Then MacRae leaned over his saddle-horn and made a wry face at them.

"Hunt, confound you," he said, almost cheerfully. "We'll give you some hunting to do before you're through with us."



CHAPTER XIV.

A CLOSE CALL.

We were standing in a brushy pocket on the side of a hill, and as there was no immediate danger of our being seen, MacRae continued, by the aid of the glasses, to follow the movements of our would-be captors.

"D'you know that plunder can't be far away; those fellows haven't had much time to make their cache," he reflected, more to himself than to me. "I wonder how they accounted to Lessard for us. Just think of it—somewhere within twenty miles of us there's in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars of stolen money, planted till they can get it safely; and the men that got away with it are helping the law to run us down. That's a new feature of the case; one, I must say, that I didn't look for."

He lowered the glasses, and regarded me soberly.

"They fight fire with fire in a grass country," he observed. "The Mounted Police are a hard formation to buck against—but I've a mind to see this thing to a finish. How do you feel about it, Sarge? Will you go through?"

"All the way and back again," I promised recklessly. I wasn't sure of what he had in mind, but I knew him—and seeing that we were in the same boat, I thought it fitting that we should sink or swim together.

"We'll come out on top yet," he confidently asserted. "Meantime we'd better locate some secluded spot and give our nags a chance to fill up on grass and be fresh for to-morrow; we're apt to have a hard day."

"It wouldn't be a bad scheme to fill ourselves at the same time," I suggested. "I'm feeling pretty vacant inside. The first bunch of buffalo that has a fat calf along is going to hear from me."

"If we can get over this ridge without being seen, there's a canyon with some cottonwoods and a spring in it. That will be as good a place to hole up for the night as we can find," Mac decided. "And there will likely be some buffalo near there."

So we ascended cautiously to the top of the divide, keeping in the coulees as much as possible, for we knew that other field-glasses would be focused on the hills. Once over the crest, we halted and watched for riders coming our way. But none appeared. Once I thought I glimpsed a moving speck on the farther bank of Lost River. MacRae brought the glasses to bear, and said it was two Policemen jogging toward camp. Then we were sure that our flight had not been observed, and we dropped into a depression that gradually deepened to a narrow-bottomed canyon. Two miles down this we came to the spring of which MacRae had spoken, a tiny stream issuing from a crevice at the foot of the bank. What was equally important, a thick clump of cottonwood and willow furnished tolerably secure concealment.

The fates smiled on us in the matter of food very shortly. I'm not enamored of a straight meat diet as a rule, but that evening I was in no mood to carp at anything half-way eatable. While we were on our stomachs gratefully stowing away a draught of the cool water, I heard a buffalo bull lift his voice in challenge to another far down the canyon. We tied our horses out of sight in the timber and stole in the direction of the sound. A glorious bull-fight was taking place when we got within shooting-distance, the cows and calves forming a noisy circle about the combatants, each shaggy brown brute bawling with all the strength of bovine lungs; in that pandemonium of bellowing and trampling I doubt if the report of Mac's carbine could have been heard two hundred yards away. The shot served to break up the fight and scatter the herd, however, and we returned to the cottonwoods with the hind-quarter of a fat calf.

Hungry as we were, we could hardly bolt raw meat, so, taking it for granted that no one was likely to ride up on us, we built a fire in the grove, being careful to feed it with dry twigs that would make little smoke. Over this we toasted bits of meat on the end of a splinter, and presently our hunger was appeased. Then we blotted out the fire, and, stretching ourselves on the ground, had recourse to the solace of tobacco.

The longer we laid there the more curious did I become as to what line of action MacRae purposed to follow. He lay on his back, silent, staring straight up at the bit of sky that showed through the branches above, and I'd just reached the point of asking, when he sat up and forestalled my questions.

"This is going to be risky business, Sarge," he began. "But so far as I can see, there is only one way that we can hope to get the thing straightened out. If we can get hold of Hicks or Bevans, any one of the four, in fact, I think we can make him tell us all we need to know. It's the only chance for you and Lyn to get your money back, and for me to square myself."

"I shouldn't think," I put in resentfully, "that you'd want to square yourself, after the dirty way you've been treated. I'd as soon take to herding sheep, or washing dirty clothes like a Chinaman, as be a member of the Mounted Police if what I've seen in the last ten days is a fair sample of what a man can expect."

"Fiddlesticks!" Mac impatiently exclaimed. "You don't know what you're talking about. I tell you a man in the Police, if he has any head at all, can control his own destiny. You'll be a heap more sane when you get that old, wild-west notion, that every man should be a law unto himself, out of your head. I'll venture to say that the Northwest will be a safer and more law-abiding place five years from now than south of the line will be in twenty—and the men in red coats will make it so. Why, I wouldn't miss helping tame this country for half a dozen such scrapes as I'm in now. This is merely the result of a rotten spot in the personnel, a rotten spot that will soon be cut out if things come about logically; it isn't the fault of the system. There never was any great movement in developing a new country that didn't have a quota of damned rascals to eliminate from within itself. If you didn't have such a perverted idea of independence, you'd see that I'm in no danger of losing either my identity or my self-respect simply because I've become a unit in a body of six hundred fighting-men. I don't intend to remain in the insignificant-unit class."

"Your intentions," I interrupted, "will cut a mighty small figure if your friend Lessard gets hold of you in the next day or two."

"That's the melancholy truth," he returned seriously. "I imagine we'd get a pretty rough deal; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that troop has received orders, by now, to shoot first and arrest afterward. Still, I'm willing to gamble that if we rode into Fort Walsh and gave ourselves up, it would only be a matter of a few weeks in the guardhouse for us before the thing was cleared up."

