The tracks led for a distance through the thick timber, and then slanted down to the brook and continued northward along the unobstructed course of the stream. The killer walked with a free, unhurried stride, without pausing anywhere by the way to listen or glance behind. Particles of feathery snow still held loosely around the edges of the prints, and Corporal Dexter knew that the maker of the tracks was traveling not more than twenty minutes ahead of him.
For a distance of two miles or so the trail followed the meanderings of the winter-bound brook. But at last, near the banks of a forking stream, the hob nails turned aside and entered a dismal spruce forest that extended upward over the valley slope in an unbroken area of overweighted tree tops. The failing twilight scarcely filtered through the interlaced branches overhead, and Dexter found himself groping among the shadowy tree shapes in a purple-tinged dusk that thickened and deepened as he advanced.
He quickened his pace, hoping to run down his quarry before night overtook him. But he had traveled scarcely five hundred yards among the spruces, when he discovered open ground ahead, and stopped short at the edge of a stumpy clearing, cut in the midst of the standing timber.
Before him in the darkness, vague and unreal as the apparition of a wood troll's dwelling, there loomed the dingy outline of a low-roofed log cabin.
The horseman instinctively reached behind to grab his pony's muzzle. But the precaution was needless. Susy stood with drooping head, and apparently lacked interest to announce her arrival. Dexter eyed her sharply, with a passing glance at the burden she carried, and then turned back to reconnoiter the shadows.
He had not heard of any settlers living on this side of the range. Apparently the builder of this cabin was a newcomer. The logs showed recent ax marks, and the second growth of seedlings had not yet found time to spring up among the stumps.
The silence was like a weight upon the senses. Dexter heard no sound except the faint creak of saddle leather as Susy breathed. He might easily imagine himself alone in all that vast stretch of forest. But as he peered forth from behind his shelter of brush, a vagrant puff of air brought to him an odor of chimney smoke. And as he strained his vision to see in the gathering darkness, he was aware that the hobnail prints ran directly across the open ground to the cabin door.
He left the pony to drowse in the thicket, with the reins dangling from the bit, and strode forward alone into the clearing. Placing his own feet in the marks left by the other boots, he followed his man to the cabin entrance. For ten seconds he held motionless, his foot touching the outer sill. Still he heard no sound. But the line of tracks ended here, and he knew that Constable Graves' murderer was inside the cabin.
Between two men who had not yet seen each other, the door of spruce slabs held shut like the closed book of doom. Once it was opened, the warrant of death for one or the other must be read. If Corporal Dexter crossed the threshold, he would walk forth again to escort a manacled prisoner to the hangman's gibbet at Fort Dauntless; or else he would not walk forth again. It was the custom of the mounted to play for all or nothing, and ask no odds of fortune. The corporal's thin lips harbored a half cynical smile as he accepted the terms. He prayed only that the drawbar was not fastened.
The click of his carbine sounded fearfully loud in his ears as he thumbed back the hammer. He did not wait after that, but reached with his left hand to knock open the wooden latch. The door swung ajar, and he kicked it wide on its squeaking hinges.