Special Agent Billy Gard stood on the spot from which the shot had been fired. From this point to that at which the buckshot had entered the wall of the cabin was not more than thirty feet.
"An ordinary shotgun at thirty feet," he reflected, remembering his squirrel hunting days, "shoots almost like a rifle. The shot at that distance are all in a bunch not bigger than your fist. Yet the shot in the cabin wall were scattered. The man with the gun must have been further away."
Gard stated this view of the matter to the mountaineer, but that individual showed how it would have been impossible for the shot to have been fired from a greater distance because there was a depression that would have placed the man with the gun too low down to see in at the window. The shot could have been fired from but the one spot. The window pane through which the shot had passed was about half way between the peg and the wall where the charge had lodged. The hole in the window was not more than half as large as the wall surface peppered by the shot. This scatter of shot at such short range was significant.
"The shot must have been fired from a sawed-off shotgun," said the special agent. "Only a short-barreled gun would have scattered so much at this short range."
He meditated a moment and then asked:
"Who is there around here who has a sawed-off shotgun?"
"Ty Jones has got one," said Sam.
"Is he friendly to you?" asked Gard.
"No," was the reply. "The revenue agents chopped up his still after I reported it."
"Did he ever threaten you?"