"Maybe," I responded skeptically. "If that's your belief, why don't you act accordingly?"

"Because, confound it, that's just where they want to get us," he declared. "Once we were safely penned, they'll drift, and neither you nor Lyn Rowan nor the government would ever lay eyes on that bundle of money again. I have a theory—but what's vastly more important, I think those fellows can hardly get out of the country with their plunder without crossing trails with us. It was smooth business to set the dogs on us. I don't quite sabe—well, I do, too. You can probably realize just how headquarters would take the sort of yarn we'd spin if we dashed in and told them the truth. But I think we're smart enough to upset these fellows' calculations. Lord! wouldn't it be a stroke of business if we could trap that collection of buccaneers? Frankly, that would be the biggest thing that ever came my way."

"It would be equally a stroke of business if they happen to trap us," I reminded.

"They won't," he asserted confidently. "We can't afford to let them. We've inflicted a compound fracture on established law, and until we can make the outcome justify our actions, we're compelled, in self-defense, to avoid being caught. It may be a dubious undertaking, but as I see it the only thing for us is to hang on the flank of these man-hunters till we can lay hold of one of that red-handed quartette. According to Burky, two of them, at least, are in that troop. Probably the others are. And knowing that bunch as well as I do, I don't think they'll lift the plunder and quit the country till they can go together. Even if we can't get hold of one of them, we can keep track of their movements, and if they do lift their cache and pull out, why, that would be as good as we want. I wouldn't ask anything better than to get a fair chance at that bunch with the stolen money on them."

I'll admit that, soberly considered, MacRae's plan did look exceeding risky. No one could appreciate better than ourselves the unpleasant possibilities that stared us in the face. But things had narrowed to a point where only two courses were open to us—one, to throw up our hands and quit the jurisdiction of the Mounted Police, which involved desertion on MacRae's part, and on mine a chicken-hearted abandonment of La Pere's trust in me (for, rightly or wrongly, I was given over to the feeling that on me alone rested the responsibility for the loss or recovery of La Pere's money); the other, to take any measure, no matter how desperate, that would unravel the tangle. All things considered, the latter was the logical choice. And the plan Mac had put forth seemed as feasible as any.

"We'll have to proceed on the faro-bank formula that all bets go as they lay," I said lightly. "There's no use anticipating things disagreeable or otherwise; we'll simply have to take them as they come."

By this time dusk was upon us. We picketed the horses in the open bottom where grass was more plentiful than in the brush, and settled ourselves to sleep. Fortunately, the aftermath of that blistering day was a fairly warm night. By spreading over us the heavy woolen blankets the Mounted Police use under their saddles, we slept in comfort. Long before dawn, however, we arose, built a fire, and breakfasted on buffalo veal, at the same time broiling a good supply and stowing it in our pockets to serve the rest of the day. Then, with darkness still obscuring our movements, we saddled and rode over the ridge and down into Lost River, crossing that ancient waterway before the first glimmer of light in the east.

Day found us dismounted in the head of a coulee where we could spy on the Police camp from a distance of three miles, more or less. About sunrise the troop left camp in a body, later spreading fanwise over the prairies. Once a party trotted by within a half-mile of us, but no one of the four men we wanted to see was in the squad.

Until after the noon hour we laid perdu in the hollow, no wiser for our watching. Then I saw a number of riders debouch from the camp, and at once trained the glasses on them. At first I couldn't distinguish any particular face among so many shifting forms, but presently they split in two bodies, and these again subdivided; and in the bunch coming toward us I recognized three men, Lessard, unmistakable in his black uniform, Hicks, and Bevans. I turned the glasses over to MacRae then.

"I thought probably some more of our friends would show up," he said, after a quick survey. "With those two in sight the chances are that all four are with the troop. The other fellows in that squad are just plain buck Policemen. Confound them, I wish——Aha, by Jupiter! the big chief is turning off those two."

As Mac spoke I saw the two men I had spotted as Hicks and Bevans swing away from the rest and angle toward Lost River. From our vantage point we watched them come abreast and pass us at a distance well within a mile. The others turned south, directly away from us.

"Now," Mac coolly declared, "here's where we get the chance we want, if we're lucky. We'll keep parallel with these gentlemen, and if they get out of touch with the rest we'll make a try at nailing them. Be careful, though, how you show yourself; there's at least fifty of these peacemakers within four or five miles, and a shot or a yell will bring them on a high run."

Hicks and Bevans, whatever their destination, were in no haste. They rode at a walk most of the time, and we were forced to keep the same pace. It was slow work poking along those coulee-bottoms, now and then making a risky sneak to ground, whence we could get a clear view of the game we were stalking so assiduously.

Progressing in this manner we finally reached the breaks that ran down to Lost River, not a great distance from where MacRae and I had kicked over the traces of legally constituted authority the previous day. Here we had to dodge over a stretch of ground barren of concealment, and to do so waited till such time as Hicks and Bevans were themselves in the depths of a coulee.

When next we caught sight of our men—well, to be exact, we saw only one, and that was Bevans. He had stopped his horse on top of a knoll not more than four hundred yards to the north of us, and was standing up in his stirrups staring over the ears of his horse at a point down the slope. Hicks had disappeared. Nor did we see aught of him during the next few minutes that we spent glaring at Bevans and the surrounding territory.

"I wonder if that square-jawed devil has got a glimpse of us and is trying a lone-handed stalk himself?" I hazarded.

MacRae shook his head. "Not likely," he said. "If it was Paul Gregory, now, that's the very thing he'd do. I don't quite sabe this performance."

