"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 analytical gift of the trained detective.

 

"You!" she said mockingly, when she had caught up with him. "You're as transparent as glass; 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 sex, 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 associations 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 amusement, 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 grass at the mouth of the hole. It was an empty cartridge shell.

 

"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 shell. "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 shell 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 shell 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 shell to be convincing proof of Bailey's guilt.

 

"Don't go too fast now, Dorothy," he cautioned. "This shell 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 shell 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."

 

"How do you suppose that shell got where you found it?" she asked, her voice full of hope.

 

"Bailey must have levered it out of his rifle, after the shooting, and it fell into that hole. You see,"--he could not resist making the triumphant point once more,--"if I hadn't stopped to look for another rattler, I never would have found it. Just that chance--just a little chance like that--throws the biggest criminals. Funny, ain't it?" But she was too preoccupied with the importance of the discovery to dwell on his gifts as a sleuth.

 

"What can we do about it, Lem?" She gave her pony her head and they began to move slowly. "What ought we to do?"

 

"I'll find this fellow, Bailey, and wring the truth out of him," he answered grimly; and her eyes sparkled. "If I'm not greatly mistaken, though, he was only the tool."

 

"Meaning that Moran...."

 

"And Rexhill," Trowbridge snapped. "They are the men higher up, and the game we're really gunning for. They hired Bailey to shoot Jensen so that the crime might be fastened on to Gordon. I believe that as fully as I'm alive this minute; the point is to prove it."

 

"Then we've no time to waste," she said, touching her pony with the quirt. "We mustn't loiter here. Suppose Bailey has been sent away?"

 

The thought of this caused them to urge their tired horses along at speed. Many times during the ride which followed Trowbridge looked admiringly at his companion as she rode on, untiringly, side by side with him. A single man himself, he had come to feel very tenderly toward her, but he had no hope of winning her. She had never been more than good friends with him, and he realized her feeling for Wade, but this knowledge did not make him less keen in his admiration of her.

 

"Good luck to you, Lem," she said, giving him her hand, as they paused at the head of Crawling Water's main street. "Let me know what you do as soon as you can. I'll be anxious."

 

He nodded.

 

"I know about where to find him, if he's in town. Oh, we're slowly getting it on them, Dorothy. We'll be ready to 'call' them pretty soon. Good-by!"

 

Tug Bailey, however, was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the floor above.

 

"Wait a minute."

 

Trowbridge waited and the woman came down to him. He knew her by ill-repute, as did every man in the town, for she was Pansy Madder, one of the dance-hall habitues, good-looking enough by night to the inflamed fancy, but repulsive by day, with her sodden skin and hard eyes.

 

"You want to know where Tug is?" she demanded.

 

"Yes, where is he?"

 

"He's headed for Sheridan, I reckon. If he ain't headed there, he'll strike the railroad at some other point; him and that--Nellie Lewis, that he's skipped with." Her lusterless eyes were fired by the only thing that could fire them: her bitter jealousy.

 

"You're sure?" Trowbridge persisted, a little doubtfully.

 

"Sure? Of course, I'm sure. Say,"--she clutched at his arm as he turned away,--"if he's wanted for anything, bring him back here, will you? Promise me that! Let me"--her pale lips were twisted by an ugly smile--"get my hands on him!"

 

From the dance-hall, Trowbridge hastened to the jail to swear out a warrant for Bailey's arrest and to demand that Sheriff Thomas telegraph to Sheridan and to the two points above and below, Ranchester and Clearmont, to head off the fugitive there. Not knowing how far the Sheriff might be under the dominance of the Rexhill faction, the cattleman was not sure that he could count upon assistance from the official. He meant, if he saw signs of indecision, to do the telegraphing himself and to sign at the bottom of the message the name of every ranch owner in the district. That should be enough to awaken the law along the railroad without help from Thomas, and Trowbridge knew that such action would be backed up by his associates.

 

He had no trouble on this score, however, for Sheriff Thomas was away on the trail of a horse-thief, and the deputy in charge of the jail was of sturdier character than his chief.

 

"Will I help you, Lem?" he exclaimed. "Say, will a cat drink milk? You bet I'll help you. Between you and me, I've been so damned ashamed of what's been doing in this here office lately that I'm aching for a chance to square myself. I'll send them wires off immediate."

 

"I reckon you're due to be the next Sheriff in this county, Steve," Trowbridge responded gratefully. "There's going to be a change here before long."

 

"That so? Well, I ain't sayin' that I'd refuse, but I ain't doin' this as no favor, either, you understand. I'm doin' it because it's the law, the good old-fashioned, honest to Gawd, s'help me die, law!"

 

"That's the kind we want here--that, or no kind. So long, Steve!"

 

With a nod of relief, Trowbridge left the jail, ............