They pushed up the gulch as rapidly as they could. The ashes of a camp fire halted them a few minutes later. Scattered about lay the feathers and dismembered bones of some birds.
Cass stooped and picked up some of the feathers. “Quails, I reckon. Miss Cullison had three tied to her saddle horn when I met her.”
“Why did she come up here to cook them?” Sam asked.
Luck was already off his horse, quartering over the ground to read what it might tell him.
“She wasn’t alone. There was a man with her. See these tracks.”
It was Fendrick who made the next discovery. He had followed a draw for a short distance and climbed to a little mesa above. Presently he called to Cullison.
Father and son hurried toward him. The sheep-owner was standing at the edge of a prospect hole pointing down with his finger.
“Someone has been in that pit recently, and he’s been there several days.”
“Then how did he get out?” Sam asked.
Fendrick knelt on the edge of the pit and showed him where a rope had been dragged so heavily that it had cut deeply into the clay.