We watched for sign of Hicks, but without result. Then Bevans got under way and moved along at the same poky gait as before. When he had gone some distance we took to the hollow. Twenty minutes jogging brought us into a stretch of rough country, a series of knobs and ridges cut by innumerable coulees. Here it became necessary to locate Mr. Bevans again. Once more he was revealed on top of an elevation, studying the surrounding landscape, and he was still alone.

"Where the mischief can Hicks have got to?" Mac growled. "We really ought to smell him out before we do anything."

"Look, now," I said. "Don't you suppose Bevans is waiting for him?"

Bevans had dismounted and stretched himself on the ground in the shade of his horse. But he was not napping; on the contrary, he was very much on the alert, for his head turned slowly from side to side, quiescent as he seemed; there would be little movement pass unobserved within range of that pair of eyes.

"Maybe he is," MacRae replied. "Anyhow, I think we'd better wait a while ourselves."

For nearly an hour Bevans kept his position. Hicks, if he were in the vicinity, kept closely under cover. Bevans had all the best of the situation, so far as being able to keep a lookout was a factor; the opposite bank of the coulee we were in towered high above us, and shut off our view in that direction. And we didn't dare risk showing ourselves on high ground. Finally, after what seemed an interminable period of waiting, Mac's patience frazzled out and he declared for action.

"We're doing no good here," he said. "Hicks or no Hicks, I'm going to have a try at making connections with his nibs on that hill. I think the coulee right under his perch is an arm of the one we're in; runs in somewhere below. Maybe we can get to him that way. It's worth trying."

As MacRae had surmised, our canyon forked below. We turned the point after making sure that Bevans couldn't see us unless he moved. But the uncertain beggar had moved, and moved to some purpose we quickly learned; for when we next laid eyes on him he was out on the extreme point of the little bench, opposite the mouth of the coulee we had ascended, whirling his horse about in cramped circles. And in answer to his signaling a full score of red-jacketed riders were galloping down the ridges, a human comb that bade fair to rake us from our concealment in a scant number of minutes.

"Looks bad for you and me, old boy," MacRae grinned. "I see now what brother Hicks has been up to. But they haven't got us yet. Whatever happens, Sarge, don't get excited and go to shooting. We can't win out that way, against this combination. If we can't dodge and outrun them we'll have to take our medicine. Down the coulee is our only chance. There's only Bevans to stop us; and it won't really matter if we do put his light out—be one thief less at the finish."

Bevans, however, made no demonstration. We just got a mere glimpse of him, and I imagine he was nowise anxious to try heading us off, which he could not do without coming into the open. Whipping around the crooked bends at top speed, he had little chance to pot us, and I think he had an idea that we would cheerfully pot him if he got in the way.

We mystified them somewhat, and gained considerable ground, by that sudden dash, but it wasn't long before they were in full cry like a pack of hounds, and the carbines began to pop in a futile sort of way. Mac had not been far astray when he hazarded the guess that the troop would have orders to shoot on sight, for they began to peck at us the moment we came in view. We had just enough of a start, though, and our mounts were just good enough and fresh enough to gradually draw away from them. And as we were then out of the network of protecting coulees and pattering over the comparative level of Lost River bottoms, I was very glad that we were beyond carbine-range and that it was near sundown.

"Barring accidents, they can't get up on us now," Mac declared. "So I think it'll be wise to keep south along the open bottoms. If they see us splitting the breeze down Lost River, they won't look for us to bob up from the opposite quarter to-morrow. When it gets dark and we're far enough ahead, we can swing into the hills. That'll fool them plenty for to-night. They'll probably try tracking us to-morrow, but I reckon they'll find that a tough job."

They kept persistently after us, and we were more or less on the anxious seat, till it did get dark. Then we turned sharp to the left and gained high ground once more, congratulating ourselves on so easily getting out of a ticklish place. If we hadn't moved up on Bevans they might have surrounded us before we got wind of them. But we'd beaten them fairly, and so we looked back through the dark and laughed; though I'm sure we had no particular cause for merriment.



CHAPTER XV.

PIEGAN TAKES A HAND.

I don't believe a detailed account of how we spent that night would be classed as wildly interesting; if memory serves me right, it was a bleak, hungry, comfortless passage of time, and I am willing to let it go at that. We managed to secure a buffalo steak for breakfast. No man needed to starve in that country during those days of plentiful game; but we were handicapped by the necessity of doing our hunting in a very surreptitious manner. However, we didn't starve; the worst we experienced was an occasional period of acute hunger, when we didn't dare fire a shot for fear of revealing our whereabouts.

Nor can I see, now, where we accomplished anything beyond killing time the following day. To be sure, we scouted faithfully, and once or twice came perilously near being caught by squads of Mounted Police appearing from unexpected quarters. Our scouting was so much wasted energy. We got nowhere near the Police camp; we failed to get a glimpse of any of our men; and so, for all we knew to the contrary, they might have loaded the plunder and decamped for other regions. When night again spread its concealing folds about us, we had only one tangible fact as a reward for our exertions—Lessard had returned to Fort Walsh—presumably. Early that morning, escorted by four troopers, he had crossed Lost River and disappeared in the direction of the post. Of his identity the field-glasses assured us. But that was the sum total of our acquired knowledge, and it brought us no nearer the breaking up of the Goodell-Gregory combination or the recovery of the loot.

So for a third night we were compelled to seek sanctuary in the silent canyons. And the third day brought us no better luck. At evening we were constrained to admit that we were simply butting our heads against a wall—with an ever-present possibility of the wall toppling over and crushing us flat.

