“Well, from the fact that a red who was supposed to be one of Fire Top’s bucks was seen sashayin’ round Morgan’s place the day before, and from what Conover told me this morning?”
“You found a trail?”
“Not a very plain one; but there was pony tracks behind the knoll below the house—tracks of an unshod Injun cayuse—which must have been made about the time the kid disappeared.”
“You followed them?”
“To the point where they entered the main trail leadin’ toward the Cumbres. We couldn’t do nothin’ after that, for the main trail is hard as flint, with a thousand tracks, if there’s one.”
“You might have made sure that the cayuse tracks didn’t leave the Cumbres trail.”
“We tried to, but we didn’t find nothing—except this.” The marshal put his hand in his pocket and drew out a battered piece of silver that had been rudely fashioned into an Indian earring.
“Whoever wore that was most likely an Indian,” he said, “though it might ’a’ been a Mexican; they’re all alike in wantin’ to wear shiny things in their ears and in their hair—Mexicans aire half Injun, anyhow, ye know. One of my men picked that up below the knoll, as we was follerin’ that cayuse trail; and I put it in my pocket.”
“Did you send a force toward the Cumbres Mountains?” queried the scout.
“Well, not all the way,” said the marshal, twisting uneasily in his chair, for he knew that was a thing he should have insisted on. “I couldn’t git any men that wanted to go farther than the Cross Timbers. Fire Top’s Toltecs ain’t men that aire to be fooled with, and so I didn’t go beyond that point. But I didn’t see any need, as we’d struck no trail. And if it was Fire Top, and he got into the Cumbres, where he holes up, then it wouldn’t do no good, anyhow.”