e
hearty good-will of the country-side, incurring the enmity of no one,
with the exception of Moran, as far as they knew. The latter's alibi
having established his innocence beyond doubt, no definite clues were
forthcoming as yet, beyond the foot-prints, the horse, and the "Luger"
shell. Moran, too, they ascertained had ridden in alone, and was not in
the habit of chumming with anyone in particular. Slavin had prepared a
list of all known out-going and incoming individuals on and about the
date of the crime. This was carefully conned over. All were, without
exception, well-known respectable ranchers, and citizens of Cow Run, to
whom no suspicion could be attached.

"No!" commented the inspector wearily, at length. "In my opinion this
has been done by someone living right here in this burg--a man whom we
could go and put our hands on this very minute--if we only had something
to work on. You'll see . . . it'll turn out to be that later. Just
about the last man you'd suspect, either. Cases like this--where the
individual has nerve enough to stay right on the job and go about his
business as usual--are often the hardest nuts to crack. You remember
that Huggard case, Sergeant?"

Many years previous he and Slavin had been non-coms together in the
Yukon, and other divisions of the Force, and now, delving back into their
memories of crime and criminals, they cited many old and grim cases, more
or less similar to the one in hand. Yorke and Redmond listened eagerly
to their narration, but Gully betrayed only a sort of taciturn interest.
If he had any experiences of his own, he apparently did not consider it
worth while to contribute them just then; though to Slavin and Yorke he
was known to be a man who had travelled far and wide.

"Ah!" remarked the inspector, a trifle bitterly. "If only some of these
smart individuals who write fool detective stories, with their utterly
impracticable methods, theories, and deductions, were to climb out of
their arm-chairs and tackle the real thing--had to do it for their
living--they'd make a pretty ghastly mess of things I'm thinking. It all
looks so mighty easy--in a book. You can see exactly how the thing
happened, put your hand on the man who did it, and all that, right from
the start. And you begin to wonder, pityingly, why the police were such
fools as Dot to have seen through everything right away."

He paused a moment, continuing: "This is a law-abiding country. Crim