Altogether, we spent five consecutive days hovering around that collection of law-enforcers, in imminent risk of capture. Each night in the open was more cheerless than the preceding one, and each day brought the same sense of futile effort at its close. Twice during that time the Police camp moved, and we had to be wary, for they scoured the surrounding territory with painstaking thoroughness. But we felt that there was yet a chance for us to turn the tables, for Goodell was still with the troop, and also Gregory; we saw them both the morning of the fifth day.

"It beats me why they're pecking around over the same ground so much," Mac observed. "I suppose they're looking for us, but I'm pretty sure they haven't had a glimpse of us for three days, and so I don't see why they should think we're still hanging around. Logically, if we'd got that bunch of money, we'd be getting out of the country. Lord, I do wish those four would show their hand—make a move of some kind."

"So do I," I seconded. "We're not doing much good that I can see. And I think I could play the game with a heap more enthusiasm if I had some coffee and white bread under my belt once or twice a day. We'll go hungry, and likewise get a devilish good soaking to-night, or I'm badly mistaken."

We had checked our horses on the summit of the divide that ran down to Lost River on one side and on the other sloped away to the southeast. The wind that was merely a breath at sundown had gathered strength to itself and now swept across the hill-tops with a resonant roar, piling layer on layer of murky low-flying clouds into a dense mass overhead. Night, black as the bottomless pit, walled us in. A fifty-mile breeze lashed us spitefully, tugging at our shirt-sleeves and drowning our voices, while we halted on that pinnacle. By the dank breath of the wind, the ominous overcasting of the sky, all the little signs that a prairie-wise man learns to read, we knew that a storm was close at hand. Shelter there was none, nor food, and we stood in need of both.

"You're right," MacRae admitted. "But how are we going to help it? We'll just have to grin and tough it out."

"I'll tell you how we'll help it," I proposed recklessly, shouting to make myself heard above the noisy wind. "We can go down and tackle that bull-train we saw pulling along the foot of the ridge. They'll know we're on the dodge, but that won't make any difference to them. I know nearly every bull-whacker that freights out of Benton, and they're a pretty white bunch. If it's Baker's outfit, especially, we'll be welcome as flowers in May. You said they'd likely camp at that spring—Ten Mile, isn't it? What d'ye think? Shall we go down and take a chance? I sure don't like the look of things up here. It's going to be a rip-snorter of a night, once it cuts loose."

"I'm ready to go against nearly anything, right now," MacRae frankly owned. "If you think it's worth trying, why, it's a go with me."

"Let's drift, then," I declared; and straightway we turned our horses broadside to the wind and tore away for Ten Mile Spring and the creature comforts I knew were to be had at the white-sheeted wagons we saw crawling slowly along the Stony Crossing trail late that afternoon.

As Mac had calculated, the freight-train was camped at the Spring; and it was a mighty good thing for us that MacRae knew that country so well or we would never have found them, short of riding our horses to a standstill. Long before we got there the deep-throated thunder was growling over us, and the clouds spat occasional flurries of rain.

We made the freight camp, however, just as the storm cut loose in deadly earnest. Luckily for me, it was Baker's outfit. I took a long chance, and stalked boldly in. And here I was treated to a surprise, one that afforded both MacRae and me considerable food for thought; Horner, the wagon-boss, a man I knew well, frankly declared that no one at Fort Walsh had heard that we were accused of robbery and murder. For that matter, he said, he didn't care a tinker's dam if we were; he had grub and bedding and we were welcome to both.

So with this assurance of good-will we picketed our horses close by the circle of wagons—where we could get to them quickly should any of Lessard's troop happen into the camp—and prepared to devour the supper Horner's good-natured cook bestirred himself to make ready. As we filled our plates and squatted under the canvas that sheltered the cook's Dutch-oven layout, a man under the hind end of the chuck-wagon propped himself on elbow and shouted greeting to us. In the semi-dark I couldn't see his face, but I recognized the voice. It was our friend of the whisky-keg episode, Piegan Smith.

"Hello, thar, fellers!" he bellowed (Piegan always spoke to a man as if he were a hundred yards away). "Say, Flood, yuh ain't been t' Benton an' back already, have yuh?"

"Faith, no," I owned, between mouthfuls, "and it's hard telling when I will get there. How come you to be pacing along this trail, Piegan? Gone to freighting in your old age?"

"Not what yuh could notice, I ain't," he snorted. "Catch me whackin' bulls for a livin'! Naw, I sold my outfit to a goggle-eyed pilgrim that has an idea buffalo hides is prime all summer. So I'm headed for Benton to see if I kain't stir up a little excitement now an' then, to pass away the time till the fall buffalo-run begins."

"If you're looking for excitement, Piegan," MacRae put in dryly, "you'd better come along with us. We'll introduce you to more different brands of it in the next few days than Benton could furnish in six months."

"Maybe," Piegan laughed. "But not the brand I'm a-thirstin' for."

Mac was on the point of replying when there came a most unexpected interruption. I looked up at sound of a startled exclamation, and beheld the round African physog of Lyn Rowan's colored mammy. But she had no eyes for me; she stood like a black statue just within the firelight, a tin bucket in one hand, staring over my head at MacRae.

"Lawd a-me!" she gulped out. "Ef Ah ain't sho'ly laid mah ol' eyes on Marse Go'don. Is dat sho' 'nuf yo', wid yo' red coat an' all?"

"It sure is, Mammy," Mac answered. "How does it happen you're traveling this way? I thought you were at Fort Walsh. Is Miss Lyn along?"

"She suttinly am," Mammy Thomas emphatically asserted. "Yo' doan catch dis chile a-mosyin' obeh dese yeah plains by huh lonesome. Since dey done brought Miss Lyn's paw in an' planted him, she say dey ain't no use foh huh to stay in dis yeah redcoat country no longer; so we all packed up an' sta'ted back foh de lan' ob de free."

