Erle Stanley Gardner

A Man Is Missing

Sheriff Bill Catlin spilled the contents of the envelope on his battered desk and glowered at the younger man across from him, who sat uncomfortably attentive.

“The trouble with these dudes,” the sheriff said, “is that they think out here in Idaho we ain’t civilized. Now, here’s Ed Harvel, the chief of police who was visiting out here three years ago. He wants me to locate an amnesia victim, and he writes me a two-page letter telling me how to go about it.”

Hank Lucas nodded vaguely as the sheriff’s steely eyes looked up over the top of his spectacles.

“Now, this here chap,” the sheriff went on, “had a previous attack. He wandered off on his own. Was gone for three months, came back, and didn’t know where he’d been. Never has been able to remember a thing about it. Didn’t know what he’d done, what name he went under, where he lived, or anything about it. He just left his office five o’clock one afternoon and started for home. He showed up three months later. Ain’t that a heck of a note?”

“That,” Lucas agreed, “is a heck of a note.”

“Now then,” the sheriff went on, “a year ago he did it again. Disappeared last September. But this time he writes his wife a picture postcard. Sends it to her ’way back last October.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Hank said. “If he sent his wife a picture postcard, his mind hasn’t gone plumb blank. How did he know where to address it?”

“I’m coming to that,” the sheriff said. “That’s the funny thing. He’d been married three years, but he addressed the postcard to his wife under her maiden name and sent it to the old address where she lived when he was courting her. Been married to her and still thinks she’s his sweetie pie.”

Hank didn’t say anything.

“Now, this here Ed Harvel,” the sheriff went on, “I guess he’s a bang-up chief of police hack East, but you put him out here and he’s just a dude. Had him into the Middle Fork country three years ago, and there wasn’t a single tenderfoot trick he didn't pull — even to getting lost. Now, when he writes to me, he tells me what he wants done and then goes on and tells me how I should do it. You’d think I’d never done any investigating at all. Suggests this chap, whose name is Frank Adrian, is still going under his own name, because he signed the postcard ‘Frank.’ Says it might be a good plan to check with the hanks to see if he’s opened an account, talk with the proprietors of some of the stores in town, go search the backcountry, and—”

“Ain’t that all right?” Hank asked.

The sheriff snorted. “It’s the idea of him telling me how I should go about finding the guy! Anyhow, I don’t think that’s the best way to do it.”

“No?” Hank asked.

“Nope,” the sheriff said positively, and then added, “Funny thing about dudes—”

“You said you wanted to see me official, Bill,” Hank interrupted, shifting his position uneasily.

“Now, don’t get impatient,” the sheriff said. “A man would think you’d been shooting meat outta season and was afraid you’d left a back trail.”

“You’d ought to know how it feels,” Flank said. “I can remember before you was elected when—”

“Now, this here amnesia guy,” the sheriff interrupted hastily but authoritatively, “seems to have gone over in the Middle Fork country and lived in a cabin. He had a camera, and someone took his picture standing in front of his cabin. It was sent to his wife — addressed to her, like I said, under her maiden name, Corliss Lathan.

“The postcard was mailed from Twin Falls, and darned if they didn’t waste a lot of time corresponding with the folks down in Twin Falls. Then finally someone suggested it might be the Middle Fork country, and it seems like the man who is in charge of the missing-persons department found out Ed Harvel had been out here three years ago. So he goes to Ed and asks Ed for the name of the sheriff. And instead of writing a letter of introduction, Ed takes over and writes me the whole story and—”

“You wanted to ask me something about it?” Hank interrupted.

The sheriff pushed the photographic postcard across the desk. “Take a look.”

Hank looked at the card. On the side reserved for the message was written: “Corliss, dear, this shows where I am living. It's the wildest, most inaccessible place you can imagine. I still feel the results of that auto accident six weeks ago, but what with climbing around these mountains, living on venison and trout, getting lots of fresh air and exercise. I'll be fit in no time at all.”

The card was addressed to Miss Corliss Lathan.

Hank turned the card over and studied the photograph of a mountain cabin, with a man standing in front of it smiling fatuously at the camera. “Auto accident?” Hank asked.

“According to Ed Harvel, that accident was three years ago. The date on the card shows it was sent about six weeks after the guy disappeared the second time. Apparently he got his head banged in that accident, and whenever his memory slips a cog, it goes back to the time of the accident. Everything after that is a blank.”

Hank studied the postcard.

“What do you make out of it?” the sheriff asked.

“A trapper’s cabin,” Hank said, “up on a ridge. It was built in the fall. You can see where the trees were chopped off around near the cabin — indicates there was about three feet of snow on the ground. The guy’s sure a tenderfoot.”

“He is, for a fact,” the sheriff agreed.

“Those high boots,” Hank went on. “Hobnails in ’em too. Bet they weigh a ton. Look at that hunting knife hanging on his belt. Pretty far front. No protection on the sheath. He'd go hunting, jump over a log, double up when he lit, and the point of that knife would run through that leather sheath right into his leg and cut the big artery. Then we'd have another dead dude to pack out... What makes you think the cabin’s around here?”

“Notice that little ‘T.M.’ up in the corner?”

Hank nodded.

“That’s Tom Morton’s initials. He puts ’em on the postcards he prints, with a string of figures after ’em. I don’t know just what the idea is myself. But I’ve seen those sets of figures on picture postcards Tom makes of the fishing country and places around town. Tom printed that postcard, all right.”

“You talk with Tom?” Hank asked.

“Nope, I was sorta waiting for you.”

“Why me?”

“Well, now,” the sheriff said, “you see, it’s like this, Hank. I want you to sorta help me out.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Hank said. “The way you're talking, Bill, you’ve gone and made some arrangements.”

“Nothing out of the way,” Sheriff Gatlin said hastily. “I’ve got you a couple of customers. A couple of dudes.”

“Who?” Hank asked.

