“By daylight next mornin’ he was there and he took one look around him and didn’t see hide nor hair of you two nor of the horses, but he did see that slide where it had come down right square on top of the camp-ground along the creek, and he decided to himself, the same as anybody else with good sense would, that the whole outfit of you was under that mess of truck. He didn’t waste no time foolin’ around. If he went in there fast, he came out still faster. It wasn’t noon yet when he got back to Polebridge with the news. His pony had went lame and he’d finished the trip, jumpin’ and runnin’.
“Well, they telephoned down to Kalispel and the sheriff sent me on up by automobile to sort of represent the county, and he sent word on ahead for the gang that was goin’ in to wait till I got there. Well, I burnt up the road gettin’ through. They had quite a posse organized when I pulled in—rangers and several kinfolks of the Hurleys and some neighbors and part of a road crew out of the Park. This young Sherm Hurley was practically all in from what he’d been through with and mighty near grieved to death besides—he took on worse than any of his family did—but he was still bent and determined on goin’ back the second time. He just would go, takin’ the lead, tired as he was.
“Somehow him and me was ahead of the rest when we hit the rim and purty soon after that I seen somethin’ that set me to thinkin’. I always did have kind of a turn for the detectin’ business; that was partly what induced me to be a deputy sheriff. Yes, sir, I seen something. Guess what it was I seen?”
Chaney shook his head.
“Tracks, that’s what. But I seen something a heap more significant right shortly after that. But these first things were tracks. I didn’t tell nobody what was sproutin’ in my mind, but I motioned everybody to stay where they was for a minute and then I got down off the plug I was ridin’ and made one or two rough measurements and sized up things. Then I holloed back to the others to come ahead and we went on down.
“So in a few minutes more we was all down there together in that basin. But while the crowd was prowlin’ round, with young Hurley beggin’ ’em to fix up some way of gettin’ his brother’s body out from under those jagged rocks and them all keepin’ on tellin’ him it looked to them like it was goin’ to be an impossible job, I was doin’ some prowlin’ on my own hook. Inside of three minutes I’d run onto something else that set me to thinkin’ harder than ever. Try guessin’ what that was.”
“Was it—was it the fishing rod?” asked Chaney. The question popped out of him of its own accord.
“Nope—you’re gettin’ warm though. It was something right close by. Say”—he raised his voice admiringly—“say, plantin’ that busted bamboo pole there wasn’t such a bad idea on your part. I’ve said that to myself often since then and I still say so. It showed you two had been there before the slide and it made it look like you’d been took by surprise when the big disturbance started. But the thing I’m speakin’ about now wasn’t anything you’d fixed up for a plant. It was something you must have overlooked in the excitement. Well, nobody could have blamed you much for that. It must have been pretty squally times down in that deep hole when the earth began to rock and the cliffs began to crumble. You bet!
“Try to think of something besides the pole,” he prompted. “Go on and try!”