oss has done cast a shoe. Cain't you ride up there?"

"I cannot," said I, promptly. "I've been out all night and had no
breakfast. But you can have my horse."

So we traded horses and separated, each our own way. They sent me out by
Coyote Wells with two other men, and we did not get back until the
following evening.

The ranch was buzzing with excitement. Jim Starr had not returned,
although the ride to Elder Springs was only a two-hour affair. After a
night had elapsed, and still he did not return, two men had been sent.
They found him half way to Elder Springs with a bullet hole in his back.
The bullet was that of a rifle. Being plainsmen they had done good
detective work of its kind, and had determined--by the direction of the
bullet's flight as evidenced by the wound--that it had been fired from a
point above. The only point above was the low "rim" that ran for miles
down the Soda Springs Valley. It was of black lava and showed no tracks.
The men, with a true sense of values, had contented themselves with
covering Jim Starr with a blanket, and then had ridden the rim for some
miles in both directions looking for a trail. None could be discovered.
By this they deduced that the murder was not the result of chance
encounter, but had been so carefully planned that no trace would be left
of the murderer or murderers.

No theory could be imagined save the rather vague one of personal
enmity. Jim Starr was comparatively a newcomer with us. Nobody knew
anything much about him or his relations. Nobody questioned the only man
who could have told anything; and that man did not volunteer to tell
what he knew.

I refer to myself. The thing was sickeningly clear to me. Jim Starr had
nothing to do with it. I was the man for whom that bullet from the rim
had been intended. I was the unthinking, shortsighted fool who had done
Jim Starr to his death. It had never occurred to me that my midnight
reconnoitring would leave tracks, that Old Man Hooper's suspicious
vigilance would even look for tracks. But given that vigilance, the rest
followed plainly enough. A skillful trailer would have found his way to
where I had mounted; he would have followed my horse to Arroyo Seco
where I had met with Jim Starr. There he would have visualized a rider
on a horse without one shoe coming as far as the Arroyo, meeting me, and
returning whence he had come; and me at once turning off at right
angles. His natural conclusion would be that a messen