Don't misunderstand me. I appreciate your position. I shall remain
here, as you suggest, but only for the purpose of aiding you in
getting to the bottom of this affair."
"What do you think about it, Doc?"
"He says he's willing to stay, don't he? Well, what more can you ask?"
snapped the old doctor. "I should say the best thing for you to do,
Abner, is to get a posse of men together and begin raking the woods up
yonder for the men that did the shooting. You say there is another one
dead up at Jim Conley's? Well, I'll go over and view him at once. The
first thing to do is to establish the corpus delicti. We've got to be
able to say the men are dead before we can charge anybody with murder.
This man was shot in the chest, from in front. Now we'll examine his
clothes and so forth and see if they throw any additional light on the
matter."
The most careful search of Andrew Paul's person established one thing
beyond all question: the man had deliberately removed everything that
might in any way serve to aid the authorities in determining who he
really was and whence he came. The tailor's tags had been cut from the
smart, well-fitting garments; the buttons on the same had been
replaced by others of an ordinary character; the names of the
haberdasher, the hat dealer and the boot maker had been as effectually
destroyed.
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