It was afternoon when deputies from the sheriff’s and coroner’s offices arrived from Los Angeles, together with detectives from the district attorney’s office. Crumb’s body still lay where it had fallen, guarded by a constable from the village of Ganado. It was surrounded by members of his company, villagers, and near-by ranchers, for word of the murder had spread rapidly in the district in that seemingly mysterious way in which news travels in rural communities. Among the crowd was Slick Allen, who had returned to the valley after his release from the county jail.
A partially successful effort had been made to keep the crowd from trampling the ground in the immediate vicinity of the body, but beyond a limited area whatever possible clews the murderer might have left in the shape of footprints had been entirely obliterated long before the officers arrived from Los Angeles.
When the body was finally lifted from its resting place, and placed in the ambulance that had been brought from Los Angeles, one of the detectives picked up a horseshoe that had lain underneath the body. From its appearance it was evident that it had been upon a horse’s hoof very recently, and had been torn off by force.
As the detective examined the shoe, several of the crowd pressed forward to look at it. Among them was Allen.
“That’s off of young Pennington’s horse,” he said.
“How do you know that?” inquired the detective.
“I used to work for them—took care of their saddle horses. This young Pennington’s horse forges. They had to shoe him special, to keep him from pulling the off fore shoe. I could tell one of his shoes in a million. If they haven’t walked all over his tracks, I can tell whether that horse had been up here or not.”
He stooped and examined the ground close to where the body had lain.
“There!” he said, pointing. “There’s an imprint of one of his hind feet. See how the toe of that shoe is squared off? That was made by the Apache, all right!”
The detective was interested. He studied the hoofprint carefully, and searched for others, but this was the only one he could find.