In the immediate vicinity there was little chance of doing anything, for Service's bunch, and themselves, had trampled over the soft floor until all original traces of the murder were blotted out. Albright looked around and seemed to hesitate. "Me, alone?" he asked. "Gimme Dick Compos, there." "Done," said Kenset. A tall, silent half-breed stepped forward and without another word the two began to scan the walls, the floors, the heaps of rotted rock, the loose and tumbled boulders, not yet decomposed, that lined the cut on both sides. They stood in their tracks and looked, and the concentration in their eyes was akin to that in the eyes of a wild animal, hiding, hard-pressed, and looking for a loophole for life. The Vigilantes watched them in silence. Presently Dick Compos stepped forward, leaned down and searched the wall at the left. Then he went forward, bent over, scanning each inch. He looked above and below, the height of a man's shoulders, his hips, his knees. Then he crept back, stopped at a particular upstanding piece of stone, searched it closely--stepped in behind. When he came out he looked over at Tharon Last standing at the head of her people. "Some one went along th' Wall here," he waved a slender brown hand at the canyon face. "Three signs--here--here--here." He indicated the heights he had scanned. They stepped a bit nearer and looked. Several pairs of Valley eyes saw what Dick Compos had seen, a sign so fine that few would have called it that--merely a brushing, a smoothing of the fine-sandstone surface where a man's shoulders, his hips, his knees might have pressed had he stood waiting there. A bit nearer the standing pinnacle of rock, they were evident again. With one accord they turned and looked down the canyon to where that thin line sprayed the face. A close shot, such as would be necessary in the darkness of the cut. Albright and Compos both stepped to the rock and stood looking with those narrowed, concentrated eyes. Suddenly Albright, looking back across his shoulders, moved like a cat and picked up something from ten feet away. He held it on his palm--an empty shell, such as fitted a .44 Smith and Wesson. He scanned it minutely, turned it over this way and that, looked at it fore and aft. "Firin' pin's nicked," he said, "an' a leetle off centre." For ten minutes the thing went from hand to hand. Then Kenset gave it to the coroner. "There's your clew, Mr. Banner," he said. "Now we can begin. Let us be going back to Corvan." And so it was that Old Pete, the snow-packer, went back in state to the Golden Cloud, by relays on men's shoulders down the sounding passes, through the dead cut, by pack-horse across the levels, lashed stiffly to the saddle, a pitiful burden. Tharon Last, riding close after the calm fashion of a strong man in the face of tragedy, thought pensively of that night in spring when this little old man had taken his life in his hands to save her own.