Jean Backus - Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Ames was up with the first grayness of morning. The woodshed yielded dry wood, and, as the aroma of coffee filled the little cabin, Ames poured water into the jar of sour dough, thickened the water with flour, beat it to just the right consistency and poured out sour-dough hot cakes.

He had finished with the breakfast dishes and the chores, and was contemplating the stream which danced by in the sunlight just beyond the long shadows of the pine trees, when his eyes suddenly rested with startled disbelief on the two rounded manzanita pegs which had been driven into holes drilled in the wall of the log cabin.

The .22 rifle, with its telescopic sight, was missing.

The space immediately below, where his .30-.30 rifle hung suspended from pegs, was as usual, and the .30-.30 was in place. Only the place where the .22 should have been was vacant.

Ames heard steps outside the door. A masculine voice called, “Hello! Anyone home?”

“Who is it?” Ames called, whirling.

The form of Sheriff Bill Eldon was framed in the doorway.

“Howdy,” he said. “Guess I should drop in and introduce myself. I’m Bill Eldon, sheriff of the county.”

Ames took in the spare figure, tough as gristle, straight as a lodgepole pine, a man who was well past middle age, but who moved with the easy, lithe grace of a man in his thirties, a man who carried not so much as an ounce of unnecessary weight, whose eyes, peering out from under shaggy eyebrows, had the same quality of fierce penetration which is so characteristic of the hawks and eagles, yet his manner and voice were mild.

“I’m camped up the stream a piece with a couple of head of pack stock,” the sheriff said, “just riding through. This country up here is in my county and I sort of make a swing around through it during the fishing season. I was up here last year, but missed you. They said you were in town.”

Ames stretched out his hand. “Come right in, sheriff, and sit down. Ames is my name. I’m mighty glad to know you. I’ve heard about you.”

Bill Eldon thanked him, walked over to one of the homemade chairs built from pine slabs and baling wire, settled himself comfortably, rolled a cigarette. “Been up here long?”

“Couple of years. I run a trap line in the winters. I have a small allowance and I’m trying to stretch it as far as possible so I can build up health and a bank account at the same time — just enough for operating capital.”

Eldon crossed his legs, said, “Do you get around the country much?”

“Some.”

“Seen the folks camped down below?”

“Yes. I met some of them yesterday. I guess they came in the other way.”

“That’s right. Quite an outfit. Know any of the people camped up above?”

“I didn’t know there were any.”

“I didn’t know there were either,” the sheriff said, and then was quiet.

Ames cocked an eyebrow in quizzical interrogation.

“Seen anybody up that way?” Eldon asked.

“There are some folks camped up on Squaw Creek, but that’s six miles away. A man and his wife.”

“I know all about them,” the sheriff said. “I met them on the trail. Haven’t seen anything of a man about thirty-five, dark hair, stubby, close-cut mustache, gray eyes, about a hundred and sixty pounds, five feet, eight or nine inches tall, wearing big hobnail boots with wool socks rolled down over the tops of the boots — new boots?”

Ames shook his head.

“Seems as though he must have been camped up around here somewhere,” the sheriff said.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Mind taking a little walk with me?” the sheriff asked.

Ames, suddenly suspicious, said, “I have a few chores to do. I—”

“This is along the line of business,” the sheriff answered, getting up out of the chair with the casual, easy grace of a wild animal getting to its feet.

“If you put it that way, I guess we’ll let the chores go,” Ames said.

They left the cabin and swung up the trail. Ames’ long legs moved in the steady rhythm of space-devouring strides. The sheriff kept pace with him, although his shorter legs made him take five strides to the other man’s four.

For some five minutes they walked silently, walking abreast where the trail was wide; then as the trail narrowed, the sheriff took the lead, setting a steady, unwavering pace.

Abruptly Bill Eldon held up his hand as a signal to halt. “Now from this point on,” he said, “I’d like you to be kind of careful about not touching things. Just follow me.”

He swung from the side of the trail, came to a little patch of quaking asp and a spring.

A man was stretched on the ground by the spring, lying rigid and inert.

Eldon circled the body. “I’ve already gone over the tracks,” he said. And then added dryly, “There ain’t any, except the ones made by his own boots, and they’re pretty faint.”

“What killed him?” Ames asked.

“Small-caliber bullet, right in the side of the head,” the sheriff said.

Ames stood silently looking at the features discolored by death, the stubby mustache, the dark hair, the new hobnail boots with the wool socks turned down over the tops.

“When — when did it happen?”

“Don’t rightly know,” the sheriff said. “Apparently it happened before the thunderstorm yesterday. Tracks are pretty well washed out. You can see where he came running down this little slope. Then he jumped to one side and then to the other. Didn’t do him no good. He fell right here. But the point is, his tracks are pretty indistinct, almost washed out by that rainstorm. If it hadn’t been for the hobnails on his new boots, I doubt if we’d have noticed his tracks at all.

“Funny thing is,” the sheriff went on, “you don’t see any stock. He must have packed in his little camp stuff on his back. Pretty husky chap but he doesn’t look like a woodsman.”

Ames nodded.

“Wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?” the sheriff asked.

Ames shook his head.

“Happened to be walking down the stream yesterday afternoon just a little bit before the rain came up,” the sheriff said. “Didn’t see this fellow’s tracks anywhere in the trail and didn’t see any smoke. Wouldn’t have known he had a camp here if it hadn’t been for—”

Abruptly the sheriff ceased speaking.

“I was fishing yesterday,” Ames said.

“I noticed it,” the sheriff said. “Walked by your cabin but you weren’t there. Then I walked on down the trail, caught the glint of sunlight from the reel on your fishing rod.”

Eldon’s silence was an invitation.

Ames laughed nervously and said, “Yes, I took a hike down the trail and didn’t want to be burdened with the rod and the creel.”

“Saw the leader was broken on the fishing rod,” the sheriff commented. “Looked as though maybe you’d tangled up with a big one and he’d got away — leader twisted around a bit and frayed. Thought maybe you’d hooked on to a big one over in that pool and he might have wrapped the leader around some of the branches on that fallen tree over at the far end.”

“He did, for a fact,” Ames admitted ruefully.

“That puzzled me,” the sheriff said. “You quit right there and then, without even taking off the broken leader. You just propped your fishin’ rod up against the tree and hung your creel on a forked limb, fish and all. Tracks showed you’d been going pretty fast.”

“I’m a fast walker.”

“Uh-huh,” Eldon said. “Then you hit the trail. There was tracks made by a woman in the trail. She was running. I saw your tracks following.”

“I can assure you,” Ames said, trying to make a joke of it, “that I wasn’t chasing any woman down the trail.”

“I know you weren’t,” Eldon said. “You were studying those tracks, kind of curious about them, so you kept to one side of the trail where you could move along and study them. You’d get back in the trail once or twice where you had to and then your tracks would be over those of the woman, but for the most part you were sort of trailing her.”