He stepped inside, and swept the interior of the principal room with a quick glance. Nothing had been disturbed. The body had been removed. Nothing else, apparently, had been touched.
He stepped across to the combined office and sleeping-room. It too appeared to be exactly as he had last seen it. He returned to the other room, seated himself upon one of the log stools, and rolled a cigarette.
He had been moved by no definite plan of action when he had determined to return to the cabin. He hoped only that, undisturbed, he might discover some clue which would lead to the solution of the murder. Now he felt that he might conduct his investigation in a leisurely manner. The Sheriff, if he were at liberty by this time, without doubt would start his pursuit—if, indeed, he made any pursuit at all—in the direction of the Tetons. He would never dream that his prisoner had returned to the scene of the murder.
He wondered if the Sheriff had been liberated from his own handcuffs. Certainly, he thought with a smile, he could not have been freed by the jailer, for that valiant person undoubtedly was still running. Probably some of the residents of the town, aroused by the shooting but loath to leave their homes at the time of the one-man jail-delivery, had discovered the Sheriff shortly after the departure of the cowpuncher rescuers, and had found another key to the handcuffs or had filed them from his wrists.
For a time he had feared that a coroner’s jury might be impaneled and might visit the cabin during the morning. This fear he dismissed, however, upon reflection that the plank bearing Fyffe’s message, and his revolver, the two most damaging bits of evidence, were in the hands of the Sheriff and could be exhibited to the coroner’s jury where they were impaneled, thus obviating the necessity of their visiting the scene of the murder.
Could it be possible that Fyffe might have written something else on the floor—some message that later had been obliterated by the pool of blood, and thus remained undiscovered during the investigation by the Sheriff and his deputy?
He doubted it. Yet, determined to investigate everything that promised a shadow of a clue, he knelt on the floor, near the spot where the plank had been ripped from its fastenings.
What remained of the blood-pool on the adjoining planking was now a brown stain. He scrutinized it minutely. For some unaccountable reason the interior of the room grew darker. He wondered absently if the sun had been obscured by the clouds. He raised his head and turned toward the door. There he saw—Mariel Lancaster.
He uttered an exclamation of astonishment and dismay. She too cried out in alarm, shrank back a step, and reached out a supporting hand which she placed upon the door frame.