MacRae, I am sure, was no more than half through his meal. But he swallowed the coffee in his cup, and tossed his eating-implements into the cook's wash-pan.

"I'll go with you, Mammy," he told her. "I want to see Miss Lyn myself."

"Jes' a minute, Marse Go'don," she said. "Ah's got to git some wa'm watah f'om dis yeah Mr. Cook."

The cook signaled her to help herself from the kettle that bubbled over the fire, and she filled her bucket and disappeared, chattering volubly, MacRae at her heels.

I finished my supper more deliberately. There was no occasion for me to gobble my food and rush off to talk with Lyn Rowan. MacRae, I suspected, would be inclined to monopolize her for the rest of the evening. So I ate leisurely, and when done crawled under the wagon beside Piegan Smith and gave myself up to cigarettes and meditation, while over his pipe Piegan expressed a most unflattering opinion of the weather.

It was a dirty night, beyond question; one that gave color to Piegan's prophesy that Milk River would be out of its banks if the storm held till morning, and that Baker's freight-train would be stalled by mud and high water for three or four days. I was duly thankful for the shelter we had found. A tarpaulin stretched from wheel to wheel of the wagon shut out the driving rain that fled in sheets before the whooping wind. The lightning-play was hidden behind the drifting cloud-bank, for no glint of it penetrated the gloom; but the cavernous thunder-bellow roared intermittently, and a fury of rain drove slantwise against sodden earth and creaking wagon-tops.

If the next two hours were as slow in passing, to MacRae and Lyn, as they seemed to me, the two of them had time to dissect and discuss the hopes and fears and errors of their whole existence, and formulate a new philosophy of life. Piegan broke a long silence to remark sagely that if Mac was putting in all this time talking to that "yaller-headed fairy," he was a plumb good stayer.

"They're old friends," I told him. "Mac knew her long ago; and all her people."

"Well, he's in darned agreeable company," Piegan observed. "She's a mighty fine little woman, far's I've seen. I dunno's I'd know when t' jar loose m'self, if I knowed her an' she didn't object t' me hangin' around. But seein' we ain't in on the reception, we might as well get under the covers, eh? I reckon most everybody in camp's turned in."

Piegan had a bulky roll of bedding under the wagon. Spread to its full width, it was ample for three ordinary men. We had just got out of our outside garments and were snuggling down between the blankets when Mac came slopping through the puddles that were now gathering in every depression. He crawled under the wagon, shed some of his clothing, and got into bed with us. But he didn't lie down until he had rolled a cigarette, and then instead of going to sleep he began talking to Piegan, asking what seemed to me a lot of rather trifling questions. I was nearly worn out, and their conversation was nowise interesting to me, so listening to the monotonous drone of their voices and the steady beat of falling rain, I went to sleep.

Before a great while I wakened; to speak truthfully, the ungentle voice of Piegan Smith brought me out of dreamland with a guilty start. MacRae was still sitting up in bed, and from that part of his speech which filtered into my ears I gathered that he was recounting to Piegan the tale of our adventures during the past week. I thought that odd, for Mac was a close-mouthed beggar as a general thing; but there was no valid reason why he should not proclaim the story from the hill-tops if he chose, so I rolled over and pulled the blankets above my head—to protect my ear-drums if Piegan's astonishment should again find verbal expression.

The cook's battle-cry of "Grub pi-i-ile" wakened me next. A thin line of yellowish-red in the east betokened the birth of another day, a day born in elemental turmoil, for the fierce wind was no whit abated, nor the sullen, driving rain.

"I've enlisted a recruit," MacRae told me in an undertone, as we ate breakfast. "It struck me that if we had somebody along that we could trust to ride into that Police camp with his mouth shut and his ears and eyes open, we might find out something that would show us how the land lay; even if he accomplished nothing else, he could learn if those fellows are still with the troop."

"That was why you were making that talk to Piegan last night, was it?" I said. "Well, from what little I've seen and heard of him, he'd be a whole team if he's willing to throw in with us and take a chance." Which was perfectly true. Old Piegan had the reputation, on both sides of the line, of loving to jump into a one-sided fight for the pure joy of evening up the odds. He was a boisterous, rough-spoken mortal, but his heart was big, and set in the right place. And, though I didn't know it then, he had a grouch against Hicks, who had once upon a time run him into Fort Walsh in irons on an unjustified suspicion of whisky-running. That was really what started Piegan in the smuggling business—a desire to play even, after getting what he called a "damn rough deal."

"He's willing enough," Mac assured me. "Aside from the fact that most any white man would go out of his way to help a girl like Lyn Rowan, there's the certainty that the Canadian government will be pretty generous to anybody who helps round up that crooked bunch and restore the stolen money. Piegan snorted when I told him we were on the dodge—that they were trying to nail us for holding up the paymaster. That's the rottenest part of the whole thing. I think—but then we've got to do more than think to get ourselves out of this jackpot."

He stopped abruptly, and went on with his breakfast. By the time we were done eating, the gray light of a bedraggled morning revealed tiny lakes in every hollow, and each coulee and washout was a miniature torrent of muddy water—with a promise of more to come in the murky cloud-drift that overcast the sky. Horner sent out two men to relieve the night-herders, remarked philosophically "More rain, more rest," and retired to the shelter of the cook's canvas. His drivers sought cover in and under the wagons, where they had spent the night. But though mud and swollen streams might hold back the cumbrous freight outfit, it did not follow that heavy going would delay the flitting of the thieves, if they planned such a move; nor would it prevent the Mounted Police from descending on the Baker outfit if they thought we had taken refuge there. So we held council of war with Piegan, after which we saddled up and made ready to tackle the soaked prairies.

