"I don't see how," said Percy. "What do you know about him, anyhow?"
Sergeant Silk thrust the cap under his arm and took the rein in his fingers.
"Not more than you could have found out yourself," he answered. "I followed his trail and discovered that he'd left his pony hitched to a tree, back of the bluff there, while he went on foot through the orchard towards Crisp's homestead, coming back the same way. It was when he was returning that he lost his cap; and, not finding it, he mounted and rode away. He's a tall man. He has coarse red hair, and he has lost the forefinger of his left hand."
Percy stared at his companion in surprise.
"Did you discover all that in the few minutes you've been prowling over there in the bush?" he asked.
"Why, cert'nly," Silk intimated, touching his broncho's flank with his heel.
"How do you know he is tall?" Percy interrogated.
"Simply because the branch that swept off his cap was high—on a level with my own head."
"How about the colour of his hair?"
"Oh, well," returned the sergeant, "that's only an inference made from the fact that I found two or three red hairs clinging to the lining of his cap. It's likely that the rest of his hair is the same colour. But the only thing I'm certain about is that he has only three fingers on his left hand. You see, he'd been groping about, searching for his cap, leaving his traces on the ground made moist by the rain, and the impressions of his left hand in the mud always showed the absence of a finger."