“Seems like this Corliss Adrian has all of a sudden got in a helluva lather to get her husband located. Seems like there’s another man been hanging around, and maybe she’d like to get a divorce. To do that she’d like to make a charge of desertion and serve papers. Or, in case she's a widow, then she could get married again right away. This here new man has got lots of money, and he’s willing to spend it. He wants results quick. And the high-powered city detective who’s been in charge of the investigation, a chap by the name of James Dewitt, has a vacation coming up. So he and this Corliss Adrian are driving out together, and they wanted—”

“Absolutely not,” Hank said. “I can’t—”

“They’ll pay regular dude prices,” the sheriff finished triumphantly.

“Well...” Hank hesitated. “That’s different. How about the other guy, the one who wants to marry her? Is he coming?”

“Course not,” the sheriff said. “He’s keeping under cover, hugging the ground like a spotted fawn and hoping no one sees him. He’s the rich son of a big broker back there. Tots of dough and political influence — chap name of Gridley. His dad’s a pal of Ed Marvel's, and that’s partly why Ed’s all worked up. You can see the thing from Gridley’s viewpoint. S’pose they locate this husband and his mind’s a blank, or maybe he’s just checked out of marriage because he’s tired of it. But he gets a lawyer and starts a suit for alienating affections or some such business. Nope, Gridley’s son is sitting just as still as a pheasant in a grain patch.”

Hank said, “Well, I’ve got my pack string where I could take a party into the Middle Fork. Of course. I don’t know what sort this city detective is, and—”

“Let’s you an’ me go to see Tom Morton,” the sheriff suggested...

The sheriff and Hank Lucas left the wooden courthouse and went out into the sun. The sprawling Idaho town was deceptive to those who didn’t know it. A single long main street stretching in a thin ribbon of frame business structures, many of which were in need of paint, gave little indication of the innate prosperity of the place. For a radius of more than fifty miles, cattlemen used the facilities of the town to service their ranches. Business from a county as big as some of the eastern states flowed into the county scat. The bank, housed in a one-story frame structure, casually discussed financial deals which would have jarred many a more pretentious city bank to its granite foundations.

The sheriff and Hank Lucas turned in at Tom Morton’s doorway. The entrance room was bleak and cold, decorated with pictures of familiar faces, young men in uniform, girls at the time of high-school graduation. Here and there were hand-colored photographs of the mountainous backcountry.

Ignoring the sign, “Ring for Photographer,” the sheriff and Lucas clumped noisily along the uncarpeted corridor toward the living quarters and the darkroom in the rear.

“Hi, Tom,” the sheriff called.

“Hello,” a voice answered from behind a door marked “Darkroom.”

“This is the sheriff. Watcha doin’?”

“Just taking some films out of the developer. Stick around a minute, and I'll be with you.”

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?”

“Cosh, 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 lots 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-sized 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 broad 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 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 Flank 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.”

“Please don’t joke about it,” Corliss Adrian said, in a low, throaty voice.

Hank’s grin was infectious. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m not joking. That was my answer. S’pose you try and figure out some other way.”

He included them in a lazy grin and said. “Only about ten minutes to camp,” and swung back around in the saddle. Almost immediately his voice rose in a plaintive melody.

His ten minutes turned out to be exactly twenty-three minutes, as Marion Chandler noted from her wristwatch. Then they made camp in a grassy meadow, with pines furnishing a welcome shade. The packs came off in record time. The cook had a fire going, and even before the wranglers had finished hobbling the horses and putting a cowbell on the leader, Marion could smell the aroma of cooking.

James Dewitt came over to stand by her. “You seem to have stood the trip quite well.”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“You do quite a bit of riding.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know — the way you were sitting on the horse. You seemed to be a part of him. You aren’t tired?”

“Not particularly.”

“I'm all in,” he confessed. “Too much weight to pack around. I’m going to get busy and take off twenty or twenty-live pounds. Been threatening to do it for a year. Perhaps this will be a good chance to start.”

Marion nodded toward the campfire. “Wait until that gets down to coals and you begin to smell the broiling steaks.”

“Steaks?”

“That’s what Sammy told me. Steaks the first night out.”

Dewitt made an exaggerated motion of wiping the back of his hand across his lips. “Guess I'll start my diet tomorrow,” he said. “So you’re taking pictures?”

“That’s right.”

“Have a contract with some magazine?”

“No. I’m free-lancing.”

“Rather an expensive trip just for free-lancing, isn’t it?”

“I don't think so,” she said coolly.

“Pardon me.” He grinned. “I’m always sticking my neck out, saying things that happen to crop into my mind. Did you get any pictures along the trail?”

“No. I’m going to wait a day or two before I do much photography. It's always better to play it that way. The scenery’s better, and the first day’s journey is usually the longest and the hardest on the stock and the people. Packers don’t like to have you hold up the string the first day out.”

“You sound like a veteran.”

She laughed gaily and said, “I’ve been listening to Hank.”

“But you have been on quite a few camping trips?”

“Oh, yes.”

It was plain that Dewitt wanted to ask more questions, but her manner held his curiosity in check.

Corliss Adrian came over to join them. “Wasn't it perfectly delightful?” she asked, but her voice was flat with fatigue.

Hank Lucas, having finished hobbling the horses, pulled a can of fruit juice from one of the kyacks, jabbed a hunting knife through the top of the can, and produced paper cups and a bottle. He mixed the ingredients with haste.

“Now, this here,” he announced, “is a little mountain tonic. A couple of these has the effect of loosening the sore muscles, removing kinks from the back, and whetting the appetite. How about it, Mr. Dewitt? Want me to get out your fishing tackle so you can catch a few trout before supper?”

Dewitt grabbed the cocktail. “Gosh, no,” he said. “All I want is to sprawl out and rest. Where are the sleeping bags?”

Lucas passed the drinks around and tossed off one himself, saying, “Coming right up.” And he promptly proceeded to busy himself getting things unpacked.

Marion was grateful for the fatigue that permeated the camp, which she knew had interposed a shield between her and what had apparently been a well-planned course of questioning agreed upon in advance. Dewitt had done his part, but Corliss had been too tired to keep up the mental effort.

As the sun went down in the west, the shadows of the mountains on the other side of the stream marched rapidly toward them. Almost instantly it became cool and, by the time the broiled steaks, potatoes, and salad were on their plates, the sharp tang of the mountain air, plus the effect of the cocktails, had whetted their appetites so that eating was a full-time occupation. And, in an incredibly short time after eating, the food induced a drowsy torpor which made even the most fragmentary conversation a matter of effort.

