busy again, working over some of the Footstool calves. Jess Bledsoe says they been bothering around some of the Flying A stock, too. Well, I rode over to the cabin of Gus Bernat, the French trapper, last night, figuring I might get a line on the fellow who’s so free with the running-iron. Had a hunch he might be working the range down below Two-Gwo-Tee pass, but I couldn’t see a thing—”

Deputy Seth Markey, seemingly impatient that the others should waste their time on such casual remarks with the mystery of the Fyffe killing confronting them, arose with an exclamation.

“Looky here, boss,” he cried to the Sheriff, directing his attention to two tiny brown spots near the doorsill. “See them blood-drops? That means Fyffe was outside when he was shot, and run in here afterward. Let’s take a look outside the cabin.”

Ogden abandoned his examination of the stove, and the pair of worn, hobnailed Canadian pack boots hanging from the log ceiling above it by their leather laces, and joined his deputy at the door.

“Sure ’nough,” he observed as he led the way outside the cabin, carefully scrutinizing the ground about the doorway. “Here’s another. We’ll just back-track this trail, an’ see what we can find.”

With difficulty they followed the thin trail of blood over the coarse gravel surface and pine-needle carpet of the pasture which surrounded the ranger cabin. It led through the open gate in the barbed-wire fence which inclosed the pasture. They lost it in the near-by creek bottom. In vain did they circle the spot where the last bloodstain appeared.

Some fifty yards away they came upon the cold ashes of a tiny wood fire. Sheriff Ogden pressed his hand among the charred fragments.

“From the feel of her, she might be a week old,” he announced sagely. “The ashes aint flaky, but black, showin’ that the fire didn’t burn out, but was doused with water from the crick.”

“But why,” asked Otis curiously, “would anyone want to build a fire so near the ranger station? I tell you it couldn’t be to cook a meal, because anyone could have dropped in and eaten with Fyffe.”

“Maybe the ranger built it hisself,” suggested the Sheriff. “What few tracks show in this coarse gravel is cow-tracks, and that don’t tell us nothin’. Can’t see any signs of a fight here. Let’s go back to the cabin.”

“He must have run 

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