Making themselves entirely at home with the assurance of people who live in neighborly harmony, the pair moved on into the living room, settled down in chairs by a potbellied stove which radiated welcome warmth, and waited for Tom Morton to emerge from the darkroom.

  A few minutes later the photographer, tall, thin, wrapped in an aura of acid-fixing bath which gave him the odor of a dill pickle, said, “What can I do for you boys?”

  Bill Catlin showed him the photograph. “You make this postcard, Tom?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know.”

  “Ain’t these figures in pen and ink up in the corner yours?”

  The photographer took the print, turned it over, and examined the figures in the upper right-hand corner. “That’s right,” he said.

  “How come?” the sheriff asked.

  Morton grinned. “Well, if you guys have got to know something that’s none of your business, I don’t have a very big margin in this business. All photographic stuff has an expiration date put on it by the manufacturer. That’s the limit during which the manufacturer will guarantee it’s okay. But stuff will last for months or even years after that if it’s had the right kind of care. And once the expiration date is past, you can pick it up cheap if you know where to go.

  “Well, last year I had a chance to pick up three or four lots of postcard paper on which the expiration date had passed. I put figures on them so I’d know which lot was which, in case I had to discard one. Sometimes just before the paper begins to go bad the prints get a little muddy. But I was lucky. I didn’t have any trouble at all.”

  “So you’re sure this was a print you made?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Try to think when you made it.”

  “Gosh, Bill, have a heart!”

  “Take a good look at it,” the sheriff invited.

  Morton studied the postcard, while the sheriff regarded him anxiously. Hank Lucas, having tilted himself back in his chair, put his boots up to the arm of another chair and perused an illustrated periodical.

  Morton examined the figure on the postcard and said, “Say, wait a minute. I’m kind of beginning to remember something about that picture.”

  “ ’Atta boy,” the sheriff encouraged.

  Morton said, “There was something funny about it…. Yeah, I remember what it was now. The guy wanted just one print made.”

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “Well, when people want a picture put on postcards, usually they want at least a dozen, to send to friends. This fellow came in and said he wanted one print made, and only one.”

  “You developed the film? Or do you remember?”

  “No, I didn’t. That was another thing. He brought the film with him, all developed. And he handed me this one postcard-size film and told me to make one print on a postcard. He said he wanted to send it to his girl.”

  “Remember what he looked like?”

  “He was the guy in the picture.”

  “Well, now, that’s interesting. Probably along about last September?”

  “I thought it was earlier. I thought it was some time in the summer.”

  “Couldn’t have been in the summer,” the sheriff said. “Must have been in September.”

  Morton studied the pen-and-ink number on the upper right-hand corner of the postcard and said, “I didn’t think the stuff was still on hand in September. This was a batch I got around April. I thought it was gone by August. Guess I’m wrong, though.”

  “Well, we got the date on the postcard and the time of the man’s disappearance.”

  “What disappearance?”

  “He went off the beam. Had amnesia. His wife’s looking for him. You wouldn’t remember anything about him—the name he gave or anything of that sort?”

  “Gosh, no. Along during the fishing season I get a lot of work from dudes, and I just keep the names long enough to deliver the pictures.”

  “Well, Tom, just make a photo of this here postcard and make us half a dozen prints right quick. Can you do that?”

  Tom Morton looked at his watch. “How soon you want ’em?”

  “Soon as I can get ’em.”

  “Don’t know why I asked,” Morton said, aggrieved. “You been making that same answer to that question ever since you been sheriff….”

  As the two men went clump-clump-clumping out along the board corridor, Hank Lucas said to the sheriff, “You know, Bill, if that fellow’d been in the Middle Fork country ever since last fall, I’d have known about it. He could have gone in for a month or two and holed up in a cabin somewhere, but—Let me see that description again.”

  Catlin passed over the description from Ed Harvel’s letter.