The fire crackled cheerfully for a while, then died down, and the circle of darkness which had been waiting just outside the camp moved silently in.

“I'm going to roll in,” Marion announced. “Good night, everyone.”

James Dewitt sighed and said, “Good night.” He arose and started for his sleeping bag. His first two steps were staggering, off-balance attempts to keep himself erect as his cramped muscles for the moment refused to work. A moment later Corliss Adrian had rolled in, and Marion, hurriedly disrobing, slid down into her sleeping bag. She looked over at the campfire, where Hank Lucas, Sam Eaton, and Howard Kenney were gathered in a little group silhouetted against the glowing embers.

She wondered sleepily at the subject of their conference and determined that she would lie awake to watch them, suddenly suspicious of the intense attitude of concentration.

She doubled the light pillow of her sleeping bag to prop her head up so she could see them more clearly and closed her eyes momentarily when they began to smart, to shut out the light of the campfire. Her consciousness was almost instantly sucked down into an abyss of warm comfort...

When she wakened there was the feel of dawn in the air. The stars over the tops of the big pines had receded into a sky which was taking on just a faint suggestion of greenish-blue color.

She knew that it was cold outside because she could feel a tingling at the tip of her nose, but the envelope of the sleeping bag was filled with warm down and she was too comfortable to even move. She lay there in a state halfway between sleeping and waking, listening to the sounds of the purling river and the stir of activity around camp. Time ceased to exist.

There was color in the pine trees now. The stars had disappeared and the sky had taken on a distinctly bluish tint. She heard the sound of distant shouts, and then the clanging of the bell on the lead horse became suddenly a hysterical clamor. Hoofs pounded and, startled, she raised herself on an elbow, to see the horses coming into camp, driven along by Howard Kenney, who was riding bareback, letting out cowboy yells at intervals. Sleep was effectively banished.

Marion struggled into her clothes, splashed ice-cold water on her face, and felt that surge of vitality which comes with the dawn when one has been sleeping on the ground in the open.

With an appetite sharpened by the fresh air, she watched the cook bring flapjacks to a golden brown and put them on her plate together with slices of crisp, meaty bacon. A thick slab of country butter melted to run down the sides of the hot cakes and mingle with the maple syrup. There was clear, strong coffee in a huge agateware cup.

She ate with zest and then walked down to the edge of the river, where Dewitt was just finishing putting his trout rod together. He had made a few preliminary casts to soften up his leader and now, with a skilled wrist motion, sent a fly winging out in a long cast.

“Hello,” he said, grinning amiably. “You’re looking mighty fit this morning.” Using his left hand to pull the line through the guides, he brought the fly around the edge of a little ripple, then across a straight stretch of swift current.

“Feeling like a million dollars,” she said.

A trout suddenly flashed up out of the water, struck at the fly, missed, and then went sulking down to the depths of the stream.

“Missed him,” Dewitt said. “I was a little too anxious. Whipped the fly right out of his mouth.”

Hank Lucas, who had joined them without being observed, said, in his peculiar drawling voice, “No need to get discouraged. There’s lots of ’em in here. If you want to fish an hour or so while we’re getting the packs on, you’ll have more fish than you can carry... Haven't seen Mrs. Adrian, have you?”

Dewitt snapped in the line and made another cast. “No. Is she up?” he asked, his eyes glued to the fly.

“She’s up, all right. Took a little walk upstream. She hasn’t come back for breakfast.”

Dewitt said abruptly, “You say she’s gone?”

“That’s right. Seems to have taken a walk,” Lucas said, “but there aren't any tracks on the trail. I thought I’d take a look along the stream here, and then I saw you fishing.”

Lucas strolled more or less aimlessly up the stream edge between the rocks, then said suddenly, “Here’s where she went.”

Marion had to look twice to see the track. Then it appeared to be only a faint discoloration of the ground. But, some twenty yards farther on, Lucas, who had kept moving on ahead, uncovered another fresh track — this time made in damp sand and distinctly visible.

Dewitt abruptly lost interest in the fishing and snapped in his line. “Guess I’d better follow her.”

“Keep on fishing if you want.” Hank said. “I’ll go on up... Maybe you’d like to take a walk,” he said to Marion, and then added, with a grin, “In case she’s taking a swim, you can go on ahead and tell her she’ll have to hurry if she wants breakfast. We’ve got to get the packs on.”

Dewitt hesitated. “Really, I should come,” he said.

“Why?” Hank asked, and then added, “I can probably follow her trail as well as you can.”

Dewitt grinned. “Oh, well, if you put it that way,” he said.

He resumed his fishing, and Hank and Marion moved slowly upstream.

Almost instantly the lazy smile left Hank’s eyes. His manner became tense and businesslike. “Any idea where she might have gone?” he asked.

“No. I woke up shortly before dawn and then dozed again. I didn’t hear her move.”

“She was in her sleeping bag when Kenney and I took out after the horses. You haven’t any idea what she might be after?”

“She might have wanted to bathe.”

“Water's pretty cold,” Hank said, and then added abruptly, “You know what she’s in here for?”

“She wants to find her husband?” Marion ventured.

“That’s right... You’re a photographer?”

“Yes.”

Hank said, “Here’s a copy of a picture. It ain’t too clear because it isn’t a print, but it’s a picture of a picture. What do you make of it?” He handed her one of the postcard reproductions Tom Morton had made.

“What,” Marion asked, studying the photograph, “do you want to know about it?”

“Anything you can tell about the picture. Just from looking at it.”

“Lots of things,” Marion said, laughing.

“What, for instance?”

“To begin with,” she said, “the picture was probably taken with a 3-A folding Kodak with a rapid rectilinear lens. It was taken in the middle of the day.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well,” she said, “despite the fact that the lens was stopped ’way down, there’s still a certain blurring at the extreme corners and there’s a peculiar diffused warmth to the shadows. You get that with a rapid rectilinear lens. The anastigmatic lens has a tendency to cut things wire-sharp. But there isn’t quite the warmth in the shadows and—”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean the lens was stopped ’way down?” Hank asked.

