Reasonably sure the cabin was empty, but cautious nevertheless, he moved down through the trees, his gaze focused on the door, ready to open fire if suddenly surprised. With his rifle leveled before him, he opened the door to find the cabin deserted. They were gone, but for how long? Looking around the rough structure, he saw no clothes, bedding, or anything that would indicate the occupants would be coming back. He went to the fireplace and tested the ashes. They told him that there had been no fire rekindled that morning, that the fire had been allowed to go out during the night. So, they either left last night or before breakfast this morning, he thought. And from the looks of the cabin, they weren’t planning to come back. Good thing I didn’t ride back to Fort Benton and tell them where they could find Booth and his gang. As soon as he thought it, he decided that his plan to find the killers for the army to arrest was not likely to have resulted in bringing the guilty parties to trial, anyway. So now, standing in an empty hideout, it was time to make a decision. As Conner would advise, should he forget about something that was not his responsibility in the first place, and go home? Or should he make it his business to see that the four remaining members of the gang paid for their atrocious crimes? “Hell, I shot one of the son of a bitches,” he announced to the cold fireplace. It wasn’t enough to satisfy him that justice had come to only one of them, however. The problem now, if he decided to continue to tail them, was the fact that they were gone and he had no idea where they might be heading.

Thinking all good hideouts had a backdoor escape route, he decided to look for this one. Surely there was an easier way up and down this mountain, he thought, after just having climbed the almost impossible trail up. He went back outside and whistled Rascal up from the path below. Leading the buckskin, he walked around to the back of the cabin, where he immediately saw a path leading down the mountain. There was no evidence that they had tried to hide the path, for hoofprints were obvious. “Might as well see where this comes out,” he said to Rascal. Again thinking of the tight crooks and turns of the rocky passage he had followed up from the stream, he figured this back path was not the way the gang had come up the mountain. The way he had come up was most likely the back door and an escape route.