Otis followed him to the room which served as a sleeping chamber and office. Ogden removed a rifle from two wooden pegs in the log wall above the desk, examined it carefully, and shook his head. His scrutiny of a holstered revolver which swung by a cartridge belt from a nail in the wall was likewise barren of results.
“Neither one’s been fired,” he asserted, frowning and turning to the maps and papers on the rude pine desk. “He never had a chance to shoot back. You knew him pretty well, didn’t you, Otis? D’you know whether he had any other guns?”
Otis shook his head.
“Don’t think he did,” he replied uneasily, casting his eye about the room. “He hardly ever packed the revolver. Sometimes he carried the rifle in his saddle scabbard, but it was on the chance of seeing a cat or something, and not for protection from—well, you know. He never seemed to worry about the threats of the boys that the Gov’ment couldn’t send in any damned ranger to collect grazing-fees for using the open range.”
The Sheriff turned from the desk to a workbench containing a shallow tank, wooden racks and a row of bottles.
“I know,” he remarked gravely. “But between you and me, it aint like any of the boys to shoot him down like this. What’s this junk?”
“Dark-room equipment,” Otis answered, fingering a developing tray. “Joe was a nut on wild-animal photography, you know. Got some of the best animal pictures I’ve ever seen. Did his own finishing here at night. See that blanket rolled up over the window? He’d let that down, and have a first-class dark-room.”
“That’s right,” the Sheriff affirmed. “I remember now. He was the feller that bragged he was the only man that ever got a close-up picture of a wild mountain sheep, wasn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t say he bragged about it. But it was something worth boasting about, anyway.”
Sheriff Ogden, his barren search of the office and bedroom completed, led the way back to the room where the body lay.