ets of the man's overcoat which she wore on
chilly drives--

"The ghouls are arriving early."

"There's another word as ugly," Dr. Harpe retorted significantly.

"I can't imagine--unless it's quack."

"Or accomplice," she suggested with a sneer.

Dan Treu frowned.

With the surprising tact and gentleness which blunt men of his type
sometimes show, the deputy-sheriff drew from the girl her story of the
murder.

"I went to the creek--down the trail there--to get some water. I was
only gone a moment; I was bending down--dipping with the pail--I heard
two shots--close together. I thought he was shooting at prairie dogs--I
did not hurry. When I came back--he was lying near the wagon. It was
horrible! I called and called. He was dead. The blood was running
everywhere. I got a quilt and dragged and dragged until I got him on it
somehow. I saw no one. I heard no one."

Her slender hands were clenched tightly and she spoke with an effort.
There was silence when she finished, for her story seemed complete;
there seemed nothing more that she could tell. It was Dr. Harpe who
asked--

"But his gun--where's his gun? He's always kept a gun--I've seen it--a
Colt's automatic?"

The girl shook her head.

"I don't know."

"And, Doctor,"--it was the Dago Duke's suave voice that asked the
question--"you saw no one--passed no one while driving through the
hills?"

She looked at him steadily.

"I saw no one."

His eyelids slowly veiled his eyes.

"Why do you ask that?" His faint smile irritated her. "Don't you suppose
I would have said so long before this?"

"Let's look for that gun," the deputy interrupted. "He had a gun--I'm
sure of that; every sheepman packs a gun."

With the aid of a lantern and the glare of a huge sagebrush fire they
searched in the immediate vicinity for the gun and in the hope of
finding some accidental clue.

"We can't expect to do much till morning," the deputy opined as with his
light close to the ground he looked for some strange footprint in the
dust of the dooryard.

It was behind the cabin that Dan Treu stooped quickly and brought the
lantern close to a blurred outline in a bit of soft earth close to a
growth of cactus. He looked at it long and intently and when he
straightened himself his heavy, rather expressionless face wore a
puzzled look.

"Come here," he called finally to the coroner. He pointed to the
indistinct outline. "What does that look like to you?"

The coroner was