"One shot?" said Ingleby, with a little smile. "The corporal heard two, both close together, and there certainly was another."
"Then it was another man who fired it," said Tomlinson shortly. "I guess I don't often waste cartridges."
The corporal, who was usually a trifle persistent, took up Tomlinson's rifle and pushed back the slide of the magazine.
"A forty-four Marlin! It was full when you went out?" he said.
"Yes, sir. Two cartridges gone. You'll find one bullet in yonder deer."
The corporal, for no particular reason, jerked a cartridge into the chamber, and then snapped it out. "You use nicked bullets?"
Tomlinson did not, as everybody noticed, appear exactly pleased. In fact, it was not difficult to fancy that he was a trifle embarrassed. It is a little easier to bring down a deer with a bullet that will split up into a torn strip of metal when it meets a bone than with one that has a solid nose and makes a clean, punctured wound.
"Well," he said, "I don't know any reason why I shouldn't, and now and then I get the hack-saw and cut one or two across. When I go shooting it's a deer I want."
Nothing more was said on that point, though Ingleby fancied that the corporal was a little incredulous still. He rose, and looked up the trail as though listening.
"I can't quite figure what is keeping Probyn," he said. "The Indian was to meet him at sundown, where the North Creek fork twists round the rocks, and he should have been back by now."