"Will you show me just how you were sitting when you were shot?"
The mountaineer placed the rocking chair in front of the fire directly between a hole in the window and a spot in the opposite wall where the buckshot had lodged themselves, peppering up a surface two feet square. Thus was it easy to trace the flight of the shot through the room. The special agent examined both window pane and wall.
"Could you tell where the man stood when he fired?" he asked.
"Yes," said Lunsford. "I looked for tracks next day. Let me show you."
He led the way into the yard and there pointed out a stout peg which had been driven into the ground not a dozen feet from the window.
"The tracks came up to there and stopped," he said.
"Did you measure the tracks?" asked the special agent.
The mountaineer had done so and had cut a stick just the length of the track. This stick had been carefully preserved.
"Did you find any of the gun wadding?" asked the agent.
Even this precaution was taken by Lunsford. These men of the mountains mostly load their own shells and the wads in this case had been made by cutting pieces out of a pasteboard box. So there were a number of clues at hand.