With difficulty they followed the thin trail of blood over the coarse gravel surface and pine-needle carpet of the pasture which surrounded the ranger cabin. It led through the open gate in the barbed-wire fence which inclosed the pasture. They lost it in the near-by creek bottom. In vain did they circle the spot where the last bloodstain appeared.
Some fifty yards away they came upon the cold ashes of a tiny wood fire. Sheriff Ogden pressed his hand among the charred fragments.
“From the feel of her, she might be a week old,” he announced sagely. “The ashes aint flaky, but black, showin’ that the fire didn’t burn out, but was doused with water from the crick.”
“But why,” asked Otis curiously, “would anyone want to build a fire so near the ranger station? I tell you it couldn’t be to cook a meal, because anyone could have dropped in and eaten with Fyffe.”
“Maybe the ranger built it hisself,” suggested the Sheriff. “What few tracks show in this coarse gravel is cow-tracks, and that don’t tell us nothin’. Can’t see any signs of a fight here. Let’s go back to the cabin.”
“He must have run in here after he was shot,” speculated Otis upon reentering the shack, “and grabbed for the phone. Like as not he yelled for help once or twice, and then dropped to the floor. Or maybe he knocked the phone off the table, and the supervisor heard him calling for help after he lay on the floor.”
“He knocked that camera off the table too,” the deputy volunteered. “I found it on the floor while you two was in the other room, and put it back on the table.”
“What’s this?” asked Otis, stooping and retrieving a stub of a pencil from the floor a few feet from the body. “I wonder if this means anything?”
The Sheriff glanced at it and grunted.
“Probably dropped out of his pocket when he fell. Or maybe he knocked it off the table with the phone and the camera.”