A strange ominous silence fell upon the group.  Deep in wild, whirling conjecture, each man gazed about him.  The desolate, sinister aspect of their surroundings struck them with a sudden chill.  Yorke voiced the general sentiment.

“My God!” he said in a low voice, “but it sure is dreary!”

With a final, self-satisfying survey at his “lay av things” Slavin stepped well to the side of the incriminating foot-prints.  “Come on!” he said “get in file behint me!  We will follow this up!”

Silently they obeyed and padded in his rear.

“D——­d big feet, whoever owns ’em,” remarked Redmond to Yorke.

Slavin heard him.  “Ay!” he flung back grimly.  “An’ they will shtand on th’ dhrop yet—­thim same feet!”

The tracks returning in the direction of the coulee presented a vast contrast to the approaching imprints.  Where the latter denoted an even, steady stride, the former ran in queer, irregular fashion—­sometimes bunched together, and at others with wide spaces between.

“‘On th’ double!’” remarked Slavin observantly.

“Must have got scairt!”

“Ah!” murmured the coroner, reflectively, “though the Bible doesn’t expressly state so, I guess Cain, too, got on the ‘double’ as you call it—­after he killed Abel.”

They finally reached the coulee where the tracks, debouching from the steep edge, passed along its rim and presently descended the more shallow end of the draw.  Their leader eventually halted at the foot of a small cotton-wood tree where the human foot-prints ended.  There in the snow they beheld a hoof-trampled space, which, together with broken twigs, indicated a tethered horse.

This served for comment and speculation awhile.

The sergeant, producing a small tape measure dotted down careful measurements of the over-shoed imprints and their length of stride, also the size of the shod hoof-marks.

Redmond drew his attention to blood-stains in several of the latter.  “Shod with ‘never-slip’ calks, Sergeant!” he said.  “Must have slipped somewhere and ‘calked’ himself on the ‘coronet,’ I guess?”

“Eyah!” muttered Slavin approvingly, “Th’ ‘nigh-hind’ ’tis, note, bhoy! . . . ‘t’will serve good thrailin’ that.  Well, let’s follow ut on!”

Wearily his companions plodded on in his wake.  The tracks, after following the draw for a short distance, suddenly wound up a steep, narrow path on the left side of the coulee.  Reaching the surface of the level ground, they circled until they struck into the main trail east again, about a mile below where the party had left their horses.  Here, merged amongst countless others on the well-travelled highway, they became more difficult to trace, though occasionally the faint blood-stains proclaimed their identity.