The engineer made arrangements for carrying the body of Coyle to the dam and sent a messenger to notify Merrick of what had taken place. This done, he climbed to the saddle of the draw with the intention of investigating the lay of the land where the stampede had started. He knew that, if he were only expert enough to read it, the testimony written there would convict those who had done this crime. At work of this sort he was a child. He was from the East, and he knew nothing of reading sign. Stamped in mud, with outlines clear-cut and sharp, he would have known, of course, a pony’s tracks from those of a steer. But unfortunately the marks imprinted on the short brittle grass were faint and fragmentary. They told no story to Jones. He quartered over the ground carefully, giving his whole mind to the open page which Nature had spread before him and covered with her handwriting. Concentration was not enough. It was written in a language of which he had not learned the vocabulary. Reluctantly he gave up the attempt. Sheriff Daniels was a Westerner, an old cattleman, skilled at cutting sign. This was a problem for him to solve if he could. It was afternoon when the sheriff arrived. He had made one discovery before reaching the camp. A cow had broken a leg in the stampede and lay helpless in the bed of Elk Creek. The brand on it was the Diamond Bar K. “Fine business,” he commented dryly. “Clint’s enemies try to bust up the irrigation proposition he’s interested in by stampedin’ his own cattle down the draw here. Maybe we can find out the _hombres_ that rounded up a bunch of his stock yesterday. That’d help some.” If the sheriff discovered anything from his examination of the lane over which the stampede had swept, he did not confide in either Jones or Merrick. Like many men who have lived much in the open, he had a capacity for reticence. He made his observations unhurriedly and rode away without returning to the camp. Merrick gave his assistant orders to break camp and return to the dam. A force was still to continue at work in the cañon, but the men would be taken up and brought back each day. CHAPTER XVII HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPER Summer had burned to autumn. The first frosts had crisped the foliage of the quaking asps and the cottonwoods to a golden glory in tune with the halcyon Indian summer. Faint threats of coming winter could be read in an atmosphere grown more pale and sharp, in coloring less rich and warm. Betty could count the time in months now since she had sent her salvaged tramp into the hills to help her lover wrestle with the problems of the Sweetwater Dam project. It was still a joy to her that she had been intuitively right about him. He was making good. He had brains and ability and the power of initiative which marks the strong man from the subordinate. Justin admitted this generously, giving her credit for a keener insight than his own.