She said, “When the diaphragm shutter of a lens is wide open, the speed is increased hut there’s very little depth to the field. In other words, if you take a fairly long focal-length lens such as is necessary to cover a postcard-size film, and set it, say, at twenty-five feet and leave it wide open, things beyond thirty feet or so will be out of focus, and things closer than twenty feet will be out of focus. I’ve forgotten the exact table, but that will serve as an illustration. On the other hand, if the lens is stopped ’way down, virtually everything will be in focus. The stopping down gives a depth of field. Objects only eight or ten feet away will be fairly sharp, and so will things in the distance.”

“And this lens was stopped down?”

“This lens was stopped down,” Marion said. “Moreover, see the little white fog down there in the corner? Well, that’s a light leak, and probably came from a little hole in the bellows of the camera. If it had been careless winding on the spool, you’d have seen a little different type of leak and... Here’s Mrs. Adrian now.”

Corliss Adrian, trim and fresh, stepped out from behind a rock. Apparently she was engaged in watching the other side of the stream very intently. But she seemed to watch it a little too long, and her surprise on finally seeing Hank and Marion seemed a little too pronounced.

Marion started to say, “I think she’s been watching us,” but then abruptly changed her mind and remained silent.

Hank said good-naturedly, but still with a certain rebuke in his voice, “This here is a searching party out to locate the lost tenderfoot.”

“Don’t ever worry about me,” Corliss Adrian said, with a quick, nervous laugh. “I decided to get up and see if I couldn’t see a deer.”

“See anything?”

“I saw some does and fawns and one young buck!”

“Breakfast is just about over,” Hank said. “We’re trying to get things cleaned up so we can get away.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll rush right on back. Hank—”

“Yes?”

“Do you see that canyon up there, the one with the peculiarly shaped rock up near the top of the ridge?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What place is that?”

“Broken Leg Canyon.”

“I wonder if we could go up there. It looks like marvelous country.”

“That’s just about where I’m aiming to go,” Hank said.

“Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“You see,” Hank explained, “when Bill showed me the picture of that cabin, there wasn’t anything on it that gave a definite clue to where it was, but somehow, from the way the ground looked, I had a hunch the thing might be up Broken Leg Canyon. I thought we’d take a look up there. Provided it’s okay with Miss Chandler here.”

“Oh, I think that would be wonderful,” Marion said eagerly. “It looks very inviting. That rock would really make a magnificent photograph.”

“Then that’s all settled,” Corliss said.

Marion wondered if Hank Lucas had detected a certain note of smug satisfaction in Corliss’s voice. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, but he seemed thoroughly engrossed in picking his way over stream-worn boulders.

Dewitt was landing a fish as they walked past and was too engrossed in what he was doing to even see them. The cook was plainly angry, and Howard Kenney, faced with the job of getting the packsaddles on the horses, was indignantly silent.

Corliss Adrian moved over to a place by the fire, apparently heedless of the taciturn disapproval of the cook. Lucas started getting packsaddles on the horses, and Marion moved over to the two men. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked Kenney.

“Not a thing,” Kenney said, smiling. “You might get your personal things all together and the air out of your air mattress. No use trying to break any records getting a start, though. The Queen of Sheba is going to take her time.”

Marion glanced over to where Corliss Adrian was settling herself in a folding chair at the camp table with every evidence of preparing to enjoy a leisurely breakfast.

“Not much we can do until we get the kitchen ready to load,” Kenney explained. “Perhaps I’d better help you get the air out of your mattress.” He walked over to the beds, loosened the valves, and slowly rolled up the sleeping bags, letting the air escape.

“You like this life, don’t you?” Marion asked.

“Love it.”

“But it’s hard work, isn’t it?”

“Oh, off and on. But it’s nice work. It’s the only way I can afford to hang around the country as much as I’d like to. Sort of a vacation.”

“I see.”

“Sleep all right last night?” he asked.

“Fine.”

“You would. You were taking the ride all right yesterday. You’re used to Western-saddle trail riding.”

She became conscious of the curious interrogation in his eyes and knew suddenly that this was no casual questioning, but a well-planned examination which probably linked in with the three-way conference at the campfire last night.

“Yes, I’ve done some mountain riding,” she said, and calmly turned away and began packing her personal belongings.

Thereafter Marion avoided Howard Kenney...

When camp had been broken and all but the last two horses loaded, Hank Lucas approached his dudes.

“Kenney can finish throwing the packs, with the help of the cook, and bring the string along,” Lucas said. “I want to move on ahead and pick out a good campsite. If you folks would like to come along with me, you can save a little time.”

“That’ll be fine,” Marion said.

“Wait a minute,” Dewitt interposed cautiously. “How do you propose to make this extra time? As I see it, the packtrain will be ready to start in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“There’s quite a bit of smooth trail ahead,” Hank said. “We can put the horses in a trot.”

“In a trot!” Corliss Adrian exclaimed in dismay.

Hank grinned. “Don’t appeal to you, eh?”

“If it makes any difference to the others, I’ll be only too glad to go along,” Corliss said with dignity, “but if it doesn’t, I think I’d prefer to walk my horse. However, you’re in charge, and I’ll do as you say.”

Dewitt stepped into the situation. “You two go right ahead,” he said. “Take all the time you want. We’ll come along with the pack string. After all, we’ve got all day. Our time isn’t that valuable.”

Lucas glanced at Marion.

She nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go,” Lucas said. He took his chaps off the horn of the saddle, buckled them around his waist, fastened the snaps under his legs, put on his spurs, and swung into the saddle.

They started out at a brisk trot. There was a wide valley to skirt where another stream came into the Middle Fork. It took a detour of nearly three miles to bring them back opposite the mouth of the canyon on the other side of the stream. The horses splashed through a ford, followed relatively level going for three-quarters of a mile, and then started an abrupt climb.

Marion regarded the sweating horses during one of the brief rest periods which enabled the animals to catch a few quick breaths. “Aren't you pushing the horses a bit fast?” she asked.

Hank tilted hack his sombrero. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t anxious to have those other two along. I don’t want to disappoint them, in case I don’t find what I’m looking for.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The cabin shown in that photograph.”