  “Five feet nine,” Hank said. “Age, thirty-two. Weight, a hundred and eighty-five pounds. Red hair. Blue eyes. Fair complexion. Freckles…. Shucks, Bill, he hasn’t been in the country very long. And if he went in, he didn’t stay.”

  “I know,” the sheriff said soothingly, “but this here Ed Harvel, he thinks the only way to make a search is to go on into the Middle Fork and prowl up and down the country looking for this cabin.”

  “The cabin,” Hank said, “can probably be located. It’s up on a ridge, was built by someone who had a line of traps, was started in the fall before there was any snow on the ground, and finished after there’d been a storm that brought in about three feet of snow. You can tell where the stumps were cut close to the ground and then higher up. And those last saplings that stick out over the door to hang traps and stuff on were cut off five feet above the ground. The stumps are right near the cabin.”

  Bill Catlin grinned at him. “I wouldn’t say anything like that to this detective that’s coming out, Hank.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, now,” the sheriff said, “it’s a funny thing about city detectives. They think they’re the only ones can do any of this here deductive reasoning. They don’t realize that all that police work is is just following a trail, and that a cowboy has to do more trail work in a day than a detective does in a month. This here Dewitt is goin’ to pose as a sportsman, but he’s going to be playing old eagle eye. And if you steal his thunder, it might not go so good.”

  Hank grinned. “Me? I’m just a rough, tough old cow poke turned wrangler. How long’s it been since this Gridley guy got to hangin’ around?”

  “Now, that,” the sheriff said, “is something Ed Harvel didn’t tell me about. You ain’t s’posed to know a thing about Gridley, Hank. And don’t treat this dude like a detective. You’re s’posed to know you’re lookin’ for a cabin and a guy that’s missing, but this detective will probably be posin’ as a dude friend of the family.”

  “That,” Hank retorted with a grin, “makes it easy….”

  * * *

  The woman who left the noon stage and entered the hotel was slender-waisted, smooth-hipped, self-reliant. She seemed to have confidence in her ability to accomplish what she set out to do and to know exactly what it was she had in mind.

  There was about her the stamp of the city. Obviously, she was in unfamiliar surroundings as she stood for a moment glancing up and down the street with its variegated assortment of frame buildings. Then she raised her eyes to look over the tops of the structures at the background of high mountains. At this elevation and in the dry air, the shadows, with their sharp lines of demarcation, seemed almost black, contrasted with the vivid glare of the sunlight. Rocky peaks stabbed upward into the deep blue of the sky, dazzling in their sun-bathed brilliance.

  Abruptly conscious of the fact that the stage driver was watching her curiously, she walked smoothly and unhesitatingly into the hotel, crossed the lobby to the desk, nodded to Ray Fieldon, the proprietor, who had taken his place behind the counter to welcome incoming guests, and took the pen which he handed her.

  For a brief moment she hesitated as the point of the pen was held over the registration card, and Ray Fieldon, knowing from long experience the meaning of that momentary hesitation, cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

  Then the woman wrote in a firm, clear handwriting, “Marion Chandler, Crystal City.”

  Ray Fieldon became sociably communicative. “Lived there long?” he asked, indicating the place she had marked as her residence.

  Ray Fieldon kept that particular approach as an ace up his sleeve for women who registered under assumed names. Experience had taught him that there would be one of two responses. Either she would flush and become confused, or she would look at him with cold, haughty eyes and take refuge behind a mantle of dignity.

  But this woman merely gave him a frank, disarming smile. Her steady hazel eyes showed no trace of embarrassment. She said, in a voice which was neither too rapid nor yet too hesitant, “Oh, I don’t really live there. It just happens to be my legal residence.” She went on calmly, “I’d like something with a bath, if you have it. I expect to be here only long enough to make arrangements to pack in to the Middle Fork country. Perhaps you know of some packer who is thoroughly reliable.”

