"By the sign, major; by the sign. It's simple enough. I see the shoes of both horses lapping over each other a score of times; and in such a way that shows they must have been thegither--the animals, it might be, restless and movin' about. As for the time, they've taken long enough to smoke a cigar apiece--close to the teeth too. Here are the stumps; not enough left to fill a fellow's pipe."

The tracker, stooping as he spoke, picked up a brace of cigar stumps, and handed them to the major.

"By the same token," he continued, "I conclude that the two hors.e.m.e.n, whoever they were, while under this tree could not have had any very hostile feelins, the one to the tother. Men don't smoke in company with the design of cutting each other's throats, or blowing out one another's brains, the instant afterwards. The trouble between them must have come on after the cigars were smoked out. That it did come there can be no doubt. As sure, major, as you're sittin' in your saddle, one of them has wiped out the other. I can only guess which has been wiped out, by the errand we're on. Poor Mr Poindexter will niver more see his son alive."

"'Tis very mysterious," remarked the major.

"It is, by jingo!"

"And the body, too; where can _it_ be?"

"That's what purplexes me most of all. If 't had been Indyins, I wouldn't a thought much o' its being missin'. They might a carried the man off wi them to make a target of him, if only wounded; and if dead, to eat him, maybe. But there's been no Indyins here--not a redskin.

Take my word for it, major, one o' the two men who rid these horses has wiped out the other; and sartinly he _have_ wiped him out in the litterlest sense o' the word. What he's done wi' the body beats me; and perhaps only hisself can tell."

"Most strange!" exclaimed the major, p.r.o.nouncing the words with emphasis--"most mysterious!"

"It's possible we may yet unravel some o' the mystery," pursued Spangler. "We must follow up the tracks of the horses, after they started from this--that is, from where the deed was done. We may make something out of that. There's nothing more to be learnt here. We may as well go back, major. Am I to tell _him_?"

"Mr Poindexter, you mean?"

"Yes. You are convinced that his son is the man who has been murdered?"

"Oh, no; not so much as that comes to. Only convinced that the horse the old gentleman is now riding is one of the two that's been over this ground last night--the States horse I feel sure. I have compared the tracks; and if young Poindexter was the man who was on _his back_, I fear there's not much chance for the poor fellow. It looks ugly that the other _rid after_ him."

"Spangler! have you any suspicion as to who the other may be?"

"Not a spark, major. If't hadn't been for the tale of Old Duffer I'd never have thought of Maurice the mustanger. True, it's the track o' a shod mustang; but I don't know it to be hisn. Surely it can't be? The young Irishman aint the man to stand nonsense from n.o.body; but as little air he the one to do a deed like this--that is, if it's been cold-blooded killin'."

"I think as you about that."

"And you may think so, major. If young Poindexter's been killed, and by Maurice Gerald, there's been a fair stand-up fight atween them, and the planter's son has gone under. That's how I shed reckon it up. As to the disappearance o' the dead body--for them two quarts o' blood could only have come out o' a body that's now dead--that _trees me_. We must follow the trail, howsoever; and maybe it'll fetch us to some sensible concloosion. Am I to tell the old gentleman what I think o't?"

"Perhaps better not. He knows enough already. It will at least fall lighter upon him if he find things out by piecemeal. Say nothing of what we've seen. If you can take up the trail of the two horses after going off from the place where the blood is, I shall manage to bring the command after you without any one suspecting what we've seen."

"All right, major," said the scout, "I think I can guess where the off trail goes. Give me ten minutes upon it, and then come on to my signal."

So saying the tracker rode back to the "place of blood;" and after what appeared a very cursory examination, turned off into a lateral opening in the chapparal.

Within the promised time his shrill whistle announced that he was nearly a mile distant, and in a direction altogether different from the spot that had been profaned by some sanguinary scene.

On hearing the signal, the commander of the expedition--who had in the meantime returned to his party--gave orders to advance; while he himself, with Poindexter and the other princ.i.p.al men, moved ahead, without his revealing to any one of his retinue the chapter of strange disclosures for which he was indebted to the "instincts" of his tracker.

CHAPTER FORTY.

THE MARKED BULLET.

Before coming up with the scout, an incident occurred to vary the monotony of the march. Instead of keeping along the avenue, the major had conducted his command in a diagonal direction through the chapparal.

