There followed a period of waiting in an atmosphere of hostility. Marion and Corliss sat on a fallen log, maintaining a distance of some eight feet, both apparently intent upon the scenery, both under emotional tension.

  Then Hank Lucas came walking back rather hurriedly. He talked briefly to Dewitt. The men took off, carrying with them a shovel which had been standing in the corner of the cabin by the stove. Corliss apparently failed to appreciate the significance of Hank’s errand, but Marion waited, watching with fear-strained eyes as the men walked rapidly down the path toward the spring.

  When they returned, some twenty minutes later, Marion knew what had happened merely from their attitudes. Dewitt, bustling in his efficiency, was now very definitely in charge. Hank, coming along behind him carrying the shovel, had a dejected droop to his shoulders.

  Dewitt said, “Corliss, we want you.”

  She came to him, and Dewitt engaged in low-voiced conversation, glancing almost surreptitiously at Marion. Marion saw Corliss catch her breath, heard her half scream; then they were gone down the trail, leaving Marion seated on the log very much alone. They were back within ten minutes. The cold hostility of Dewitt’s eyes confirmed her worst fears.

  He said, “It’s my duty to inform you, Miss Benton, that we have discovered the body of Frank Adrian. The evidence is unmistakable that he was shot in the back of the head with a high-powered rifle, firing a soft-nosed bullet. In view of other evidence I’ve found, there can be no question but what your brother was the murderer.”

  Marion was on her feet. “How dare you say any such thing! You are making a superficial appraisal of circumstantial evidence. My brother may have been living with him, but he wasn’t the only man in these mountains. After all, Adrian was mentally deranged. He—”

  “Shot himself in the back of the head with a rifle?” Dewitt asked sarcastically.

  “Well, I guess there are other people in these mountains. My brother and Adrian might have found a rich mine and—”

  “That,” Dewitt said coldly, “is something you can try to prove to a jury after we’ve caught your brother.”

  “Or,” Marion went on desperately, “that body could be someone else.”

  “The identification is absolute,” Dewitt said. “Not only is there an identification by Corliss despite the state of the body due to the time it’s been in a shallow grave, but there are certain means of identification which were given me by Corliss before she ever came in here. There’s no question about the identity of the body. And, as far as my duty is concerned, it’s plain. Your brother is a fugitive from justice. He has a head start—too big a head start. But there seems to be no question as to the trail he took in going out, and I am going to ride over that trail. There’s a telephone at the other end of it.”

  Hank Lucas was downright apologetic when he moved up to talk with Marion after Dewitt had gone over to comfort Corliss. “There’s another way out of this country,” he said. “It’s only about fifteen miles of trail from here and gets you to an automobile road. There’s a ranch there and a telephone. Dewitt feels he should get in there right away, and I’ve got to guide him. Corliss is pretty much all in, but she doesn’t want to remain here.”

  “Hank, tell me,” Marion said tearfully. “I don’t trust this man on the evidence. He’s a prejudiced, overbearing, bullying—”

  “He’s a pretty good detective,” Hank Lucas said. “As far as the evidence he’s uncovered is concerned, Marion, there are half a dozen clues that tell the whole story.”

  “And the body’s that of Frank Adrian?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be any question about that…. We don’t feel that it’s right for you to hang around the cabin the way things are. Don’t you want to go back to camp and stay there with Kenney and the cook?”

  “I don’t. I want to get out of this country. I want to get away,” Marion said, feeling her voice rise almost to the point of hysteria. “I want to talk with someone who’s got some sense. I want to find the sheriff of this county.”

  “That’s right,” Lucas said soothingly. “The sheriff is a square shooter, but there’s no use kidding ourselves. So far the evidence is dead open and shut.”

  “If they accuse Harry of this I’ll get the best lawyer money can buy,” Marion stormed indignantly.