“You think you know where it is?”

“Well, now,” Hank said, shifting sideways in the saddle and cocking his right knee over the horn of the saddle, “I can best answer that by saying that I know the places where it ain’t.”

She laughed.

“You see,” Hank went on, seriously enough, “that cabin is up on a ridge somewhere. I know just about when it must have been built. That is, I know it was built after the last real heavy winter — on account of the down timber. I know the general nature of the country it’s in. And, well. I’ve been doing a little listening around.

“A year ago a chap who could be this man they’re looking for showed up here and had a partner with him. They went up in this country somewhere and sort of disappeared. Everyone thinks they went out the other way through the White Cliff country. Had one packhorse between them. I talked with the chap who sold ’em the horse. One of the fellows was a pretty good outdoors man; the other was a rank tenderfoot. Now, maybe there’s a cabin up in here somewhere that was built and then abandoned.”

“Do you know where it is?”

Hank shook his head.

Marion surveyed the tumbled waste of wild, rugged country. “How in the world do you ever expect to find it in this wilderness if you don’t know where it is?”

“Same way the people who lived in it found it,” Hank said. “Take along in the winter when trails were pretty well snowed over, they had to have something to guide them when they wanted to go home.”

“How do you mean?”

Hank motioned toward the trees along the trail. “See those little marks?”

“Oh, you mean the blazes?”

“That’s right. Now, you see, along this trail you’ve got a long blaze and underneath it two short ones. They’re pretty well grown over and a person that didn't know what he was looking for wouldn’t find them. They show up plain enough to a woodsman.”

“And you think these men blazed a trail in to their cabin?”

“Must have.”

“How much farther?”

Hank grinned. “I’m darned if I know. I’m just looking for blazes.”

He swung around in the saddle and dropped his right foot back in the stirrup. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

From little natural meadows which existed here and there along the trail, Marion could see out over an awe-inspiring expanse of country — mile on mile of tumbled mountain peaks, deep, shadow-filled canyons, high, jagged, snow-covered crests.

Hank Lucas looked back at her and grinned. “Lots of it, ain’t there?”

“I’ll say there is.”

Abruptly he reined in his horse.

“What is it?”

“There’s an elk,” he said.

“Where? I don’t see him.”

“Over there. Wait a minute, he’s going to bugle to the horses.”

From the shadows came a clear, flutclike whistle which started on a low note, ran to a higher note, then dropped through two lower notes into final silence.

“Oh, how beautiful!” Marion exclaimed.

“First time you ever heard an elk bugle?”

Her eyes were glistening. She nodded her head.

“He doesn’t like the horses,” Lucas said. “Thinks they’re a couple of bull elks which may be rivals. This country is pretty wild. He don’t know much about men. There he is over there in the shadows under that tree.”

She caught sight of him then, a huge, antlered animal standing in the shadows. Abruptly he pawed the ground, lowered his head, gave a series of short, sharp, barking challenges.

“He looks as though he’s getting ready to attack,” Marion said, alarmed.

“He is.” Hank grinned. “But he’ll get our scent before he does any damage, find out we ain’t other elks, and beat it.” He turned to her sharply. “I don’t notice you trying to photograph him. I haven’t seen you photograph anything so far. If you didn’t come in here to take pictures, why did you come in here?”

She said, “If I told you, would you keep it to yourself?”

“I might.”

The elk took two quick steps forward, then suddenly caught their wind, sniffed, whirled abruptly, and was gone, like some great, flitting cloud shadow, his big hulk dissolving in the trees.

Marion's speech was quick and nervous. “I came in here to find my brother. I think he’s the one who was with Frank Adrian. That’s why I was willing to go along with these other two.”

Hank spun his horse so he was facing her. “Okay,” he said quietly, “suppose you tell me about him.”

“I don’t know too much about it,” she said. “The last letter I had from Harry was last summer. He was at Twin Falls then. There was an ad in the paper stating that a man who was going into the hills for his health wanted a partner who was fully familiar with camping, trapping, and mining. This man was willing to give a guarantee, in addition to a half interest in any mines or pelts. It sounded good. Harry wrote me he’d answered the ad and got the job, that he liked his partner a lot, and they were going to head into the Middle Fork country. That’s the last I heard from him.”

“He write you very often?”

“Only once every two or three months,” she said. “But he’s close to me. He’s my older brother.”

“He give you any address?” Hank asked.

“Yes, the county seat back there.”

“You write to him there?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“The letters came back. I don’t think Harry would have gone away and... well, he wouldn’t have gone this long without writing unless something had happened. I've been wondering whether that ad was on the up and up.”

“I see,” Hank said. “Your brother’s name Harry Chandler?”

“Harry Benton,” she said. “My name is Marion Chandler Benton. I didn’t want to use the last name until I knew more about things. I thought perhaps if Harry had got in any trouble I might be able to help him. He’s impulsive and a little wild.”

Hank regarded her shrewdly. “Ever been in trouble before?”

“Yes. You see, he’s — well, he’s impulsive.”

“And what’s the reason you didn’t tell Corliss Adrian about this?”

“Because if he’s got into trouble,” Marion said, “I can do more for him if people don’t know who I am. I don’t want her to know. I’m telling you because you know that I’m in here for something other than photographs, and I want you to know what it is so — well, so you’ll know.”

“So I’ll quit trying to find out?” Hank asked with a grin.

“Something like that.”

“This brother of yours is sort of the black sheep of the family?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s your favorite, just the same?”

“Yes.”

“Want to tell me about the other time he was in trouble?”

“No.”

Hank gently touched the tip of his spur to his horse. “Okay,” he said. “Let's go.”

They rode on for another half mile, passing now through big-game country. Twice they saw deer standing watching them. Once they heard crashes in the forest as a big bull elk stampeded his cows out of their way, then turned, himself, to bugle a challenge.

“Usually the deer don’t hang around so much in the elk country,” Hank said, “but there seem to be a lot of them in here. I— What’s this?” He stopped abruptly.

“I don’t see anything.”

Hank pointed to a tree.

“Oh, yes, I see it now. It’s a blaze, a different blaze from this trail blaze. Looks as though the person who made it didn’t want it to be too prominent.”