While we were packing grub and bedding on Piegan's extra horse, Lyn joined us, wrapped from head to heel in a yellow slicker. And by the way Mac greeted her I knew that they had bridged that gap of five years to their mutual satisfaction; that she was loath to see him set out on a hazardous mission she presently made plain.

"Let it go, Gordon," she begged. "There's been too much blood shed over that wretched gold already. Let them have it. I know something dreadful will happen if you follow it up."

MacRae smiled and shook his head stubbornly. "I'm too deep in, little woman, to quit now," he told her patiently. "If it was only a matter of your money, we could get along without it. But Sarge stands to lose a lot, if we give up at this stage of the game. And besides, I'd always be more or less on the dodge if this thing isn't cleared up. I've got to see it through. You wouldn't have me sneak out of this country like a whipped pup, would you? There's too big an account to settle with those fellows, Lyn; it's up to us, if we're men. I can't draw back now, till it's settled for good and all, one way or the other."



"Oh, I know how you feel about it," she sighed. "But even if it comes out all right, you're still tied here. You know they won't let you go."

"Don't you worry about that," he comforted. "I'll cross that bridge fast enough when I come to it. You go on to Benton, like a good girl. I feel it in my bones that we're going to have better luck from now on. And if we do, you'll see us ride down the Benton hill one of these fine mornings. Anyway, I'll send you word by Piegan before long."

Piegan was already mounted, watching us whimsically from under the dripping brim of his hat. I shook hands with Lyn, and swung into my saddle. And when Mac had kissed her, we crowded through a gap in the circle of wagons, waved a last good-by, and rode away in the steadily falling rain.



CHAPTER XVI.

IN THE CAMP OF THE ENEMY.

From then until near noon we worked our passage if ever men did. On the high benches it was not so bad for the springy, porous turf soaked up the excessive moisture and held its firmness tolerably well. But every bank of any steepness meant a helter-skelter slide to its foot, with either a bog-hole or swimming water when we got there, and getting up the opposite hill was like climbing a greased pole—except that there was no purse at the top to reward our perseverance. Between the succeeding tablelands lay gumbo flats where the saturated clay hung to the feet of our horses like so much glue, or opened under hoof-pressure and swallowed them to the knees. So that our going was slow and wearisome.

About mid-day the storm gradually changed from unceasing downpour to squally outbursts, followed by banks of impenetrable fog that would shut down on us solidly for a few minutes, then vanish like the good intentions of yesterday; the wind switched a few points and settled to a steady gale which lashed the spent clouds into hurrying ships of the air, scudding full-sail before the droning breeze. Before long little patches of blue began to peep warily through narrow spaces above. The wind-blown rain-makers lost their leaden hue and became a soft pearl-gray, all fleecy white around the edges. Then bars of warm sunshine poured through the widening rifts and the whole rain-washed land lay around us like a great checker-board whereon black cloud-shadows chased each other madly over prairies yellow with the hot August sun and gray-green in the hollows where the grass took on a new lease of life.

That night we camped west of Lost River, lying prudently in a brush-grown coulee, for we were within sight of the Police camp—by grace of the field-glasses. At sundown the ground had dried to such a degree that a horse could lift foot without raising with it an abnormal portion of the Northwest. The wind veered still farther to the south, blowing strong and warm, sucking greedily the surplus moisture from the saturated earth. So we resolved ourselves into a committee of ways and means and decided that since the footing promised to be normal in the morning the troop would likely scatter out, might even move camp, and therefore it behooved us to get in touch with them at once; accordingly Piegan rode away to spend the night in the Police tents, with a tale of horses strayed from Baker's outfit to account for his wandering. From our nook in the ridge he could easily make it by riding a little after dark.

"Goodell and Gregory and Hicks you know," said MacRae. "Bevans is a second edition of Hicks, only not so tall by two or three inches—a square-shouldered, good-looking brute, with light hair and steel-gray eyes and a short brown mustache. He has an ugly scar—a knife-cut—across the back of one hand; you can't mistake him if you get sight of him. Stick around the camp in the morning if you can manage it, till they start, and notice which way all those fellows go. The sooner we get our hands on one or more of them the better we'll be able to get at the bottom of this; I reckon we could find a way to make him talk. Of course, if anything out of the ordinary comes up you'll have to use your own judgment; you know just as much as we do, now. And we'll wait here for you unless they jump us up. In that case we'll try and round up somewhere between here and Ten Mile."

"Right yuh are, old-timer," Piegan responded. "I'll do the best I can. Yuh want t' keep your eye glued t' that peep-glass in the mornin', and not overlook no motions. Yuh kain't tell what might come up. So-long!" And away he went.

When he was gone from sight we built a tiny fire in the scrub—for it was twilight, at which time keen eyes are needed to detect either smoke or fire, except at close range—and cooked our supper. That done, we smothered what few embers remained and laid us down to sleep. That wasn't much of a success, however. We had got into action again, with more of a chance to bring about certain desired results, and inevitably we laid awake reckoning up the chances for and against a happy conclusion to our little expedition.

"It's a wonder," I said, as the thought occurred to me, "that Lyn quit Walsh so soon. Why didn't she stay a while longer and see if these famous preservers of the peace wouldn't manage to gather in the men who killed her father? Why, hang it! she didn't even wait to see if you found that stuff at the Stone—and Lessard must have told her that somebody had gone to look for it."

