V + 

Paget was a countryman. I am not. I waited for him to move. + 

He looked around the clearing, slowly, standing still between the Italian and me. His pale eyes lighted presently. He went around the Ford to the far side of the clearing. Cereghino and I followed. + 

Near the fringe of brush at the edge of the clearing, the scrawny deputy stopped to grunt at the ground. The wheel-marks of an automobile were there. A car had turned around here. + 

Paget went on into the woods. The Italian kept close to his heels. I brought up the rear. Paget was following some sort of track. I couldn’t see it, either because he and the Italian blotted it out ahead of me, or because I’m a shine Indian. + 

We went back quite a way. + 

Paget stopped. The Italian stopped. + 

Paget said, “Uh-huh,” as if he had found an expected thing. + 

The Italian said something with the name of God in it. + 

I trampled a bush, coming beside them to see what they saw. + 

I saw it. + 

At the base of a tree, on her side, her knees drawn up close to her body, a girl was dead. + 

She wasn’t nice to see. Birds had been at her. + 

A tobacco-brown coat was half on, half off her shoulders. I knew she was Ruth Banbrock before I turned her over to look at the side of her face the ground had saved from the birds. + 

Cereghino stood watching me while I examined the girl. His face was mournful in a calm way. The deputy sheriff paid little attention to the body. He was off in the brush, moving around, looking at the ground. + 

He came back as I finished my examination. + 

“Shot,” I told him, “once in the right temple. Before that, I think, there was a fight. There are marks on the arm that was under her body. There’s nothing on her⁠—no jewelry, money⁠—nothing.” + 

“That goes,” Paget said. “Two women got out of the car back in the clearin’, an’ came here. Could’ve been three women⁠—if the others carried this one. Can’t make out how many went back. One of ’em was larger than this one. There was a scuffle here. Find the gun?” + 

“No,” I said. + 

“Neither did I. It went away in the car, then. There’s what’s left of a fire over there.” He ducked his head to the left. “Paper an’ rags burnt. Not enough left to do us any good. I reckon the photo Cereghino found blew away from the fire. Late Friday, I’d put it, or maybe Saturday mornin’.⁠ ⁠… No nearer than that.” + 

I took the deputy sheriff’s word for it. He seemed to know his stuff. + 

“Come here. I’ll show you somethin’,” he said, and led me over to a little black pile of ashes. + 

He hadn’t anything to show me. He wanted to talk to me away from the Italian’s ears. + 

“I think the guinea’s all right,” he said, “but I reckon I’d best hold him a while to make sure. This is some way from his place, an’ he stuttered a little bit too much tellin’ me how he happened to be passin’ here. Course, that don’t mean nothin’ much. All these guineas peddle vino, an’ I guess that’s what brought him out this way. I’ll hold him a day or two, anyways.” + 

“Good,” I agreed. “This is your country, and you know the people. Can you visit around and see what you can pick up? Whether anybody saw anything? Saw a Locomobile cabriolet? Or anything else? You can get more than I could.” + 

“I’ll do that,” he promised. + 

“All right. Then I’ll go back to San Francisco now. I suppose you’ll want to camp here with the body?” + 

“Yeah. You drive the Ford back to Knob Valley, an’ tell Tom what’s what. He’ll come or send out. I’ll keep the guinea here with me.” + 

Waiting for the next westbound train out of Knob Valley, I got the office on the telephone. The Old Man was out. I told my story to one of the office men and asked him to get the news to the Old Man as soon as he could. + 

Everybody was in the office when I got back to San Francisco. Alfred Banbrock, his face a pink-grey that was deader than solid grey could have been. His pink and white old lawyer, Pat Reddy, sprawled on his spine with his feet on another chair. The Old Man, with his gentle eyes behind gold spectacles and his mild smile, hiding the fact that fifty years of sleuthing had left him without any feelings at all on any subject. (Whitey Clayton used to say the Old Man could spit icicles in August.) + 

Nobody said anything when I came in. I said my say as briefly as possible. + 

“Then the other woman⁠—the woman who killed Ruth was⁠—?” + 

Banbrock didn’t finish his question. Nobody answered it. + 

“We don’t know what happened,” I said after a while. “Your daughter and someone we don’t know may have gone there. Your daughter may have been dead before she was taken there. She may have⁠—” + 

“But Myra!” Banbrock was pulling at his collar with a finger inside. “Where is Myra?” + 

I couldn’t answer that, nor could any of the others. + 

“You are going up to Knob Valley now?” I asked him. + 

“Yes, at once. You will come with me?” + 

I wasn’t sorry I could not. + 

“No. There are things to be done here. I’ll give you a note to the marshal. I want you to look carefully at the piece of your daughter’s photograph the Italian found⁠—to see if you remember it.” + 

Banbrock and the lawyer left. + 