Hank indicated other trees bearing all but imperceptible scars. “Want to take a look?” he asked.

She nodded.

Hank turned his horse down the ridge, following the faint trail.

“Shouldn't you leave a note or something, in case the pack string catches up with us?”

“They’ll see our tracks,” Hank said.

They skirted wide patches of down timber, lost the trail twice on such detours, but eventually picked it up again. Then, without warning, they came to a little clearing and a cabin.

Hank swung down off his horse and dropped the reins to the ground.

Marion looked at the cabin for a moment, then flung herself out of the saddle. “It’s the same cabin that’s in the picture,” she said. “The picture was taken from over there.”

“Let’s take a look around.”

They crossed the little opening and Hank pushed the cabin door open.

Marion stood at his side, looking over the one-room structure.

There was a wood stove of rough iron, two bunks, a table, a rude bench, a row of boxes which had been nailed to the wall so as to form a cupboard and in which were a few dishes, knives, and forks. A frying pan hung from a nail, and there was a large stewpan face down on the stove. The cabin had a dirt floor, but it was cleaner than any abandoned cabin Marion had ever seen. Yet it held that characteristic musty smell which indicated it had been some time since there had been a fire in the stove or since men had slept on the two bunks.

On the table was a kerosene lamp partially filled with kerosene.

“Well,” Hank said, “I guess this is it. You say your brother’s an old-time camper?”

“That's right. He’s done quite a good deal of trapping and prospecting. He didn’t like too much civilization.”

Hank nodded. He took off his hat and scratched the hair around his temples.

“What is it?” she asked. “Anything?”

“No,” Hank said, “I guess it’s okay. Let’s get back to the trail. We'll want to camp right around here somewhere.”

“We could camp in the flat here and use the cabin, couldn’t we?”

“Better not,” Hank said shortly. “Lets go back to the trail and— Hello, what's this?”

Hank was looking at the three boxes which had been nailed to the side of the cabin.

“What is it? I don’t see anything.”

Hank said, “That piece of paper. Looks like the edge of an envelope.”

“Oh, yes, I see it now.”

Hank moved over. His thumb and forefinger gripped the corner of an envelope which had been pushed into a small space between the boxes and the log wall of the cabin.

Marion laughed nervously. “It must be a letter he put there and forgot to mail.”

Hank turned the envelope over and said, “It’s addressed ‘To Whoever Finds This Letter.’ The envelope isn’t sealed. Let’s just take a look.”

Hank pulled the flap of the envelope and took out the single sheet of paper, which was covered on both sides with fine pen-and-ink writing. He spread it out on the table.

Marion, standing at his shoulder, read the letter with him:

My name is Frank Adrian, although until the last few days there was a great deal I couldn’t remember about myself. I am married to Corliss Lathan Adrian, and I will put her address at the bottom of this letter, so the finder may notify her in the event it becomes necessary.

I have been subject to fits of amnesia. Some time ago I had an attack which sent me wandering away from home.

For a while I didn’t know who I was, then I could remember only a part of my life. There was a hiatus following an automobile accident in which I received a blow on the head. However, recently my mind has cleared, and I know now who I am.

For some time I have been engaged in a partnership with a peculiar chap named Harry Benton, a man who is an experienced woodsman, packer, and prospector. We came up here to this cabin to do some prospecting until the weather got cold and then do some trapping.

I have heard something about cabin fever, that peculiar malady which grips two persons who are forced into constant association with each other, until finally they become so thoroughly annoyed and irritated that there is a species of insanity generated.

I had never thought that could happen to me.

I am all right, but my partner, Harry Benton, has developed a bad case of cabin fever. He hates me with an insane, bitter hatred. I think the man is crazy.

A few days ago we had a quarrel over a matter so trivial it seemed absurd to me, but I can see that Benton has become absolutely furious and is brooding over it. I am going to try to leave here, but I am still pretty much of a tenderfoot and it will be a hard trip for me. I feel certain that if Benton finds I have run out on him he will track me down and kill me. Therefore I want to get enough of a head start so he can’t catch up with me.

If the worst should come to the worst and anything should happen, will the finder of this letter please notify my wife.

The letter was signed “Frank Adrian,” and below that was the address of his wife.

Hank looked up at Marion Benton.

“Why, how absolutely absurd!” she exclaimed. “The man must be insane. Harry never was a bit like that.”

“Cabin fever is a peculiar thing,” Hank said. “I’ve seen people that were just as nice as could be. They’d be swell campmates until they got cabin fever and — well, it’s a kind of insanity. You can't—”

“Oh, bosh and nonsense! Harry has camped with people all over the country. He’s been out in the hills as much as you have. It’s absolutely absurd to think of Harry flying off the handle that way.”

“Of course, a tenderfoot is something of a trial to live with,” Hank pointed out. “There are times when just wrangling them gets you to the point where—”

“But, Hank, that’s absolutely foolish. I don’t know why this man wrote that letter, but it’s absurd.”

“Well,” Hank said, “let’s go on back and stop the packtrain. We’ll camp around here somewhere and take a look at the cabin. Everything seems to be all nice and shipshape.”

Marion nodded, too stunned and angry to engage in much conversation.

Hank looked carefully around the place for a while, then said, “Oh... oh, what's this?”

“What?”

Hank turned to one of the walls. Down near the floor were reddish-brown stains which had evidently spattered against the wood in pear-shaped drops, then had dried.

Marion looked at the stains, then raised her eyes to Hank. “Hank, is it—?”

Hank nodded and said, “I guess we’d better close up the place and go get the others...”

It was well along in the afternoon when Marion Chandler Benton, Corliss Adrian, James Dewitt, and Hank Lucas returned to the cabin. In the meantime they had found a camping place and left Kenney and the cook to unpack the horses and make camp. Lucas had briefly described what they had found and had shown the others the letter. Marion had announced to one and all that she was Harry Benton’s sister and had ridiculed the letter.

James Dewitt had accepted the announcement of her relationship to Frank Adrian’s partner without surprise. He had, however, promptly taken sides with Mrs. Adrian.

“You don't suppose Frank Adrian wrote that letter just for fun, do you?” he said.