Mac snapped out an oath in the dark. "Lessard simply lost his head," he growled. "Damn him! He told her that he had sent us to look for it, and that we had taken advantage of the opportunity to rob the paymaster. Oh, he painted us good and black, I tell you. Then he had the nerve to ask her to marry him. And he was so infernally insistent about it, that she was forced to pull up and get away from the post in self-defense. That's why she left so suddenly."

Well, I couldn't find it in my heart to blame Lessard for that last, so long as he acted the gentleman about it. In fact, it was to be expected of almost any man who happened to be thrown in contact with Lyn Rowan for any length of time. I can't honestly lay claim to being absolutely immune myself; only my attack had come years earlier, and had not been virulent enough to make me indulge in any false hopes. It's no crime for an unattached man to care for a woman; but naturally, MacRae would be prejudiced against any one who laid siege to a castle he had marked for his own. I had disliked that big, autocratic major, too, from our first meeting, but it was pure instinctive antipathy on my part, sharpened, perhaps, by his outrageous treatment of MacRae.

We dropped the subject forthwith. Lessard's relation to the problem was a subject we had so far shied around. It was beside the point to indulge in footless theory. We knew beyond a doubt who were the active agents in every blow that had been struck, and the first move in the tangle we sought to unravel was to lay hands on them, violently if necessary, and through them recover the stolen money. Only by having that in our possession—so MacRae argued—could we hope to gain credible hearing, and when that was accomplished whatever part Lessard had played would develop of itself.

By and by, my brain wearied with fruitless speculation, I began to doze, and from then till daylight I slept in five-minute snatches.

Dawn brought an access of caution, and we forbore building a fire. Our horses, which we had picketed in the open overnight, we saddled and tied out of sight in the brush. Then we ate a cold breakfast and betook ourselves to the nearest hill-top, where, screened by a huddle of rocks, we could watch for the coming of Piegan Smith; and, incidentally, keep an eye on the redcoat camp, though the distance was too great to observe their movements with any degree of certainty. The most important thing was to avoid letting a bunch of them ride up on us unheralded.

"They're not setting the earth afire looking for anybody," Mac declared, when the sun was well started on its ante-meridian journey and there was still no sign of riders leaving the cluster of tents. "Ah, there they go."

A squad of mounted men in close formation, so that their scarlet jackets stood out against the dun prairie like a flame in the dark, rode away from the camp, halted on the first hill an instant, then scattered north, south, and west. After that there was no visible stir around the white-sheeted commissary.

"They're not apt to disturb us if they keep going the opposite direction," Mac reflected, his eyes conning them through the glasses. "And neither do they appear to be going to move camp. Therefore, we'll be likely to see Piegan before long."

But it was some time ere we laid eyes on that gentleman. We didn't see him leaving the camp—which occasioned us no uneasiness, because a lone rider could very well get away from there unseen by us, especially if he was circumspect in his choice of routes, as Piegan would probably be. Only when two hours had dragged by, and then two more, did we begin to get anxious. I was lying on my back, staring up at the sky, all sorts of possible misfortune looming large on my mental horizon, when MacRae, sweeping the hills with the glasses, grunted satisfaction, and I turned my head in time to see Piegan appear momentarily on high ground a mile to the south of us.

"What's he doing off there?" I wondered. "Do you suppose somebody's following him, that he thinks it necessary to ride clear around us?"

"Hardly; but you can gamble that he isn't riding for his health," Mac responded. "Anyway, you'll soon know; he's turning."

Piegan swung into the coulee at a fast lope, and we stole carefully down to meet him. In the brush that concealed our horses Piegan dismounted, and, seating himself tailor-fashion on the ground, began to fill his pipe.

"First thing," said he, "we're a little behind the times. Your birds has took wing and flew the coop."

"Took wing—how? And when?" we demanded.

"You'll sabe better, I reckon, if I tell yuh just how I made out," Piegan answered, after a pause to light his pipe. "When I got there last night they was most all asleep. But this mornin' I got a chance to size up the whole bunch, and nary one uh them jaspers I wanted t' see was in sight. So whilst we was eatin' breakfast I begins t' quiz, an', one way an' another, lets on I wanted t' see that Injun scout. One feller up an' tells me he guess I'll find the breed at Fort Walsh, most likely. After a while I hears more talk, an' by askin' a few innocent questions I gets next t' some more. Puttin' this an' that together, this here's the way she stacks up: Lessard, as you fellers took notice, went in t' Walsh, takin' several men with him, Gregory bein' among the lot. He leaves orders that these fellers behind are t' comb the country till he calls 'em off. Yesterday mornin', in the thick uh the storm, a buck trooper arrives from Walsh, bearin' instructions for Goodell, Hicks an' another feller, which I reckon is Bevans. So when she clears up a little along towards noon, these three takes a packadero layout an' starts, presumable for Medicine Lodge. An' that's all I found out from the Policemen."

"Scattered them around the country, eh?" Mac commented. "Damn it, we're just as far behind as ever."

"Hold your hosses a minute," Piegan grinned knowingly. "I said that was all I found out from the red jackets—but I did a little prognosticatin' on my own hook. I figured that if them fellers hit the trail yesterday afternoon as soon as the storm let up, they'd make one hell of a good plain track in this sloppy goin' an' I was curious t' see if they lit straight for the Lodge. So when the bunch got out quite a ways, I quits the camp an' swings round in a wide circle—an' sure enough they'd left their mark. Three riders an' two pack-hosses. Easy trackin'? Well, I should say! They'd cut a trail in them doby flats like a bunch uh gallopin' buffalo. Say, where is Medicine Lodge?"

"Oh, break away, Piegan," Mac impatiently exclaimed. "What are you trying to get at? You know where the Lodge is as well as I do."

