* * * *

The end of a long walk brought Winston to the Sheriff’s headquarters and city jail.   He barely managed to hang up his hat when his grandfather called from his office. 

“Winston, where were you?  Did you solve the murders yet?”

“No, Gramps,” Winston answered, “in fact, I found four more of them.  One with evidence, three suspicious disappearances. But I brought the mail.  You have four pieces, and a stack of telegrams.”

“Telegrams?”  Grandpa Winston growled.  “And my phone has been ringing off the hook.  The late night passenger train from Albuquerque through Phoenix didn’t get here.  People want to know where it is. I can’t tell people it was wrecked, no sign of survivors.  So I tell them we are investigating.  What’s this about murders?”

Winston pulled a sample bottle from his pocket.  “Rudolph Schudel, jeweler, says that that wedding ring for sure belonged to Susie Jameson.  She and husband owned that ranch along the tracks south of here.   The other ring is missing its gemstone.  Her dentist was William Washington.  He says he’d recently filled her first three cavities.  Three fillings were found on the ground.  Washington said they match, roughly, what he put in.  There was a faint shadow of a skeleton, not even ashes, on the ground where I found these, at what was left of her ranch.  Her husband and two ranchhands are missing, no sign of them.”

“Oh, joy,” Gramps said.  “I can pass off these other things as not in my jurisdiction, but the Jameson Ranch for sure is.  That’s where I buy my horses.  And … was the body hers?  I’ve hanged men on less evidence.  Good work!  But nothing was left of the body?  Just a dusting of ash? Never heard of such a  thing.  Okay, you have the phone.  I get to read these and join the coroner at the train station.”

Winston returned to his desk and began outlining a report.

* * * * *

“Winston?” Radnor Cooper called to his grandson.  “I’m back.  Oh, you were right.  Two dead in the signal tower.  No idea why they died.  That place was locked tighter than a drum.  At the ranch, we found three more skeletons, what was left of them.  They all look to have been running when they fell and died.   Coroner took pictures.  He also recovered a fair amount of ash…need to show it’s human bone remains, not some kid marking chalk on a sidewalk.  What did I miss?”