  “Now, don’t go making any mistake on that,” Hank said. “That’s where you really could get in bad. Don’t go get any high-priced city lawyer and bring him in here to this county. You take the run-of-the-mill country lawyer up here, and he understands cabin fever. The jury understands cabin fever, and the lawyer understands the jury—”

  “We’re wasting time,” Dewitt interrupted. “We haven’t too much daylight left. We’ll have to ride fast. Think it will be necessary to take a packhorse with our sleeping bags?”

  “Nope,” Hank said. “There’s a ranger station there and a ranch. We can get them to put us up for the night, if we have to. But I think probably we can get an auto to drive out from Boise and pick us up.”

  “Let’s get started,” Dewitt said.

  “This is going to be tough,” Hank warned.

  Dewitt was grim. “We can take it. This is part of the day’s work—my work. …”

  It wasn’t until shortly after dark that the four horsemen rounded the last turn of a trail that had seemed absolutely interminable and saw an oblong of light, heard the sound of a radio.

  Corliss Adrian was virtually in a state of collapse. Dewitt, holding grimly to the saddle horn, lurched along like a sack of meal. Marion, accustomed as she was to a proper seat in the saddle, was unspeakably weary. Only Hank Lucas seemed perfectly at ease and untired.

  Once in the ranger station, however, Dewitt’s spirits soon revived. He was in his element, putting through telephone calls, requisitioning cars, assuming command. And Marion had to admit reluctantly that as an executive he showed to advantage.

  While they were waiting for the car to arrive from Boise, Ted Meeker, the rancher who lived about half a mile away and who had arrived in a state of excitement after quite frankly having listened over the party phone, fell into conversation with Hank.

  “How’s the stock coming?” Hank asked.

  “Pretty good. There certainly is lots of feed in this meadow during about eight months of the year.”

  “How are the horses?”

  “Fine.”

  “Got any you want to sell?”

  Meeker grinned. “None you’d want to buy.”

  “Haven’t had a stray in here, have you?”

  “Say, there is, for a fact,” Meeker said. “When the horses came in to hay last winter, there was a black that came in. Big, powerful horse. I haven’t seen him before, and I don’t know who owns him. There’s no brand.”

  “White left front foot? Star on his forehead?” Hank asked, rolling a cigarette deftly with one hand.

  “That’s right.”

  “Back in good shape?” Hank asked casually.

  “It is now,” Meeker said and laughed. “Wasn’t quite so good when he came in.”

  “Maybe fifteen years old? Sort of swaybacked?” Lucas asked.

  “Don’t tell me you own him?”

  “Nope. But I know who does.”

  “Well, by this time the owner’s got a feed bill.”

  Marion listened absentmindedly to this conversation, not quite understanding its implications. As the sister of a murderer she found herself in the position of being apart from the little group. She knew, in fact, that Dewitt had even disliked having her in the room where she could listen to the telephone instructions which had gone out pertaining to the apprehension of Harry Benton. It was a welcome relief, therefore, when she heard the sound of an automobile motor and realized that they would be on the move again….

  The drive to the county seat was a long one, and it was nearly noon when the party finally reported to Bill Catlin. They were all exhausted.

  The old country sheriff eyed them curiously. His manner was calm, unhurried, and deliberate. “Looks to me like you’ve been takin’ it pretty hard,” he said to Dewitt. “Maybe you’d better roll in for a while before we do anything else.”

  Dewitt squared his shoulders. “I can’t sleep when there are a lot of things to be done. I won’t rest until I know every wheel has been set in motion.”

  “Well, now, we can take over from here,” the sheriff assured him philosophically.

  Dewitt shook his head. “I don’t want to appear conceited, but it just happens I’m here. I’m going to keep on the job.”

  Bill Catlin said, somewhat whimsically, “Guess us country boys wouldn’t do so well in the city.”

  Dewitt smiled.

  “On the other hand,” Catlin said, “we manage to get by out here in our country.”

  “I hope,” Dewitt said, “that the time will come when we have a city-trained man available in every county in the United States.”

  “Well, now, that just might be a good thing,” Bill said.

  Dewitt’s voice was rasping from fatigue: “Well, let’s finish up this case if you don’t mind.”

