Paget was a countryman. I am not. I waited for him to move.
He looked around the clearing, slowly, standing still between the Italian and me. His pale eyes lighted presently. He went around the Ford to the far side of the clearing. Cereghino and I followed.
Near the fringe of brush at the edge of the clearing, the scrawny deputy stopped to grunt at the ground. The wheel-marks of an automobile were there. A car had turned around here.
Paget went on into the woods. The Italian kept close to his heels. I brought up the rear. Paget was following some sort of track. I couldn’t see it, either because he and the Italian blotted it out ahead of me, or because I’m a shine Indian.
We went back quite a way.
Paget stopped. The Italian stopped.
Paget said, “Uh-huh,” as if he had found an expected thing.
The Italian said something with the name of God in it.
I trampled a bush, coming beside them to see what they saw.
I saw it.
At the base of a tree, on her side, her knees drawn up close to her body, a girl was dead.
She wasn’t nice to see. Birds had been at her.