witnesses, and number two, if anybody was picking off prospectors, they weren't going to shoot five men with the deputy sheriff aboard.

By moving the body closer to camp, it would now be within the realm of believability that Ruth had made it that far alone.

And it should be much easier for the searchers to find, and he would lead the search on the ground.

Unfortunately, it would be easy for predators to find as well, but there wasn't much he could do

about that.

Two weeks after Ruth had been taken to the Willow Creek camp, Barkley returned.

Ruth was reported missing, and the search began.

During this time, Keenan and Pernell

assisted Dr. Irwin Ruth, Adolph's son, in searching, but Keenan and Pernell weren't going to give

up what they knew, and they didn't want to become suspects in a murder investigation, even though

they probably were being thought of as suspects at that time.

The pressure must have been intense.

They were probably shocked when Ruth's skull turned up a few miles from where they had left Ruth on the mesa.

Then they were probably doubly surprised when Barclay and Sheriff Deputy Adams, who were also searching, found the remains, a month later,

only a quarter of a mile from where the skull had been found.

What they didn't know was that when Barclay, Adams, and the three men searching with them

found the remains, along with the maps, still intact, that the five went searching on Peter's Mesa,

but found nothing.

They found a cave with nothing in it, and never found a mine.

We instantly assumed they were searching for gold, but they might just have been searching

for any evidence of foul play and tracks belonging to Ruth.

At some point, Walter Gassler, a close friend of the Barclays, was told by Barclay that

...