He had done this to avoid giving unnecessary pain to the afflicted father; who would otherwise have looked upon the life-blood of his son, or at least what the major believed to be so. The gory spot was shunned, and as the discovery was not yet known to any other save the major himself, and the tracker who had made it, the party moved on in ignorance of the existence of such a dread sign.

The path they were now pursuing was a mere cattle-track, scarce broad enough for two to ride abreast. Here and there were glades where it widened out for a few yards, again running into the th.o.r.n.y chapparal.

On entering one of these glades, an animal sprang out of the bushes, and bounded off over the sward. A beautiful creature it was, with its fulvous coat ocellated with rows of shining rosettes; its strong lithe limbs supporting a smooth cylindrical body, continued into a long tapering tail; the very type of agility; a creature rare even in these remote solitudes--the jaguar.

Its very rarity rendered it the more desirable as an object to test the skill of the marksman; and, notwithstanding the serious nature of the expedition, two of the party were tempted to discharge their rifles at the retreating animal.

They were Ca.s.sius Calhoun, and a young planter who was riding by his side.

The jaguar dropped dead in its tracks: a bullet having entered its body, and traversed the spine in a longitudinal direction.

Which of the two was ent.i.tled to the credit of the successful shot?

Calhoun claimed it, and so did the young planter.

The shots had been fired simultaneously, and only one of them had hit.

"I shall show you," confidently a.s.serted the ex-officer, dismounting beside the dead jaguar, and unsheathing his knife. "You see, gentlemen, the ball is still in the animal's body? If it's mine, you'll find my initials on it--C.C.--with a crescent. I mould my bullets so that I can always tell when I've killed my game."

The swaggering air with which he held up the leaden missile after extracting it told that he had spoken the truth. A few of the more curious drew near and examined the bullet. Sure enough it was moulded as Calhoun had declared, and the dispute ended in the discomfiture of the young planter.

The party soon after came up with the tracker, waiting to conduct them along a fresh trail.

It was no longer a track made by two horses, with shod hooves. The turf showed only the hoof-marks of one; and so indistinctly, that at times they were undiscernible to all eyes save those of the tracker himself.

The trace carried them through the thicket, from glade to glade--after a circuitous march--bringing them back into the lane-like opening, at a point still further to the west.

Spangler--though far from being the most accomplished of his calling-- took it; up as fast as the people could ride after him. In his own mind he had determined the character of the animal whose footmarks he was following. He knew it to be a mustang--the same that had stood under the cottonwood whilst its rider was smoking a cigar--the same whose hoof-mark he had seen deeply indented in a sod saturated with human blood.

The track of the States horse he had also followed for a short distance--in the interval, when he was left alone. He saw that it would conduct him back to the prairie through which they had pa.s.sed; and thence, in all likelihood, to the settlements on the Leona.

He had forsaken it to trace the footsteps of the shod mustang; more likely to lead him to an explanation of that red mystery of murder-- perhaps to the den of the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Hitherto perplexed by the hoof-prints of two horses alternately overlapping each other, he was not less puzzled now, while scrutinising the tracks of but one.

They went not direct, as those of an animal urged onwards upon a journey; but here and there zigzagging; occasionally turning upon themselves in short curves; then forward for a stretch; and then circling again, as if the mustang was either not mounted, or its rider was asleep in the saddle!

Could these be the hoof-prints of a horse with a man upon his back--an a.s.sa.s.sin skulking away from the scene of a.s.sa.s.sination, his conscience freshly excited by the crime?

Spangler did not think so. He knew not what to think. He was mystified more than ever. So confessed he to the major, when being questioned as to the character of the trail.

A spectacle that soon afterwards came under his eyes--simultaneously seen by every individual of the party--so far from solving the mystery, had the effect of rendering it yet more inexplicable.

More than this. What had hitherto been but an ambiguous affair--a subject for guess and speculation--was suddenly transformed into a horror; of that intense kind that can only spring from thoughts of the supernatural.

No one could say that this feeling of horror had arisen without reason.

When a man is seen mounted on a horse's back, seated firmly in the saddle, with limbs astride in the stirrups, body erect, and hand holding the rein--in short, everything in air and att.i.tude required of a rider; when, on closer scrutiny, it is observed: that there is something wanting to complete the idea of a perfect equestrian; and, on still closer scrutiny, that this something is the _head_, it would be strange if the spectacle did not startle the beholder, terrifying him to the very core of his heart.

And this very sight came before their eyes; causing them simultaneously to rein up, and with as much suddenness, as if each had rashly ridden within less than his horse's length of the brink of an abyss!