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Broadhurst’s car is in there.”
    “I know,” he said. “Is Stanley Broadhurst one of the people you’re looking for?”
    “Yes, he is.”
    “License?”
    I showed him my photostat.
    “Well, I may be able to help you.”
    He turned abruptly and moved in among the trees along a rutted trail. I followed him. The leaves were so dry under my feet that it was like walking on cornflakes.
    We came to an opening in the trees. The big sycamorewhich partly overarched it had been burned. Smoke was still rising from its charred branches and from the undergrowth behind it.
    Near the middle of the open space there was a hole in the ground between three and four feet in diameter. A spade stood upright beside it in a pile of dirt and stones. Off to one side of the pile, a pickax lay on the ground. Its sharp tip seemed to have been dipped in dark red paint. Reluctantly I looked down into the hole.
    In its shallow depth a man’s body lay curled like a foetus, face upturned. I recognized his peppermint-striped shirt, glad rags to be buried in. And in spite of the dirt that stuffed his open mouth and clung to his eyes, I recognized Stanley Broadhurst, and I said so.
    The big man absorbed the information quietly. “What was he doing here, do you know?”
    “No. I don’t. But I believe this is part of his family’s ranch. You haven’t explained what you’re doing here.”
    “I’m with the Forest Service. My name’s Joe Kelsey, I’m trying to find out what started this fire. And,” he added deliberately, “I think I have found out. It seems to have flared up in this immediate area. I came across
this
, right there.” He indicated a yellow plastic marker stuck in the burned-over ground a few feet from where we were standing. Then he produced a small aluminum evidence case and snapped it open. It contained a single half-burned cigarillo.
    “Did Broadhurst smoke these?”
    “I saw him smoke one this morning. You’ll probably find the package in his clothes.”
    “Yeah, but I didn’t want to move him until the coroner sees him. It looks as if I may have to, though.”
    He squinted uphill toward the fire. It blazed like a displaced sunset through the trees. The black silhouettes of men fighting it looked small and futile in spite of theirtanker trucks and bulldozers. Off to the left the fire had spilled over the ridge and was pouring downhill like fuming acid eating the dry brush. Its smoke blew ahead of it and spread across the city toward the sea.
    Kelsey took the spade and started to throw dirt into the hole, talking as he worked.
    “I hate to bury a man twice, but it’s better than letting him get roasted. The fire’s coming back this way.”
    “Was he buried when you found him?”
    “That’s correct. But whoever buried him didn’t do much of a job of covering up. I found the spade and the pick with the blood on it—and then the filled hole with loose dirt around. So I started digging. I didn’t know what I was going to find. But I sort of had a feeling that it would be a dead man with a hole in his head.”
    Kelsey worked rapidly. The dirt covered Stanley’s striped shirt and his upturned insulted face. Kelsey spoke to me over his shoulder:
    “You mentioned that you were looking for several people. Who are the others?”
    “The dead man’s little boy is one. And there was a blond girl with him.”
    “So I’ve heard. Can you describe her?”
    “Blue eyes, five foot six, 115 pounds, age about eighteen. Broadhurst’s widow can tell you more about her. She’s at the ranchhouse.”
    “Where’s your car? I came out on a fire truck.”
    I told him that Stanley’s mother had brought me in her pickup, and that she was in the cabin. Kelsey stopped spading dirt. His face was running with sweat, and mildly puzzled.
    “What’s she doing in there?”
    “Resting.”
    “We’re going to have to interrupt her rest.”
    Beyond the grove, in the unburned brush, the fire had grown almost as tall as the trees. The air