“He was a tenderfoot,” Marion said. “He wasn’t accustomed to living out in the hills with anyone. Harry was probably a little taciturn, and Frank took it for cabin fever.”

“Well, if nothing happened to him, and it was all a mistake,” Dewitt said, “why hasn’t his wife heard from him?”

“Because he has amnesia. He’s had another lapse of memory.”

“Could be,” Dewitt said in a tone that failed to show any conviction. “Since we’re taking off the masks, I may as well tell you I’m a sergeant detective in charge of the missing persons department of— Well, here, take a look at my credentials, all of you.”

“Please let’s get started,” Corliss Adrian said. “I don’t want to make any trouble for anyone. All I want is to find Frank. Please let’s go.”

Now, as they arrived at the cabin, Dewitt, inspecting the reddish-brown stains on the wall, promptly took charge. “Those stains are blood,” he said. “Now, let’s be careful not to disturb anything in the cabin. Hank, show me exactly where it was you found the letter.”

Hank Lucas replaced the letter behind the boxes. “Right here,” he said. “It was sticking out just about like this.”

“As much as that?”

“That’s right. Just about like this.”

“I see. Let’s take a look at this stove.”

Hank said, “Doesn’t seem to be any firewood or kindling here, but I can go out and get some dry wood and in just a few minutes have this whole cabin heated up.”

“Definitely not,” Dewitt said. “We’ll leave everything exactly as it is, except that we’ll look through these ashes down below the grate here.”

Dewitt found a piece of flat tin from which he made a scoop and began shoveling the ashes. After the second shovelful, he gave an exclamation.

There were four or five badly charred buttons in the ashes.

“I guess you folks better get out,” Dewitt said to Corliss and Marion. “It's beginning to look bad. You girls wait outside. We don’t want any evidence obliterated. You’d better wait over there by the door, Hank. This is a case where too many cooks spoil the broth. I know exactly what to do and how to do it. Remember, this is right down my alley.”

Corliss and Marion went outside. Corliss was crying, Marion indignant. Hank strolled off down the trail, which he said probably led to a spring.

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, overhearing, 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 act 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 hags?”

“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 rick 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 scat in the saddle, was unspeakably weary. Only Hank Lucas seemed perfectly at case 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 anti realized that they would be on the move again...

The drive to the county scat 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 tiring 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,” Gatlin 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?”

Dewitt said, “For heaven’s sake, are you crazy? I don’t care about the damn packhorse.”

“Well, now,” the sheriff went on, “you’d ought to know the mountains, if you’re going to work in ’em. Of course, in packing a lot of dude duffel, even a good man will sometimes get sore backs on one or two of the pack string. You just can’t help that. But when you’re packing just one horse, and when you’re leading him on foot, which is generally a slower proposition than working from horseback, a man that knew anything about packing wouldn't get a sore back on his packhorse.

“Now, another thing. The murderer tried to leave the cabin so that anybody that happened to stumble onto it wouldn’t think there was anything wrong. Everything would seem to be all nice and shipshape, just the way the trappers would have left it at the close of the winter season.

“But up here in this country we have a custom that’s an unwritten law. When a man leaves a cabin, he always leaves dry stovewood and kindling in by the stove. That’s so that if he happens to come back in a rainstorm or a blizzard, he’s got dry wood to start the fire with. And if somebody else happens to come in looking for shelter, there’s always dry wood with which to build a fire.

“Now, I don’t want to bore you by telling you all these local customs, but this one in particular is pretty rigidly enforced. Now do you get it?”

“Get what?” Dewitt asked.

“There were two men in that cabin. One of them was a tenderfoot, a city dude. The other was a woodsman. One of them killed the other and pulled out. Whoever it was that slicked the cabin up and washed the dishes and made it look as though everything was the way two trappers had left it certainly wasn’t the murdered man; it was the guy who did the killing.”

“Naturally,” Dewitt said.

“And,” Bill Catlin pointed out, “in this case, the man who did that was the tenderfoot.”

The idea hit Dewitt suddenly and hard. “But look here,” he said. “His wife identified the body. There was a ring on—”

“Sure, sure, she ‘identified the body,’ ” Catlin said. “Naturally, the murderer saw to it that the right ring was there to be identified. But she'd have made a positive identification in any event. You remember what you said about the crime having to be premeditated and someone having to be at the right place to meet the packhorse on a definite date.”

Corliss Adrian pushed her chair back from the table. “Are you,” she demanded angrily, “trying to insinuate that I—?”

“Now, just take it easy, ma’am,” the sheriff said. “I’m trying to straighten Dewitt out on the facts of this here case... One other thing, Dewitt. Hank tells me this note was sticking out from behind the cupboard. I asked him if a good mountain man would have seen it easy, and he said over the telephone, ‘My God, Bill, even a dude would have seen it.’ So there you are. You see, Adrian was just a little too anxious. He wanted to be certain that note would be found.

“Well, now, when Hank telephoned me about this here crime and the things he found, I did a lot of thinking, and then I got hold of the judge and got me a search warrant so I could search the baggage that Mrs. Adrian had left there in the hotel. And, sure enough, there was a 3-A folding camera with a rapid rectilinear lens. And when we took it into Tom Morton’s darkroom and put an electric light bulb inside the bellows, you could see that one little pinhole in the bellows just as plain as day...

“Now, don’t try to make any breaks, Mrs. Adrian. You’re all tired out from having a long ride and a long trip. And. even if you tried to run away in this country, you couldn’t get anywhere. It isn’t like just ducking outdoors in a city and trying to get lost in a crowd. You’ve got to stay right here and take your medicine. One thing about it, our menfolks up here are sort of chivalrous to women and, while they won’t turn you loose, they may make you sort of an accessory or something that wouldn’t quite take the extreme penalty.”

“You’re crazy,” she said. “You’ve got nothing on me. This is some bucolic travesty of justice.”

“I’m afraid we’ve got quite a bit on you,” the sheriff said. “You and your husband fixed this up quite a while ago. Both of you prospected around last summer and found that cabin. It had been abandoned, but it was pretty new and in good shape. You even took that picture when you found the cabin, a month or two before your husband pulled his disappearing act. You’ve played it pretty foxy. You’d taken out the insurance policies years ago. It was all as slick as a wet pavement.”

