The long patrol

by Albert M. Treynor

He still clung to his carbine, on the off-chance of bluffing through a most disagreeable business. But in the show-down he knew he would have to trust to luck and his quickness of movement.

With nerves strung taut as wires he faced about and flashed the bull's-eye of his lamp around the walls of the room. And the bright searching light discovered no resemblance of human shape.

Incredulous, he winked his eyes two or three times, and turned for his second survey of the cabin interior. Slow and deliberate now, he moved the lamp from left to right, dipping the shaft of light from rafters to floor, and upward again; and so wove luminous orbits around the four walls of the room. He scrutinized the underside of the clapboard roof, looked under the bunk, poked behind a row of garments hanging on pegs, and finally even peered up the fireplace chimney. And he saw neither substance nor shadow to betray the existence of any lurking intruder.

There was a quantity of cut brush and fagots piled by the hearth. The policeman stooped for an armful of the kindling, tossed the fuel into the fireplace, and applied a match. The dry, pitchy material took flame instantly, and crackled into a furious blaze. The yellow flare reflected to the farthest corner, searching out every black nook where a person could hide. And there was no one visible.

For a moment he stood irresolute, with puzzled lines drawn between his brows. A woman had been in the cabin a little while before. She must have entered shortly after he went to search for Susy. And she had barred the door behind her. Apparently she had locked him out with deliberate intention, while she did the work she had hardened herself to do.

On his return he had heard the mysterious ringing of a bell. He had heard her quick, overwrought speech; the shots that were fired. His hearing was trustworthy. But if by chance he were tempted to doubt the testimony of his own ears, there remained the two lifeless, huddled objects in the bunks to bear mute witness to the remorseless visitation.

It seemed unlikely that she could have found her chance to escape in the short time it had taken him to pick up the log and batter his way into the cabin. The possibility of some secret cubbyhole, behind the logs or under the floor, suggested itself. As his glance strayed about him, his eye was caught by a metallic glint of something that had been dropped near the wall across the room from the bunks. Crossing the floor, he reached down and picked up a small pearl-handled revolver.

The gun he had knocked from the hand of his first prisoner was a big, heavy-framed weapon. This was a small caliber revolver, light in weight, delicately made—the sort of firearm a woman might choose to carry in her handbag. With a grim tightening of his lips he tilted up the breach and snapped the cartridges from the cylinder. Two were empty cases that had just been fired.

He nodded to himself. This, of course, was the weapon of death. Either it had fallen accidentally from a trembling, guilty hand, or else the owner had flung it away as a hateful possession. Dexter pocketed the revolver, and set about his distasteful task. The woman must be hiding somewhere, and he would find her, he promised himself, if he had to turn the cabin inside out.

He was standing near the doorway, and he started to work systematically around the walls. The structure, which contained the single, barren, four-square room, was built of six inch logs, saddle-notched at the corners and chinked with moss and clay. An inspection of the cubical interior quickly convinced him that the walls could hold no closet or compartment large enough for the concealment of a human being. From the floor to the slanting roof overhead, all space was easily accounted for. He searched high and low, in the fireplace, behind the bunks, back of the door, under the window sills. Every log and chinked crevice between the logs was subjected to minutest scrutiny. He even climbed up on the bunk poles to assure himself that there was no false work between rafters and the outside roof. Nothing of interest was discovered.