After
that he retreated as carefully as he had approached. When he had gone
half a mile or so upstream he found a place where he could wash his
hands without wetting his moccasins, returned to the rocky hillside and
took off the clumsy footgear and stowed them away under his coat. Then
with long strides that covered the ground as fast as a horse could do
without loping, Swan headed as straight as might be for the Thurman
ranch.
About noon Swan approached the crowd of men and a few women who stood
at a little distance and whispered together, with their faces averted
from the body around which the men stood grouped. The news had spread as
such news will, even in a country so sparsely settled as the Sawtooth.
Swan counted forty men,--he did not bother with the women. Fred Thurman
had been known to every one of them. Some one had spread a piece of
canvas over the corpse, and Swan did not go very near. The blaze-faced
horse had been led farther away and tied to a cottonwood, where some one
had thrown down a bundle of hay. The Sawtooth country was rather
punctilious in its duty toward the law, and it was generally believed
that the coroner would want to see the horse that had caused the
tragedy.
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