“Sure. Why?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Meantime I want to show you something.” He rose. “Come on in!”
Charlie followed him into the kitchen.
“Will you open up that room?” Rock asked Nona. “The one where that stuff is we put away?”
“Why——” She stopped short. Something on the faces of the two men checked the question on her lips. Silently she took a key out of a drawer and walked into the hall, the narrow passage that divided the house. She opened a door—the only locked door in all those log-walled rooms.
“You better come in,” Rock said.
“Charlie’s got to know. You better tell him.”
A window from the south let sunlight into the room. A bed long unslept in stood against one wall. On the floor lay a saddle, bridle, a pair of black, Angora-faced chaps, and a pair of silver-inlaid spurs. Beside them a pair of worn riding boots, a brown calfskin belt full of .45 cartridges, and in the holster a plain, black-handled Colt. On a nail above hung a man’s felt hat. A canvas war bag lay across a chair, stuffed with the dead man’s belongings.
Rock pointed to the saddle. On the yellow leather a stain lay black like dried paint.
“Do you know that rig?” he asked. “Do you see that smear? That’s blood.”