. "We haven't any Sherlock Holmes in this country, and maybe we need one. I'll have a try at it. Come on!"

In response to the pressure of his knees, the trained cow-pony whirled toward the jack-pines, and Dorothy followed, laughing at the idea that so ingenuous a man as Lem Trowbridge might possess the a.n.a.lytical gift of the trained detective.

"You!" she said mockingly, when she had caught up with him. "You're as transparent as gla.s.s; not that it isn't nice to be that way, but still you are. Besides, the rain we've had must have washed all tracks away."

"No doubt, but we'll have a look anyhow. It won't do any harm.

Seriously, though, the ways of criminals have always interested me. I'd rather read a good detective story than any other sort of yarn."

"I shouldn't think that you had any gift that way."

"That's got nothing to do with it," he laughed. "It's always like that.

Haven't you noticed how nearly every man thinks he's missed his calling; that if he'd only gone in for something else he'd have been a rattling genius at it? Just to show you! I've got a hand over at the ranch, a fellow named Barry, who can tie down a steer in pretty close to the record. He's a born cowman, if I ever saw one, but do you suppose he thinks that's his line?"

"Doesn't he?" she asked politely. One of the secrets of her popularity lay in her willingness to feed a story along with deft little interjections of interest.

"He does not. Poetry! Shakespeare! That's his 'forty'! At night he gets out a book and reads Hamlet to the rest of the boys. Thinks that if he'd ever hit Broadway with a show, he'd set the town on fire."

When Dorothy laughed heartily, as she now did, the sound of it was worth going miles to hear. There are all shades of temperament and character in laughter, which is the one thing of which we are least self-conscious; hers revealed not only a sense of humor, rare in her s.e.x, but a blithe, happy nature, which made allies at once of those upon whose ears her merriment fell. Trowbridge's eyes sparkled with his appreciation of it.

"Well, maybe he would," she said, finally.

"Maybe I'll make good along with Sherlock Holmes." He winked at her as he slipped from his horse's back, on the edge of a rocky knoll, fronting the jack-pines. "This is the place, I reckon." His quick eyes had caught a dark stain on a flat rock, which the rain had failed to cleanse entirely of the dead herders' blood.

When Dorothy saw it, too, her mirth subsided. To her mind, the thought of death was most horrible, and especially so in the case of a murderous death, such as had befallen the sheep men. Not only was the thing horrible in itself, but still more so in its suggestion of the dangers which threatened her friends.

"Do hurry!" she begged. "There can't be anything here."

"Just a minute or two." Struck by the note of appeal in her voice, so unlike its lilt of the moment before, he added: "Ride on if you want to."

"No," she shuddered. "I'll wait, but please be quick."

It was well for her companion that she did wait, or at least that she was with him for, when he had inspected the immediate vicinity of the shooting, he stepped backward from the top of the knoll into a little, brush-filled hollow, in which lay a rattlesnake. Deeply interested in his search, he did not hear the warning rattle, and Dorothy might not have noticed it either had not her pony raised its head, with a start and a snort. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the snake and called out sharply.

"Look out, behind you, Lem!"

There are men, calling themselves conjurors, who perform prodigies of agility with coins, playing-cards, and other articles of legerdemain, but they are not so quick as was Trowbridge in springing sidewise from the menacing snake. In still quicker movement, the heavy Colt at his side leaped from its holster. The next second the rattle had ceased forever, for the snake's head had been neatly cut from its body.

"Close call! Thanks!" Trowbridge slid his weapon back into its resting place and smiled up at her.

So close, indeed, had the call been that, coming upon the dreadful a.s.sociations of the spot, Dorothy was unnerved. Her skin turned a sickly white and her lips were trembling, but not more so than were the flanks of the horses, which seemed to be in an agony of fear. When the girl saw Trowbridge pick up a withered stick and coolly explore the recesses of a small hole near which the snake had been coiled, she rebelled.

"I'm not going to stay here another minute," she declared hotly.

"Just a second. There may be another one.... Oh, all right, go on, then," he called out, as she whirled her pony and started off. "I'll catch you. Ride slow!"

He looked after her with a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt, before renewing his efforts with the stick, holding his bridle reins with one hand so that his horse could not follow hers. To his disappointment there seemed to be nothing in the hole, but his prodding suddenly developed an amazing fact. He was on the point of dropping the stick and mounting his horse, when he noticed a small piece of metal in the leaves and gra.s.s at the mouth of the hole. It was an empty cartridge sh.e.l.l.

"By Glory!" he exclaimed, as he examined it. "A clew, or I'm a sinner!"

Swinging into his saddle, he raced after Dorothy, shouting to her as he rode. In her pique, she would not answer his hail, or turn in her saddle; but he was too exultant to care. He was concerned only with overtaking her that he might tell her what he had found.

"For the love of Mike!" he said, when by a liberal use of his spurs he caught up with her. "What do you think this is, a circus?"

"You can keep up, can't you?" she retorted banteringly.

"Sure, I can keep up, all right." He reached out and caught her bridle rein, pulling her pony down to a walk in spite of her protests. "I want to show you something. You can't see it riding like a jockey. Look here!" He handed her the sh.e.l.l. "You see, if I had come when you wanted me to, I wouldn't have found it. That's what's called the detective instinct, I reckon," he added, with a grin. "Guess I'm some little Sherlock, after all."

"Whose is it?" She turned the sh.e.l.l over in her palm a trifle gingerly.

"Look!" He took it from her and pointed out where it had been dented by the firing-pin. "I reckon you wouldn't know, not being up in fire-arms.

The hammer that struck this sh.e.l.l didn't hit true; not so far off as to miss fire, you understand, but it ain't in line exactly. That tells me a lot."

"What does it tell you?" She looked up at him quickly.

"Well," he spoke slowly, "there ain't but one gun in Crawling Water that has that peculiarity, that I know of, and that one belongs, or did belong, to Tug Bailey."

She caught at his arm impulsively so that both horses were brought to a standstill.

"Then _he_ shot Jensen, Lem?"

Her voice was tremulous with eagerness, for although she had never doubted Wade or Santry; had never thought for a moment that either man could have committed the crime, or have planned it, she wanted them cleared of the doubt in the eyes of the world. Her disappointment was acute when she saw that Trowbridge did not deem the sh.e.l.l to be convincing proof of Bailey's guilt.

"Don't go too fast now, Dorothy," he cautioned. "This sh.e.l.l proves that Bailey's gun was fired, but it doesn't prove that Bailey's finger pulled the trigger, or that the gun was aimed at Jensen. Bailey might have loaned the rifle to somebody, or he might have fired at a snake, like I did a few minutes ago."

"Oh, he might have done anything, of course. But the sh.e.l.l is some evidence, isn't it? It casts the doubt on Tug Bailey, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does that, all right. It casts it further than him." The cattleman spoke positively. "It's a clew, that's what it is. We've got a clew and we've got a motive, and we didn't have either of them yesterday."