  Fieldon met those steady, friendly eyes and acknowledged defeat. “Well, now, ma’am, the best packer hereabouts is Hank Lucas. As a matter of fact, he’s starting in to the Middle Fork country tomorrow, taking a party in—a man and a woman. Just a chance you might get to team up with them—that is, if it was agreeable all around. You could save a lot of expense that way. Of course, you’d want to be sure that you were going to get along all right together. You might speak to Hank.”

  She hesitated.

  “The other two are due to arrive some time this afternoon,” Fieldon went on. “Man by the name of Dewitt and a woman named Adrian. If you want, I’ll speak to Hank.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “He’s in town and I—”

  Fieldon broke off as the door was pushed open, and Marion Chandler turned to survey the loose-jointed figure in tight-fitting Levi’s and high-heeled boots that entered the lobby.

  “This is Hank now,” Fieldon said in an undertone.

  “Seen anything of my dudes?” Hank called out.

  “They weren’t on the stage. Guess they’re coming by car,” Fieldon answered. “Come on over here, Hank.”

  Hank gave the young woman a swift, comprehensive glance, then swept off the sweat-stained sombrero to disclose dark curly hair, carelessly tumbled about his head. Fieldon performed introductions and explained the reason for them.

  “Well, now,” Hank said, “it’s all right with me, but you’d better sort of get acquainted with those other people this afternoon, see how you like them, and then sound them out. It’s sort of embarrassing if you get out with people you don’t like. You can get cabin fever awful easy.”

  “Cabin fever?” she asked, her voice and eyes showing amusement as she took in Hank’s picturesque sincerity.

  “That’s right. We call it cabin fever hereabouts. Two people get snowed in a cabin all winter. Nothing to do but look at each other. Pretty quick they get completely fed up, then little things begin to irritate them, and first thing you know they’re feuding. Outsiders get the same feeling sometimes when they’re out on a camping trip with people they don’t like.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure I’d get along with these other people.”

  “Well, they’d ought to get along with you,” Hank said, with open admiration. “What you going in for? Fishing? Or hunting? Or …?”

  She gave him the same smile she had given Fieldon when he had interrogated her about her residence. “I’m an amateur photographer. I want pictures of the Middle Fork country, and I’m particularly anxious to get pictures of people—people who have lived in that country for a long time. The old residents, you know. Types. Character studies.”

  “Well, I guess that could be arranged,” Hank said, somewhat dubiously. “The country and the cabins are all right. The people you’d have to approach tactfully.”

  She smiled. “You’d be surprised to find how tactful I am.”

  Hank grinned. “Well, those people are due in this afternoon. You can sort of size them up.”

  “What,” she asked, “are they going in for? Hunting? Or fishing?”

  Hank said, “Well, now, up in this country people just don’t ask questions like that offhand.”

  “You asked me.”

  Hank shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His eyes were pools of amusement. “Well, now, ma’am, you’ve just got to make allowances for me. I’m different.”

  “I’m quite good at making allowances for people,” she said. “I’ve had lots of experience.”

  “That’ll come in handy,” Hank told her.

  “And since you’re the one who asks the questions,” she went on, “suppose you find out from the other people whether it’s all right for me to join the party.”

  “After you’ve had a chance to look ’em over and see if it’s okay by you,” Hank said.

  “I am quite sure it will be all right as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You got a sleeping bag, ma’am?”

  “Down at the express office—that is, it should be. I sent in most of my stuff by express a few days ago.”

  “I’ll look it up,” Ray Fieldon said, and then he asked casually, “Sent from Crystal City?”

  She met his eyes. “No,” she said. “Merely inquire for a package sent to Marion Chandler, care of the express office, if you will, please. …”

  Some time early the next afternoon Marion Chandler looked back on the long line of horses from her position near the head of the string. The packs, covered with white tarpaulins and swaying slightly from side to side with the motion of the horses, made the pack string look like some huge centipede, each white pack a joint in the body.

