The Riddle of the Rangeland
THE RIDDLE OF THE RANGELAND
By Forbes Parkhill
CHAPTER I
The modern West still keeps many of the old-time thrills, as youwho read this captivating novelette of the Wyoming mountainswill discover. Mr. Parkhill himself lives in the West; “TheKen-Caryl Case” and other stories have already won him fame asan excellent writing-man.
Sheriff Lafe Ogden, long-barreled blue revolver in his hand,knocked lightly on the rough pine door of the Red Rock rangerstation. Then he stepped back softly and pressed himself closeto the log-and-plaster wall beside his deputy, Seth Markey, andyoung Otis Carr.
There was no answer from within. The Sheriff raised hisshaggy brows, pursed his lips and whistled softly. With a jerkof his head in the direction of the others, he stepped forwardagain. Suddenly he flung the door wide.
“Good God!” The exclamation burst from his lips, and checkedthe sudden advance of the two pushing forward on his heels.
“It’s Joe Fyffe himself!” He nodded toward the crumpledfigure which lay face downward on the floor.
“Dead?” asked Otis Carr in a strange, strained voice as hesqueezed his huge bulk through the door. He wondered why he hadexperienced no great shock at the gruesome discovery. For JoeFyffe, forest ranger, silent, odd and retiring, had been hisfriend.
The Sheriff dropped to one knee. He placed a hand on theranger’s wrist.
“Been dead quite a spell,” he announced without lookingup.
“Blood shows that,” the deputy volunteered.
“Looky here how it’s dried round the edges, on the floorunderneath his arms there. Two, three hours, I reckon.”
Otis Carr bent awkwardly over the huddled body.
“Shot, I s’pose,” he speculated, his tanned face, somehowattractive despite its homeliness, showing a trace of awe andconcern. Most of his life had been spent in the cattle countryeast of Jackson’s Hole; yet the acts of violence which it hadbeen his lot to witness had failed to render him callous in thepresence of death.
Sheriff Ogden turned the ranger’s stiffening body on oneside.
“That’s where he bled from,” he said shortly, pointing withthe muzzle of his revolver to a tiny, stained hole in theranger’s shirt, under the right shoulder. “But that’s what donethe work,” he added, indicating a similar hole in the back, justabove the ranger’s belt.
“It’s a cinch it wasn’t any accident,” Otis drawled, glancingcuriously about the interior of the ranger cabin. “I tell you,somebody plugged him.”
“I don’t see any gun,” observed the Sheriff, rising, steppingover the body and walking to the door of the only otherroom.
“He couldn’t ’a’ had a chance. Nasty job, this!”
Otis followed him to the room which served as a sleepingchamber and office. Ogden removed a rifle from two wooden pegsin the log wall above the desk, examined it carefully, and shookhis head. His scrutiny of a holstered revolver which swung by acartridge belt from a nail in the wall was likewise barren ofresults.
“Neither one’s been fired,” he asserted, frowning and turningto the maps and papers on the rude pine desk. “He never had achance to shoot back.