About two miles down the trail Redmond halted.
"Here it is!" he said. And he indicated an irregular, blood-soaked, clawed-up patch in the snow where the sanguinary swath ended. They dismounted. Slavin drawing up alongside the coroner's cutter handed over his lines to the teamster.
"Now!" said he, "let's shtart in! . . . Ye must have 'shpotted this on yeh way up, Docthor?" He pointed to the patch.
The latter nodded. "Yes! we thought it must have happened here."
For some few seconds, with one accord the party stared about them at their surroundings. The frozen landscape at this point presented a singularly lonely, desolate aspect. Flat, and for the greater part absolutely bare of brush; save where from a small coulee some half mile to the left of the trail the tops of a cotton-wood clump were visible. Far to the right-hand, more than a mile away, stretched the first of the shelving benches, where the high ground sloped away in irregular jumps, as it were, to the river.
"Best ye shtay fwhere ye all are," cautioned the sergeant, "'till I size up th' lay av things a bit. I du not want th' thracks fouled up. H-mm! let's see now!" He remained in deep, thoughtful silence a space. "Thravellin' towards us," he muttered—"th' back av th' head!"
Hands clasped behind bent back, and with head thrust loweringly forward from between his huge shoulders he paced slowly down the trail for some hundred yards. That grim, intent face and the swaying gait reminded Redmond of some huge bloodhound casting about for a scent.
Halting irresolutely a moment, Slavin presently faced about and returned. "Wan harse on'y!" he vouchsafed to their silent looks of enquiry. "He had not company. Must have been shot from lift or right av th' thrail." He stared around him at the bare sweep of ground. "Now fwhere cud any livin' man find cover here in th' full av th' moon, tu get th' range wid a small arm? He wud show up agin' th' snow like th' ace av shpades an' he thried."
Suddenly his jaw dropped and he stiffened. "Ah-hh!" His eyes rivetted themselves on some object and his huge arm shot out. "Fwhat's yon?"
They all stared in the direction he indicated. Plastered with frosted snow, until it was all but undiscernible against its white background, lay an enormous boulder—a relic, perchance, of some vast pre-historic upheaval. It was situated at an oblique angle to the trail, about a hundred yards distant.