  The trail itself was hardly two feet wide in most places, a narrow ribbon cut out of the wall of the canyon. Below, a stream tumbled pell-mell over rocks and sunken logs, hurling itself around bends, lashing itself into spumes of white foam in its brawling haste.

  High above towered the walls of the canyon, granite pinnacles, in places seeming to overhang the trail. Farther back were more gradual slopes, splashed here and there with dark patches of pine, until, finally, far, far up were the serrated ridges of the highest peaks.

  The trail wound interminably. Starting from a ranch located in a mountain “cove,” it had followed a stream through timbered meadows where the cold lay in a still, hushed blanket of frosty white. Now the sun was high, and the trail had dropped sharply down the canyon. At these lower elevations, the sun poured heat into the narrow defile.

  Hank Lucas led the procession. Behind him was Corliss Adrian, whom Marion judged to be about twenty-seven. She had chestnut hair, brown eyes, and was wrapped in an aura of subdued tragedy. It was a pose which well suited her, a pose which Marion felt would make men refer to her as “brave.”

  Marion, watching her ride, knew that she was a tenderfoot. Her back was too stiff. She insisted on having her stirrups too short, the effect being to throw her weight far back in the saddle. Twice lately she had asked casually of Hank Lucas, “I wonder how far we’ve gone since we started.” And Marion knew from the vague but cheerful manner in which Lucas answered the question that this was a routine with him, the first indication that a “dude” was becoming fatigued. But Corliss was being brave and uncomplaining, riding in silence.

  Back of Marion Chandler, James A. Dewitt, a thick, jolly individual in his middle thirties, frankly hung to the horn of the Western saddle when he came to the bad places in the trail. Behind him rode Sam Eaton, who was doing the cooking for the party, a quiet, middle-aged man who said nothing except when absolutely necessary.

  Back of him the packhorses came swaying along, and bringing up the rear was Howard Kenney, the assistant wrangler, a young man who had recently been discharged from the Army and whose eyes contained a touch of sadness. Marion had noticed that when he became jovial he seemed to make a conscious attempt at wrenching his mind away from past memories, an attempt which would almost invariably be followed by a period of detachment during which his tired gray eyes would focus on the distance.

  Now he was riding along, accepting the cloud of dust kicked up by the packtrain as part of the day’s work, from time to time swinging over in the saddle to scoop up a rock of convenient throwing size from the side of the mountain. Then he would stand in his stirrups and chuck the rock with unerring accuracy to prod along whatever packhorse at the moment seemed to be inclined to hold back.

  Hank Lucas, at the head of the procession, rode with long stirrups and a loose back. His sweat-stained sombrero was far back on his head, and he kept up a steady succession of cowboy songs. At times he would raise his voice so that those behind him could hear the rollicking words of a fast-moving verse or two, then suddenly he would invoke a veil of self-imposed censorship which left the words mere garbled sounds.

  At midafternoon the long string of horses wound its way down the canyon and debouched on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.

  The trail followed the river for a couple of miles, then wound around a rocky point where the way had been blasted out of sheer granite, and here the trail was barely wide enough to give a horse footing. On the left there was a drop of some two hundred feet, and so narrow was the way that the overhang of the saddle and the bulge of the horse’s side completely obscured the edge of the trail. Sitting erect in the saddle and looking down, one saw only two hundred feet of empty space under the left stirrup, with glinting water below.

  Dewitt, grabbing his saddle horn and staring with fear-widened eyes at the trail, still managed to preserve a semblance of his joviality. “I say up there, Hank,” he yelled.

  Hank swung loosely in the saddle, looking back inquiringly over his left shoulder, pivoting in such a way that he didn’t disturb his balance in the least. His face showed only courteous and casual interest.

  “What would you do if you met another pack coming from the opposite direction in a place like this?” Dewitt asked apprehensively.

  “Well,” Hank drawled, after an interval, “you couldn’t turn around, and you couldn’t pass. Reckon the only thing to do would be to decide which outfit was the least valuable and shoot it.”