  “You mean finish it up right now?”

  “That’s right. Arrest one of the guilty parties.”

  “Who?”

  “Use your head,” Dewitt said impatiently. “Reconstruct the crime. Put two and two together.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “Hank Lucas tells me that he knows that packhorse, has known it for some time. He knows the man who sold it to Adrian.”

  Catlin nodded.

  “That packhorse showed up down by the ranger station after snowfall last year when the horses came in to get fed. He’d been feeding out on the range before then.”

  Again Catlin nodded.

  “Surely you can see what happened,” Dewitt went on, trying to hold back his impatience. “There in the cabin we found some buttons in the stove, meaning that some garments had been burned up. We didn’t find a single thing in the line of wearing apparel, blankets, personal possessions, or anything. Just a few dishes and odds and ends of that sort. In other words, the cabin had been fixed up very carefully so that any person who happened to stumble onto it wouldn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary. It would appear that the trappers who had been in it had taken their furs at the end of the winter season and gone on out to sell them.”

  “So Hank was telling me,” the sheriff said.

  “All right,” Dewitt said. “Benton killed Frank Adrian. He loaded all the stuff on the packhorse and walked out to the ranch by the ranger station, where he struck the highway. He unpacked the horse and turned him loose.”

  “Then what?” Catlin asked.

  “Then he vanished.”

  “Seems like he did, for a fact,” the sheriff said.

  “Well,” Dewitt said impatiently, “my God, do I have to rub your nose in it? Figure out what happened. That wasn’t any cabin-fever killing. That was willful, premeditated murder. Adrian had quite a roll of cash on him. Benton got out with it. What happened? He got to that road and unpacked his packhorse. He didn’t just evaporate into thin air. Someone met him with an automobile. It had to be someone who was in on the play, someone who could keep an eye on things and wait until people were about ready to launch an investigation, and then contrive to show up and be very solicitous about her ‘dear brother.’ In other words, it’s just as plain as the nose on your face that Marion Benton was her brother’s accomplice and the murder of Frank Adrian was premeditated.”

  Marion jumped to her feet. “How dare you say anything like that?”

  “Now, just a minute, ma’am,” Bill Catlin said authoritatively. “If you wouldn’t mind just sitting down and keeping quiet, I’ll ask you questions when I get around to it. But right now we’re having an official investigation, and Mr. Dewitt is doing the talking.”

  Marion subsided into the chair.

  Corliss Adrian said to the sheriff, “He could have hitchhiked in. I don’t think Miss Benton was in on it.”

  “Don’t be silly, Corliss,” Dewitt said. “I can appreciate your desire to be charitable. Miss Benton has imposed on all of us with her superb job of acting, but I’m looking at the thing from the standpoint of a trained investigator.”

  Marion started to say something, but the sheriff motioned her to silence.

  “Figure it out,” Dewitt went on. “That murder was committed sometime before snow, sometime before the ground froze. The men had gone in there planning to prospect and then to trap. They had taken in enough supplies to last them through the winter, probably all of the supplies they could possibly load on one packhorse. There must have been quite a bit of stuff. Benton had to load all that and pack it out. Then he had to get rid of it.

  “I’ve asked particularly about traffic along that road. Except during hunting season, there’s virtually no one who uses it other than the ranger and the chap who has the ranch there, plus the man who delivers the mail.

  “I try to do things thoroughly. I’ve talked on the telephone to the mailman, and I asked him particularly if he remembered picking up anyone with a lot of camp equipment.”

  “Couldn’t he have hidden the camp equipment?” Corliss asked.

  “Too dangerous,” Dewitt said shortly. “There must have been a lot of provisions which had to be disposed of some way—bacon, flour, sugar, coffee. Then there were blankets and traps. To simply dump that stuff out somewhere would be taking too many chances. The minute anyone found that cache of stuff, he’d know something had happened.”

  Sheriff Catlin nodded approvingly. “You’re doing right well,” he said.

