“Well, I want everyone in my party to keep away from that body. That includes you, Dick. Understand?”
“Yes, H. W.,” Nottingham said, suddenly meek.
“And,” Dowling went on, “under the circumstances, I think we’ll wait.” He paused for two or three breaths, then added, “Until the sheriff gets back.” His eyes swiveled to glower at Ames. “Any objection, young man?”
“Not in the least,” Ames said. “Just so you don’t mess up the evidence.”
“Humph,” Dowling said, and sat down, breathing heavily.
More voices sounded on the trail. A carefree, casual, man’s laugh sounded garishly incongruous.
Dowling raised his voice and called out, “We’re in here, Sam.”
Crunching steps sounded on the decomposed granite, and Alexander Cameron and Sam Fremont came to join the party.
The abrupt cessation of their conversation, the startled consternation on their faces as they saw the body seemed to revive the shock of the others. A period of uncomfortable silence spread over the group.
Alexander Cameron, his equipment stiff and new, from the high-topped boots to the big sheath knife strapped to his belt, seemed about to become ill. Sam Fremont, quickly adjusting himself to the situation, let his restless eyes move in a quick survey from face to face, as though trying to ferret out the secret thoughts of the others.
Roberta Coe moved over to Frank Ames’ side, drew him slightly away, said in a whisper, “I suppose it’s too much to ask, but... could you... well... give me a break about what happened yesterday?”
“I’ve already covered for you,” Frank Ames said, a note of anger showing in his voice, despite the fact that it was carefully lowered so the others could not hear. “I don’t know why I did it, but I did. I stuck my neck out and—”
“Roberta!” Dowling said peremptorily. “Come over here!”
“Yes, H. W. Just a moment.”
Dowling’s eyes were narrowed. “Now!” he snapped. “I want you.”
The tension was for a moment definitely noticeable to all. Roberta Coe’s hesitancy, Dowling’s steady, imperative eyes boring into hers, holding her in the inflexible grip of his will.
“Now,” Dowling repeated.
“Yes, H. W.,” Roberta Coe said, and moved away from Frank Ames.
Sheriff Bill Eldon, squatting on his heels cowboy fashion on the side of the ridge, kept to the concealing shadows of the pine fringe just in front of the jagged rock backbone. John Olney, the ranger, sat beside him.
Here the slope was carpeted by pine needles and deeply shaded. Fifty yards back the towering granite ridge reflected the sunlight with such blinding brilliance that anyone looking up from below would see only the glaring white, and unless he happened to be a trained hunter, could never force his eyes to penetrate into the shadows.
The sheriff slowly lowered his binoculars.
“What do you see?” Olney asked.
Bill Eldon said, “Well, he ain’t going to walk into our trap. He found the gun all right, looked it over and then let it lay there. Now all these other folks have come up and it looks like they aim to stick around.”
“It’s his gun?”
“I figure it that way — sort of figured that if he had been mixed up in it, he’d try to hide the gun. He wouldn’t know we’d found it and he’d figure the safest thing to do would be to hide it.”
“I still think he’ll do just that,” Olney said.
The sheriff said, “Nope, he’s lost his chance now. Somehow I just can’t get that gun business straight. If Ames had done the killing and it’s his gun, you’d think he’d either have hidden it or taken it back home. The way it is now, somebody must have wiped it clean of fingerprints, then dropped it, walked off and left it. That someone had to be either pretty lucky or a pretty fair woodsman; knew that a storm was coming up and knew a heavy rain would wash out all the tracks. Hang it, I thought Ames would give us a lead when he found that gun. Guess we’ve got to figure out a new approach. Well, let’s go on back and tell him we’ve phoned the coroner.”
“When do you reckon Coroner Logan will get here?”
“Going to take him a while,” the sheriff said. “Even if he gets a plane, he’s got a long ride.”
“We just going to wait?”
“Not by a damn sight,” Eldon said cheerfully. “We ain’t supposed to move the body or take anything out of the pockets until the coroner gets here, but I’m not going to sit on my haunches just waiting around. Let’s be kind of careful sneaking back to our horses. We wouldn’t want ’em to know we’d been watching! There’s a lot more people down there now.”
“City guys,” Olney said, snorting.
“I know, but they all have eyes, and the more pairs of eyes there are, the more chance there is of seeing motion. Just take it easy now. Keep in the shadows and back of the trees.”
They worked their way back around the slope carefully.
Bill Eldon led the way to the place where their horses had been tied. The men tightened the cinches and swung into their saddles. “We don’t want to hit that trail too soon,” Sheriff Eldon announced. “Some of those people might be smart enough to follow our tracks back a ways.”
“Not those city folks,” Olney said, and laughed.
“Might not be deliberately backtracking us,” Bill Eldon said, “but they might hike back up the trail. If they do, and should find they ran out of horse tracks before they got very far, even a city dude might get suspicious. Remember when they came walking up the trail, that chap in the sweater stopped when he came to the point where the tracks led up to the place we found the body. He’s probably been around the hills some.”
“Been around as a dude,” Olney said scornfully, “but perhaps we’d better ride up a mile or so before we hit the trail.”
“How do you figure this Ames out?” asked the sheriff.
Olney put his horse into a jog trot behind the sheriff’s fast-stepping mount. “There’s something wrong with him. He broods too much. He’s out there alone and— Well, I always did think he was running away from someone. I think maybe he’s on the lam. I’ve stopped in on him a few times. He’s never opened up. That ain’t right. When a man’s out here in the hills all alone he gets lonesome, and he should talk his head off when he gets a chance to visit with someone.”
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.
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.”