slope led down to Granite Creek. He did not
follow the trail, but struck straight across an outcropping ledge,
descended to Granite Creek and strode along next the hill where the
soil was gravelly and barren. When he had gone some distance, he sat
down and took from under his coat two huge, crudely made moccasins of
coyote skin. These he pulled on over his shoes, tied them around his
ankles and went on, still keeping close under the hill.

He reached the place where Fred Thurman lay, stood well away from the
body and studied every detail closely. Then, stepping carefully on
trampled brush and rocks, he approached and cautiously lifted Lone's
coat. It was not a pretty sight, but Swan's interest held him there
for perhaps ten minutes, his eyes leaving the body only when the
blaze-faced horse moved. Then Swan would look up quickly at the horse,
seem reassured when he saw that the animal was not watching anything at
a distance, and return, to his curious task. Finally he drew the coat
back over the head and shoulders, placed each stone exactly as he had
found it and went up to the horse, examining the saddle rather closely.
After that he retreated as carefully as he had approached. When he had
gone half a mile or so upstream he found a place where he could wash
his hands without wetting his moccasins, returned to the rocky hillside
and took off the clumsy footgear and stowed them away under his coat.
Then with long strides that covered the ground as fast as a horse could
do without loping, Swan headed as straight as might be for the Thurman
ranch.

About noon Swan approached the crowd of men and a few women who stood
at a little distance and whispered together, with their faces averted
from the body around which the men stood grouped. The news had spread
as such news will, even in a country so sparsely settled as the
Sawtooth. Swan counted forty men,--he did not bother with the women.
Fred Thurman had been known to every one of them. Some one had spread
a piece of canvas over the corpse, and Swan did not go very near. The
blaze-faced horse had been led farther away and tied to a cottonwood,
where some one had thrown down a bundle of hay. The Sawtooth country
was rather punctilious in its duty toward the law, and it was generally
believed that the coroner would want to see the horse that had caused
the tragedy.

Half an hour after Swan arrived, the coroner came in a machine, and
with him came the sheriff. T