  “I think you’ll find,” Dewitt told him, with some dignity, “that the principles of investigating a crime both in the city and in the country are the same. In the country you have, perhaps, a wider area, which tends to increase the difficulty of finding clues. But, on the other hand, you have a smaller population, which makes the job of finding what you want much more simple.”

  “Yes, I reckon you’re right,” the sheriff said. “You’ve done some good reasoning there. I guess he couldn’t hitchhike. I guess he had to have someone meet him.”

  “And you can see what that means,” Dewitt went on. “It means deliberate murder. The crime had to be committed according to a certain schedule. The person with the car had to be there on a certain date. It’s your county, Sheriff, and I don’t want to dictate, but if it comes to a showdown, I’m going to have to. I want Miss Benton arrested as one of the two persons who murdered Frank Adrian. I want her arrested now.”

  The sheriff turned to Marion Benton. “Miss Benton, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a question or two. I know it’s sort of embarrassing, but you’ll help things along a bit if you’ll just talk frankly…. Your brother is sort of wild, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Done quite a lot of camping and packing?”

  “A lot.”

  “Lived in the hills a good part of his life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty good prospector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Packer and trapper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hank tells me you sit a horse pretty good. Take it you’ve done quite a bit of riding in the mountains, haven’t you?”

  “Some.”

  “With your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your brother have anyone along to do the packing or anything when he took those trips?”

  “No, of course not. He likes to do it.”

  The sheriff turned back to Dewitt. “Now, then, Hank tells me,” he said, “that when you found the cabin there was a shovel on the inside of the cabin by the stove, some blood spots on one of the walls, but no other blood spots anywhere. There were dishes in the little cupboard, dishes that had been washed and put away. There wasn’t any firewood or kindling inside the cabin. The stove had ashes that hadn’t been cleaned out, and there were some buttons in the ashes. There was this here note that had been stuck behind the boxes that formed the cupboard, and there wasn’t a single, solitary thing left in the cabin to show that, of the two men who occupied that cabin, one of them had stayed behind. The packhorse was found at the end of the trail, some skinned-up places on his back.”

  Dewitt nodded, then said somewhat impatiently, “I’ve gone all over that before. Hang it, Sheriff, I’ve given that cabin my personal attention. I’ve seen the evidence.”

  “Well, you’ve looked at the cabin,” the sheriff said. “Sometimes we don’t always see what we look at…. Now, let’s see. Mrs. Adrian, you registered over here at the hotel and left some baggage, I believe, to be picked up when you came out of the mountains.”

  “That’s right. Hank told me to make the load as light as I could, just take the things I really needed to get along with.”

  “Hank tells me you ain’t done much mountain riding.”

  “This is my first trip.”

  “Now, then,” the sheriff said to Dewitt, “I think you’ve got it right. This here murderer had to have somebody meet him. That means it was a premeditated crime. It means he had an accomplice. It means the thing was worked out according to schedule.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Dewitt snapped. “It means it was premeditated murder.”

  “That’s right. But a couple of things you’ve sort of overlooked. Let’s do a little thinking out loud. Take that photographic postcard, for instance.”

  “What about it?”

  “Notice the shadows?”

  “The shadows! What have the shadows to do with the murder of Frank Adrian?”

  “They’re pretty short shadows,” Catlin said. “The picture must have been taken right at noon, but, even so, shadows don’t get that short up here in Idaho except right during the summer months. Now, Tom Morton, the photographer who printed that picture, put it on paper that he says must have been used up by the last part of July. The shadows say it was July. The postcard says it was October. How you going to reconcile the shadows and—”

  Dewitt laughed. “I’m not even going to try. Frank Adrian didn’t disappear until September.”

  Bill Catlin nodded and went on, calmly, “And this here picture was taken with a folding camera that has a little light leak in the bellows. That’s how come this little patch of white fog is down here in the corner. Now, I know I’m just sort of boring you, but there’s one more thing you’d ought to consider. Remember when that packhorse showed up, his back had been rubbed raw and then healed over?”