“Wait a minute,” Dewitt said. “Let me handle this, Corliss... Sheriff, your own reasoning defeats itself.”

“How come?”

“You admit that the man who left that cabin last tried to fix it up so it would look as though the trappers had moved out for the winter.”

“That’s what Hank told me,” the sheriff said.

“Yet Hank also told you that this note was left in such a prominent place that anyone, even a dude, couldn’t have failed to see it.”

The sheriff chuckled. “Well, now, that’s an interesting thing,” he said. “That’s the clue that struck me the minute Hank told me about it over the telephone. So I did a little thinking.”

“I haven’t seen any evidence of it yet,” Dewitt said, now openly hostile.

“Well,” the sheriff said, “you have to think that one over a little bit. Have to sort of put yourself in the shoes of the murderer, and then you get it.”

“I’m afraid,” Dewitt said, with deep sarcasm, “my mental processes are too far inferior to yours to get these fine points. Suppose you explain it to me.”

“Well, now,” the sheriff said, “just put yourself in the shoes of the murderer. You don’t want the body to be discovered until after it’s pretty hard to make a positive identification. You’ve buried the body in a shallow grave. You want it to stay there and decompose for just about so long. Then you’re ready to have the thing discovered. Now, then, if it’s discovered too soon, you’re sunk. Well, you can figure out what that means, Dewitt.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that the murderer, or someone that was in cahoots with him, had to conic back to that cabin and put that note there where it would be discovered at just about the right time. The idea was to get someone to go to that cabin, and when he reached the cabin he had to find the note and the body. So the person who put the note there wanted to be sure it’d be found. Now, Adrian could have put it there all right, just the way he says. But, if Benton had killed him, he’d have seen that note and naturally burnt it up. A mountain man wouldn't have overlooked that note — not in a million years.

“So when Hank told me about the note and about the way it had been found, I asked him about the color of the ink. Seems like the ink was still sort of blue. Now, you take ink that way and, as I understand it, there’s some sort of a chemical in it that unites with oxygen and turns black after it oxidizes, and that’s what gives you the permanent color in ink. But until that chemical has had a chance to oxidize, they put a blue dye in the ink, so you can see what’s been written down. That’s why ink will be sort of blue for a while and then, after it gets old, it’ll turn black. You take a man that’s accustomed to judging colors pretty careful, and he can come pretty close to telling whether pen-writing is old or new. Hank said this looked pretty new to him.

“Well, that started me thinking some more, and so I asked Hank over the phone how Mrs. Adrian stood the trip. Did she ride pretty good in a saddle? And he said she was just like most of the dudes, riding with short stirrups, gripping with her knees, and pushing back against the cantle of the saddle. So I figure she’d hardly be the kind that could make a quick round trip to the cabin to plant a note in there, and maybe slash her finger and leave some bloodstains around. And, the way I sized it up, there was only one other person who could have done it.

“Well, I had a pretty good description of Frank Adrian, thanks to the stuff my friend, Ed Marvel, had sent on. So I sort of figured, if he sneaked into that cabin and put a note in there, he’d have had to go in through the ranger station or down through the Middle Fork. But it would have been a pretty hard trip, because he was a tenderfoot too. And it didn’t look like they’d take chances having three people in on it. However, they’re bringing in a few planes lately, and there’s a forest service emergency landing field only about five miles from the cabin now.

“So I got busy on the telephone and rang up the cities around that have charter air service, asking them about whether they took a man of a certain description into that landing field within the last month or so. And, sure enough, I struck pay dirt.”

“What did you find?” Dewitt asked, interested now despite himself.

“Well,” the sheriff said, “a man chartering an airplane has to give a lot of information about himself. Of course, this man was using an assumed name. He’s working in a garage now. Probably thought he was all good and safe and nobody was going to bother him. Well, I telephoned down to my friend, the sheriff, there, and we picked him up.

“And when I’d picked him up, I talked with him over the phone and told him about how his wife had already collected the insurance money and run away with a playboy, name of Gridley. That was sort of reading her mind a little in advance. May have been sort of a mean trick, but it worked like a charm. This here Adrian has a quick temper, and seems like he really blew up and started talking fast. He'd evidently heard something about this Gridley chap.

“So now, Mrs. Adrian, I hate to do it, but I’ve just got to give you lodging in the jail. I’ve sent over to the hotel and had your bags taken over, and, while the matron will be watching you to see what you take out, you can get some clean clothes and— My gosh!” Bill Catlin said, his voice edged with sympathy. “Darned if she ain’t fainted. Hank, will you wet a towel over there at the washstand, and let’s see if we can’t snap her out of it? And there’s a bottle of whiskey in that locker.

“And I reckon you can use a drink too, Miss Benton. It’s too bad about your brother, but, after all, it’s better that way than to have him turn out to be a murderer.

“And as far as Ed Harvel’s concerned, Dewitt, I rang him up and told him we’d got the case solved and the murderer in jail.

“And now, if you folks feel like it, we’ll get Mrs. Adrian disposed of, and then I guess we can have a little something to eat. I’ve been up pretty nearly all night working on this thing, and I ain’t as young as I used to be. When I go without sleep, I’ve got to have lots of food to keep the energy up.

“I told Harvel you’d done a fine job of detective work up here, Dewitt. And Harvel was proud as punch. ’Course I told him that us country fellows had to put a few little finishing touches on, here and there. Just because it’s our county, you know, and the voters sort of look to us to keep things in line. But I told him you’d done most of the work.

“Okay, Hank, let’s get the matron over here, and then we’ll go down and see what we can find. Deer season’s open now, and a friend sent me a loin of venison. I took it down to Ted Collins’ place and told him to have things all ready to give us a good venison feed when we showed up.

“Oh, yes, another thing. The insurance companies that had the policies on Adrian’s life, in favor of his wife, are pretty grateful. Ed Harvel tells me they want to make sort of a contribution. So I guess, come to figure it all out, we done a pretty fair day’s work. Whatta ya think, boys?”

Content

Erle Stanley Gardner
A Man Is Missing