Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/231

Rh his only thought was to kill and, following the prompting that has sent so many murderers to the gallows, he had afterwards returned to the scene of the crime to destroy any clues he might have left and to search the body for any evidence against the arson ring.

Dan's next thought was to follow along the trail and find Cranston's ambush. Of course it would be in the direction of the settlement from the body, as the bullet had entered from the front. He found it hard to believe that Hildreth had fallen in the exact spot where the body lay. Men journeying at night keep to the trail, and the white heap itself was fully forty feet back from the trail in the thickets. Perhaps Cranston had dragged it there to hide it from the sight of any one who might pass along the lonely trail again; and it was a remote possibility that Whisperfoot, coming in the night, had tugged it into the thickets for dreadful purposes of his own. Likely the shot was fired when Hildreth was in an open place on the trail; and Dan searched for the ambush with this conclusion in mind. He walked back, looking for a thicket from which such a spot would be visible. Something over fifty yards down he found it; and he knew it by the empty brass rifle cartridge that lay half buried in the wet leaves.