The sergeant nodded. "Something of the sort. But first I'm going to have a little look into the brush to see—what I can see. Mind waiting for a few minutes?"
"Don't risk it," cried the girl, taking a step toward him and laying an impulsive hand upon his sleeve. "Whoever murdered Bart may be lurking in the brush and wouldn't hesitate to take a shot at you. You don't know how desperate the——" She broke off in sudden caution and finished inconsequentially: "One killing is enough for to-day."
"A killing too many," he assured her, but swung into the saddle. "I'll take no unnecessary chances, and I'll not be gone long."
With the girl's disapproving look following him, he rode into the underbrush to the left of the trail. From that direction, he figured, had come the bullet. He had small hope of any encounter. With the cowardly attack neatly turned, he could conceive no reason why the perpetrator should hide around the scene of the crime. There was a chance, however, that he might pick up the trail of departure and learn its trend before the camp's amateur sleuths got busy and blotted out all signs.
On superficial survey, it seemed to the sergeant that the bogus officer had been riding out from town on some mission not entirely unsuspected by those against whom he meant to act. Near the trail forks, someone had lain in wait and killed him.
One shot had sufficed. Caswell's effort to answer undoubtedly had been futile. Then the slayer had slunk away in the brush. It seemed unlikely that he would go into town; entirely reasonable that he would return whence he had come. Seymour imagined that that would be the place for which the pretended Mountie was bound, were that ever determined. That the escape had been through the brush seemed likely, since nobody had passed them on the trail after the shooting.
Twenty yards into the brush, he set Kaw parallel with the trail that followed the River Cheena. The undergrowth was not too thick for riding if one watched for fallen trees and devil-club thickets. The ground, soft from recent spring rains, took tracks like putty. An Indian in moccasins might have passed without leaving a trail, but any booted white must have shed footprints like Crusoe's man Friday.
Soon, the officer picked up horse tracks so fresh as to be still sucking moisture from the muskeg. These angled toward the trail over which he had followed Miss Duperow. He traced them back to a clump of poplars. There he found evidence that a horse had been tied, evidently having been ridden from the main trail.
Footprints coming and going testified to a round trip in that direction. He examined these with care. In measuring these with a lead pencil, for lack of a tape, he noted the impress of a peculiar plate on the side of the right sole. Either the wearer was slightly lame or possessed a gait that made it advisable to reinforce the outer edge of his boot.
The foot trail ended in a patch of salmonberry bushes, already in thick leaf and furnishing an ideal curtain. Groping about where the earth was beaten down, he soon discovered a copper cartridge case. His eyes sized this as having been thrown from a 30-30 Winchester, the same sort as that his saddle carried, one likely to be common in that region. Undoubtedly the dented case had held the steel nosed bullet that had ended the career of the crook who had dared impersonate a Mountie.