At the office they found Shotgun Shillman.
"What luck?" asked Billy.
"Plenty," was the reply. "We went to the Cayley cabin first. Nobody livin' there. Ashes in the fireplace might have been a week or a month old. But the balsam tips in the bunks were older than that. They were last summer's cutting—all stiffer than a porcupine's quills."
"As I remember that cabin," reflected Billy, "the balsam grew all around it."
"They still do. We found a quarter of beef hanging on a stub back of the house. 'There,' says Simon, 'there's proof for you.' 'Yes,' I says, 'let's see the cow it came off of.' 'Whatsa use?' says Simon.
"'Lots,' I says. 'C'mon.' He did reluctant, bellowing alla time how we'd oughta follow the tracks leading away from the house toward the Hillsville trail a mile away."
"Were those tracks made by one man?" inquired Billy.
"Looked so to me—anyway, we went along on the line of tracks leading to the dead cow. It had been shot all right enough. It oughta been shot. It had big-jaw."
"'You mean to tell me them fellers cut that quarter off a big-jaw cow?' I says to Simon. 'Sure,' he says. 'Aw right,' I says. 'Let it go at that.' I poked around to find the other cow. Simon raising objections alla time to me wastin' so much time and trying to get me off the trail. Oh, he didn't care a whoop about me finding the second cow. Wasn't one enough? Oh, sure, to hear him talk! But I found the cow. It hadn't been shot a-tall. Died of the yallers last fall. And it had just about half rotted before freezing weather set in. 'I suppose,' I says sarcastic, 'both cows were killed about the same time.' 'You've guessed it,' says Simon, bold as brass. 'Now all you gotta do is chase right along back to the cabin and take up the trail like I wanted you to do in the first place and trail 'em down.' He acted real disappointed when I left him standin' there and came away. I'd have arrested him right then only you said not to."
"Good enough," approved Billy. "Plenty of time to arrest him later. I want to give him plenty of rope. One of these days I'll get a subpoena from Judge Donelson and serve it on him. That'll give him plenty of time to think things over between now and the trial."