So Starr went
carefully, keeping behind boulders and rugged outcroppings and in the
bottom of deep, water-worn washes when nothing else served. He did not
think the fellow, even if he stayed on the peak, would be watching behind
him, but Starr did not take any chances, and climbed rather slowly.
He reached the summit at the left of where the man had stood when he
shot; very close to the spot where Helen May had stood and looked upon
Vic and the goats and the country she abhorred. Starr saw her tracks
there in a sheltered place beside a rock and knew that she had been up
there, though in that dry soil he could not, of course, tell when. When
that baked soil takes an imprint, it is apt to hold it for a long while
unless rain or a real sand-storm blots it out.
He hid there for a few minutes, craning as much as he dared to see if
there were any sign of the man he wanted. In a little he left that spot
and crept, foot by foot, over to the cairn, the "sheepherder's monument,"
behind which the fellow had stood. There again he found the prints of
Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very
well.
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