Chapter 16

STARR SEES TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH

Carefully skirting the ridge where Helen May had her goats; keeping always in the gulches and never once showing himself on high ground, Starr came after a while to a point where he could look up to the pinnacle behind Sunlight Basin, from the side opposite the point where he had wriggled away behind a bush. He left Rabbit hidden in a brush-choked arroyo that meandered away to the southwest, and began cautiously to climb.

Starr did not expect to come upon his man on the peak; indeed he would have been surprised to find the fellow still there. But that peak was as good as any for reconnoitering the surrounding country, was higher than any other within several miles, in fact. What he did hope was to pick up with his glasses the man's line of retreat after a deed he must believe successfully accomplished. And there might be some betraying sign there that would give him a clue.

There was always the possibility, however, that the fellow had lingered to see what took place after the supposed killing. He must believe that the girl who had been with Starr would take some action, and he might want to know to a certainty what that action was. So Starr went carefully, keeping behind boulders and rugged outcroppings and in the bottom of deep, water-worn washes when nothing else served. He did not think the fellow, even if he stayed on the peak, would be watching behind him, but Starr did not take any chances, and climbed rather slowly.

He reached the summit at the left of where the man had stood when he shot; very close to the spot where Helen May had stood and looked upon Vic and the goats and the country she abhorred. Starr saw her tracks there in a sheltered place beside a rock and knew that she had been up there, though in that dry soil he could not, of course, tell when. When that baked soil takes an imprint, it is apt to hold it for a long while unless rain or a real sand-storm blots it out.

He hid there for a few minutes, craning as much as he dared to see if there were any sign of the man he wanted. In a little he left that spot and crept, foot by foot, over to the cairn, the "sheepherder's monument," behind which the fellow had stood. There again he found the prints of Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very well. And close to them, looking as though the two had stood together, were the larger, deeper tracks of a man.

Starr dared not rise and stand upright. He must keep always under cover from any chance spying from below. He could not, therefore, trace the footprints down the peak. But he got some idea of the man's direction when he left, and he knew, of course, where to find Helen May. He did not connect the two in his mind, beyond registering clearly in his memory the two sets of tracks.

He crept closer to the Basin side of the peak and looked down, following an impulse he did not try to