CHAPTER XV
THE FIRST CLEW
"Let's see!" Trowbridge reined in his horse and meditated, when he and Dorothy had covered several miles of their ride back to Crawling Water. "Jensen was shot around here somewhere, wasn't he?"
"I think it was over there." She pointed with her quirt in the direction of a distant clump of jack-pines. "Why?"
"Suppose we ride over and take a look at the spot." He smiled at her little shudder of repugnance. "We haven't any Sherlock Holmes in this country, and maybe we need one. I'll have a try at it. Come on!"
In response to the pressure of his knees, the trained cow-pony whirled toward the jack-pines, and Dorothy followed, laughing at the idea that so ingenuous a man as Lem Trowbridge might possess the analytical gift of the trained detective.
"You!" she said mockingly, when she had caught up with him. "You're as transparent as glass; not that it isn't nice to be that way, but still you are. Besides, the rain we've had must have washed all tracks away."
"No doubt, but we'll have a look anyhow. It won't do any harm. Seriously, though, the ways of criminals have always interested me. I'd rather read a good detective story than any other sort of yarn."
"I shouldn't think that you had any gift that way."