“Looks like you might have been right. We’ve about agreed that a ghost did it — then dissolved up the chimney.” Shayne dropped his bantering tone. “Come on with us. I want to look for footprints down toward the creek where you said a man might have crossed.”
Strenk said, “There’s a path back this way. We usta carry water up from the crik. Hard to tell about footprints on these rocks, though.”
In the circle of light cast by the patrolman’s flashlight, Shayne saw nothing that looked like a path, but Strenk led the way downward confidently.
The roar of rushing creek waters increased as they neared the bottom of the gulch. Strenk stopped on the edge of a narrow turbulent stream and pointed to some flat rocks partially covered with foaming water.
“There’s where we usta dip our pails in. Comes floodin’ down like this every time it rains heavy in the hills.”
“Is it too deep to be waded now?”
Strenk squinted at the tumbling stream and calculated aloud, “Just over the top of them rocks now, an’ it’s goin’ down fast. Reckon it ain’t more’n two feet deep in the middle. A man could wade ’er if he could stand up against the current.”
“Throw your light up and down the bank,” Shayne told the patrolman. “If anyone left the cabin in a hurry, he might easily have missed this thing Strenk calls a path.”
The officer’s light flickered along the edge of the water downstream. The bank was steep and rocky, and showed no trace of footprints.
He turned his light upstream, manipulating the focusing mechanism to make the beam smaller and brighter as the distance grew greater.