"
"I don't believe Oldham is interested in the liquor famine," laughed
Bob. "Anything else?"
"They _may_ be after deer," acknowledged Ware, reluctantly, "though I
hate to think that rattlesnake is out for anything legitimate. I will
say he's a good hunter; and an A1 trailer."
"Oh, he's a good trailer, is he?" said Bob. "Well, I rather suspected
you'd say that. Now I know why they're up there; they want to figure out
from the signs we've left just what we've been up to."
"That's easy done," remarked Ware.
This explanation fitted. Bob had been in the Basin before, but on the
business of estimating government timber. Baker knew this. Now that the
Forest officer had gone in for a second time, it might be possible that
he was doing the same thing; or it might be equally possible that he was
engaged in an investigation of Baker's own property. This the power man
had decided to find out. Therefore he had sent in, with his land man, an
individual expert at deducing from the half-obliterated marks of human
occupation the activities that had left them. That Oldham and his
sinister companion had encountered the Forest men was a sheer accident
due to miscalculation.
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