“You were watching?” she asked, almost before she thought.
He waited for some five seconds before he answered. “Yes,” he said.
She said, “Frank, let’s not let foolish pride come between us. I thought — I thought you were going away — out of my life — because of my prior marriage — I started up the trail after you. I had to find out... I—”
“I was leaving because I knew you were too far above me. For a minute I thought-well, you acted as though— Oh, shucks, I love you! I love you!”
Bill Eldon sat by the big campfire, drinking coffee.
“If you ask me,” Nottingham protested, “this is about the fourth fool thing that’s been done tonight.”
“What?” Bill Eldon asked.
“Having us all gather around a campfire while we know there’s a desperate killer out in the hills. He can see our figures silhouetted against the blaze and—”
“I know,” the sheriff said, “but it takes a good man to shoot at night.”
“Well, I think this murderer is what you’d call a ‘good man.’ Good enough to do just about as he pleases.”
The sheriff ignored the insult. “Funny thing about that murderer, now,” he said. “I’ve been sort of checking up with people about where everyone was when Frank Ames first came into this camp. It seems like there were two people missing, Alexander Cameron and Sam Fremont. Now, were you two boys together?”
“No, we weren’t,” Cameron said. “I went on downstream, fishing.”
“Downstream?”
“That’s right.”
“And you?” the sheriff asked Fremont.
“I went downstream a ways with Cameron and then I left him and started hunting for pictures of wildlife,” Fremont said. “I suppose you have the right to ask.”
“You got those pictures?” the sheriff asked.
“Certainly. They aren’t developed. I have two rolls of film.”
“Of course,” Nottingham pointed out, “those pictures wouldn’t prove a thing, because he could have gone downstream any time and taken a couple of rolls of film.”
“Don’t be so officious,” Fremont said, grinning. “When I came back the girls were all strutting sex appeal for the benefit of a newcomer. I stole a couple of pictures showing ’em all grouped around Ames. Those will be the last two pictures on the last roll.”
“How about the guides?” Sylvia asked. “They weren’t here. At least one of them was out—”
“Rounding up the horses,” the wrangler cut in. “And unless horses can talk, I haven’t any witnesses.”
“I was in my tent taking a siesta,” Dowling said. “The unusual chatter finally wakened me.”
“Well, I was just checking up,” the sheriff said. “Were you in bed tonight when the shooting started, Dowling?”
“Yes. I dressed and came barging up the trail as fast as I could. The others hadn’t turned in; they got up there well ahead of me.”
“You hurried right along?”
“Naturally. I was as afraid to stay in camp alone as I was to go up there where the shooting was taking place.”
The sheriff regarded his toes with a puzzled frown.
“You folks do whatever you want,” Dowling said indignantly, “but I’m going to get away from this fire.”
“I don’t think there’s the slightest danger,” the sheriff said.
“Well, I’m quite able to think for myself, thank you. I’m not accustomed to letting others do my thinking for me. You evidently didn’t think fast enough to keep him from shooting at Roberta.”
“That’s right,” Bill Eldon admitted. “I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t have quite as much to go on as I have now.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned,” Dowling said, “I’m going to get away from this campfire.”
“You seem to be pretty much of a woodsman,” the sheriff said.
“I did a little trapping in my younger days,” Dowling admitted.
“You know,” the sheriff drawled, “I think I know how that murderer got through our cordon. I think he climbed a tree until we went past.
“And,” the sheriff went on, “after we’d passed that tree a few steps, he dropped back down to the ground.”
“And ran away?” Nottingham asked.
“No, just mingled with us,” Eldon said. “You see, he was well known, so he only had to get through the line. I had that all figured out as soon as we came on the empty gun propped against the tree. That’s why I brought you all down here and built up a bright campfire. I wanted to see which one of you had pitch on his hands!”
In the second or two of amazed silence which followed, one or two of the men looked at their hands. The others looked at the sheriff.
“The man who did the killing,” the sheriff went on, “went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that there was someone else running around the hills. He had practiced the whistle that was used by a certain man whose name we won’t mention at the moment. He went to a lot of trouble to make a bed of fir boughs that hadn’t been slept in, to open a can of beans that wasn’t eaten. He tried to kill Roberta Coe, but Ames showed up and spoiled his aim. Then he jumped into the thicket of pine trees, did a lot of shooting, dropped the gun, climbed a tree, waited for us to enter the brush, then came threshing around, indignantly demanding an explanation.”
“Indeed!” Dowling sneered. “I wonder if you’re asinine enough to be trying to implicate me.”
“Well,” the sheriff said, “there are some things that look a little queer. You were in your tent when the shooting started?”
“Fast asleep. I jumped up, dressed, grabbed my six-shooter and ran up the trail to join the others. Here’s my gun. Want to look at it?”
“Not right now,” Eldon said, casually taking his cloth tobacco sack from his pocket and starting to roll a cigarette. “But if you’d run all the way up the trail, you’d have been out of breath. Instead of which, you took time to curse my bucolic stupidity and you weren’t out of breath in the least. In fact, you strung quite a few words together.”
The sheriff used both hands to roll the cigarette. “And you have pitch on your hands and on your clothes, and somewhere in your tent I think we’ll find a pair of cord-soled shoes that will fit the tracks of—”
“Take a look at this gun now,” Dowling said, moving swiftly. “And take a look at the front end.”
The sheriff was motionless for a moment, then went on rolling his cigarette.
“I don’t want anyone to move,” Dowling said. “Keep right here in plain sight by this campfire and—”
Suddenly from the other side of the campfire came the swift flash of an explosion, the roar of a gun, and Dowling stood dazed, glancing incredulously at his bloody right hand from which the gun had disappeared.
The sheriff put the cigarette to his lips to moisten the paper, drew his tongue along the crease in the rice paper, and said in a low drawl, “Thanks for that, Ames, I sort of figured you’d know what to do in case I could talk him into making a break.”
The eastern sun had long since turned the crags of the big granite mountains into rosy gold. The shadows were still long, however, and the freshness of dawn lingered in the air.
Frank looked up as he heard the sound of the horse’s hoofs trampling the ground. Then Roberta’s voice called, “Ahoy, how are the hot cakes?”
“All eaten up,” Ames said, “and the dishes washed. Why don’t you city slickers get up before lunch?”
She laughed. “We did,” she said. “In fact, no one went to bed at all. The packers broke camp with daylight, and the sheriff has already taken Dowling out to stand trial. I thought you’d want to know all the latest. Bill Eldon certainly isn’t the slow-thinking hick he might seem. Howard Maben was released from the penitentiary two months ago, but he got in trouble again over some forged papers and is awaiting trial in Kansas right now. The sheriff got all that information over the phone.