A stand of densely growing cedars climbed upward along the mountainside. Obeying the trailer's instinct, he walked straight across the open ground and entered the nearest point of cover. And there he found, as he was sure he must find, the imprints of booted feet.
Somebody who wore a criss-cross pattern of hob nails had stood concealed in a fairy bower of frost-rimed branches. The furrowed snow in a breast-high crotch indicated the place where a rifle barrel had been rested for steady sighting. And from the powdery drift at his feet the corporal picked up an empty cartridge case, .30 caliber, that smelled of freshly burned powder. The story was complete.
The trail of the departing hob nails went northward through the cedars, and thence Corporal Dexter's future pathway lay, inevitable, unswerving, relentless as the summons of fate.
A policeman does not desert a policeman, in life or death. Dexter returned to his fallen comrade, and as gently as though he feared the hurting of sensate flesh, he gathered the pitiful human shape into his arms. He was not a big nor powerful man, but there was a lithe, cougar-like adequacy hidden in the muscles of a lean and hard-trained body, and he made little effort of his task.
Susy, the pony, objected to her new burden, but Dexter had no time to parley. He crowded into the horse with his shoulder, and before she could really think of acting skittish, the limp weight was deposited across her saddle. Dexter bent a few turns of a lashing thong under the cinches, and after that she could do nothing but submit to the arrangement.
As coolly as a workman taking a needed tool from his kit, the corporal pulled his carbine out of the saddle holster. Then, with the reins twisted in his fingers, and the pony shambling at his heels, he turned back afoot into the cedars and started northward, following the hobnail boots.
CHAPTER II
KNIGHTS OF THE LAW
In the wild mountain district where Corporal Dexter and a few knightly comrades rode in the service of the King's Law, there was not more than one officer available to patrol each two hundred square miles of territory. In the back hills were certain inaccessible regions never visited by civilized beings. A crime committed in such an out-of-the-way valley as this might remain unsuspected for years.
The murderer of Constable Graves could have no inkling that a second officer had just ridden down through the passes. It probably did not occur to him that there was any danger of pursuit, and he did not try to mask his trail.