Two hours before Snowbird had left the house, on her long tramp to the ranger station, Dan had started home. He hadn't shot until sunset, as he had planned. The rear guard of the waterfowl—hardy birds who spent most of the winter in the Lake region and which had come south in the great flight that had been completed some weeks before—had passed in hundreds over his blind, and he had obtained the limit he had set upon himself—ten drake mallards—by four o'clock in the afternoon. If he had stayed to shoot longer, his birds would have been wasted. So he started back along a certain winding trail that led through the thickets and which would, if followed long enough, carry him to the road that led to the valleys.
He rode one of Lennox's cattle ponies, the only piece of horse-flesh that Bill had not taken to the valleys when he had driven down the livestock. She was a pretty bay, a spirited, high-bred mare that could whip about on her hind legs at the touch of the rein on her neck. She made good time along the trail. And an hour before sunset he passed the only human habitation between the marsh and Lennox's house,—the cabin that had been recently occupied by Landy Hildreth.
He glanced at the place as he passed and saw that it was deserted. No smell of wood smoke remained in the air. Evidently Landy had gone down to the settlements with his precious testimony in regard to the arson ring. Yet it was curious that no word had been heard of him. As far as Dan knew, neither the courts nor the Forest Service had taken action.
He hurried on, four miles farther. The trail entered the heavy thickets, and he had to ride slowly. It was as wild a section as could be found on the whole Divide. Once a deer leaped from the trail, and once he heard Woof grunting in the thickets. And just as he came to a little cleared space, three strange, dark birds flung up on wide-spreading wings.
He knew them at once. All mountaineers come to know them before their days are done. They were the buzzards, the followers of the dead. And what they were doing in the thicket just beside the trail, Dan did not dare to think.
Of course they might be feeding on the body of a deer, mortally wounded by some hunter. He resolved to ride by without investigating. He glanced up. The buzzards were hovering in the sky, evidently waiting for him to pass. Then, mostly to relieve a curious sense of discomfort in his own mind, he stopped his horse and dismounted.
The twilight had started to fall, and already its first grayness had begun to soften the harder lines of forest and hill. And after his first glance at the curious white heap beside the trail, he was extremely glad that it had. But there was no chance to mistake the thing. The elements and much more terrible agents had each wrought their change, yet there was grisly evidence in plenty to show what had occurred. Dan didn't doubt for an instant but that it was the skeleton of Landy Hildreth.
He forced himself to go nearer. The buzzards were almost done, and one white bone from the shoulder gave unmistakable evidence of the passage of a bullet. What had happened thereafter, he could only guess.
He got back quickly on his horse. He understood, now, why nothing had been heard of the evidence that Landy Hildreth was to turn over to the courts as to the activities of the arson ring. Some one—probably Bert Cranston himself—had been waiting on the trail. Others had come thereafter. And his lips set in his resolve to let this murder measure in the debt he had to pay Cranston.
The Lennox house seemed very silent when, almost an hour later, he turned his horse into the corral. He had rather hoped that Snowbird would be at the door to meet him. The darkness had just fallen, and all the lamps were lighted. He strode into the living room, warming his hands an instant beside the fireplace. The fire needed fuel. It had evidently been neglected for nearly an hour.