He followed the trampled trail off the path, searching carefully now. Three or four steps along it, he found what he had been looking for—two empty .45 caliber cartridges lying in the grass.
He picked them up and juggled them in his hand, looking speculatively about. Angling off to the left was an opening in the undergrowth.
He walked that way and found himself standing on the lip of a sharply eroded gully. Someone or something had kicked the bank down recently, there was a great pile of new earth in the bottom of the gully. He kicked around in the leaves and mold at his feet. There was a dark crusted substance on the leaves.
The door of the cottage slammed. He slipped the empty cartridges in his pocket and stepped hastily back to the path, listening.
Were those footsteps hurrying toward him?
He began to stroll slowly back toward the cottage. Around the first turn he met Moirta.
The girl now, he thought, where does she really fit? Possible ally? Enemy? Or neutral?
She came up to him a little breathless and took his hand. "Were you going back to the house?" she asked.
"Not specially. Just walking around."
"Let's not go back just yet, then," she said. They turned and walked slowly back up the path, hand-in-hand. After a while they came out on an open shoulder from which they could look down, catching glimpses of the path they had climbed here and there, and at its end the cottage. They sat down close together, leaning back against a large tree, not speaking at first.