Methodically they all produced note-books and entered the needful particulars.  The lanky individual who had driven the coroner out brought forward a tarpaulin and spread it on the ground.  With some difficulty the over-shoed foot was disengaged from the imprisoning stirrup, the body rolled in the tarpaulin and deposited in the rear of the doctor’s cutter.  The saddle and bridle were flung into the Police cutter.  They then rolled the dead horse clear of the trail.

That night the coyotes held grim, snarling carnival.

Slavin turned to Redmond.  “Ye’ve located th’ place, eh?” The latter nodded.  “All right, thin, get mounted, th’ tu av yez, an’ lead on!”

Keeping needfully wide of the broad, claret-bespotted swath in the snow, the party started trailing back.  Yorke and George rode ahead.  The latter glanced around to make sure of being out of earshot of their sergeant.

“We-ll of all the hardened old cases! . . .  Slavin sure does crown ’em!” he muttered to his comrade.

“Hardened!” Yorke laughed grimly.  “You should have seen him up in the Yukon!  The man’s been handling these rotten morgue cases ’till he’d qualify for the Seine River Police.  He’s got so he ascribes well-nigh everything now to ‘dhrink an’ th’ divil.’” His face softened, “but I know the real heart of old Burke under it all.”

About two miles down the trail Redmond halted.

“Here it is!” he said.  And he indicated an irregular, blood-soaked, clawed-up patch in the snow where the sanguinary swath ended.  They dismounted.  Slavin drawing up alongside the coroner’s cutter handed over his lines to the teamster.

“Now!” said he, “let’s shtart in! . . .  Ye must have ’shpotted this on yeh way up, Docthor?” He pointed to the patch.

The latter nodded.  “Yes! we thought it must have happened here.”

For some few seconds, with one accord the party stared about them at their surroundings.  The frozen landscape at this point presented a singularly lonely, desolate aspect.  Flat, and for the greater part absolutely bare of brush; save where from a small coulee some half mile to the left of the trail the tops of a cotton-wood clump were visible.  Far to the right-hand, more than a mile away, stretched the first of the shelving benches, where the high ground sloped away in irregular jumps, as it were, to the river.

“Best ye shtay fwhere ye all are,” cautioned the sergeant, “’till I size up th’ lay av things a bit.  I du not want th’ thracks fouled up.  H-mm! let’s see now!” He remained in deep, thoughtful silence a space.  “Thravellin’ towards us,” he muttered—­“th’ back av th’ head!”

Hands clasped behind bent back, and with head thrust loweringly forward from between his huge shoulders he paced slowly down the trail for some hundred yards.  That grim, intent face and the swaying gait reminded Redmond of some huge bloodhound casting about for a scent.