"Well, I always thought I knowed where 'twas," Piegan retorted spiritedly, a wicked twinkle in his shrewd old eyes. "But it must 'a' changed location lately, for them fellers rode north a ways, an' then kept swingin' round till they was headin' due southeast. I follered their trail t' where yuh seen me turn this way, if yuh was watchin'. Poor devils"—Piegan grinned covertly while voicing this mock sympathy—"they must 'a' got lost, I reckon. It really ain't safe for such pilgrims t' be cavortin' over the prairies with all that boodle in their jeans. I reckon we'll just naturally have t' pike along after 'em an' take care of it ourselves. They ain't got such a rip-roarin' start of us—an' I'm the boy can foller that track from hell t' breakfast an' back again. So let's eat a bite, an' then straddle our caballos for some tall ridin'."



CHAPTER XVII.

A MASTER-STROKE OF VILLAINY.

Piegan shortly proved that he made no vain boast when he asserted his ability to follow their track. A lifetime on the plains, and a natural fitness for the life, had made him own brother to the Indian in the matter of nosing out dim trails. The crushing of a tuft of grass, a broken twig, all the half-hidden signs that the feet of horses and men leave behind, held a message for him; nothing, however slight, escaped his eagle eye. And he did it subconsciously, without perceptible effort. The surpassing skill of his tracking did not strike me forcibly at first, for I can read an open trail as well as the average cowman, and the mark of their passing lay plain before us; the veriest pilgrim, new come from graded roads and fenced pastures, could have counted the number of their steps—each hoof had stamped its impression in the soft loam as clearly as a steel die-cut in soaked leather. But that was where they had ridden while the land was still plastic from the rain. Farther, wind and sun had dried the ridge-turf to its normal firmness and baked the dobe flats till in places they were of their old flinty hardness. Yet Piegan crossed at a lope places where neither MacRae nor I could glimpse a sign—and when we would come again to soft ground the trail of the three would rise up to confront us, and bid us marvel at the keenness of his vision. He had a gift that we lacked.

We followed in the wake of Piegan Smith with what speed the coulee-gashed prairie permitted, and about three o'clock halted for half an hour to let our horses graze; we had been riding steadily over four hours, and it behooved us to have some thought for our mounts. Within ten minutes of starting again we dipped into a wide-bottomed coulee and came on the place where the three had made their first night-camp—a patch of dead ashes, a few half-burned sticks, and the close-cropped grass-plots where each horse had circled a picket-pin.

Beyond these obvious signs, there was nothing to see. Nothing, at least, that I could see except faint tracks leading away from the spot. These we had followed but a short distance when Piegan, who was scrutinizing the ground with more care than he had before shown, pulled up with an exclamation.

"Blamed if they ain't got company, from the look uh things," he grunted, squinting down. "I thought that was considerable of a trail for them t' make. You fellers wait here a minute. I want t' find out which way them tracks come in."

He loped back, swinging in north of the campground. While he was gone, MacRae and I leaned over in our saddles and scanned closely the grass-carpeted bottom-land. That the hoofs of passing horses had pressed down the rank growth of grass was plain enough, but whether the hoofs of six or a dozen we could only guess. Piegan turned, rode to where they had built their fire, circled the place, then came back to us.

"All right," he said. "I was sure there was more livestock left that campin'-place than we followed in. They come from the north—four hosses, two uh them rode an' the other two led, I think, from the way they heaved around a-crossin' a washout back yonder."

A mile or so farther we crossed a bare sandy stretch on the flat bottom of another coulee, and on its receptive surface the trail lay like a printed page—nine distinct, separate horse-tracks.

"Five riders an' four extra hosses, if I ain't read the sign wrong," Piegan casually remarked. "Say, we'll have our hands full if we bump into this bunch unexpected, eh?"

"They'll make short work of us if they get half a chance," Mac agreed. "But we'll make it a surprise party if we can."

From there on Piegan set a pace that taxed our horses' mettle—that was one consolation—we were well mounted. All three of us were good for a straightaway chase of a hundred miles if it came to a showdown. Piegan knew that we must do our trailing in daylight, and rode accordingly. He kept their trail with little effort, head cocked on one side like a saucy meadowlark, and whistled snatches of "Hell Among the Yearlin's," as though the prospect of a sanguinary brush with thieves was pleasing in the extreme.

The afternoon was on its last lap when we came in sight of Stony Crossing. The trail we followed wound along the crest of a ridge midway between the Crossing and Ten Mile Spring, where we had left Baker's outfit that rainy morning. The freighters had moved camp, but the mud and high water had held them, for we could see the white-sheeted wagons and a blur of cattle by the cottonwood grove where Hank Rowan had made his last stand. Presently we crossed the trail made by the string of wagons; it was fresh; made that morning, I judged. A little farther, on a line between the Crossing and the Spring, Piegan pulled up again, and this time the cause of his halting needed no explanation. The bunch had stopped and tarried there a few minutes, as the jumbled hoof-marks bore witness, and the track of two horses led away toward Ten Mile Spring.

"Darn it all!" Piegan grumbled. "Now, what d'yuh reckon's the meanin' uh that? Them two has lit straight for where Baker's layout was camped this mornin'. What for? Are they pullin' out uh the country with the coin? Or are they lookin' for you fellers?"

"Well"—MacRae thought a moment—"considering the care they've taken to cover up their movements, I don't see what other object they could have in view but making a smooth getaway. They've worked it nicely all around. You know that if there was anything they wanted they weren't taking any risk by going to any freight camp. We're the only men in the country that know why they are pulling out this way—and they know that we daren't go in and report it, because they've managed to put us on the dodge. They have reason to be sure that headquarters wouldn't for a minute listen to a yarn like we'd have to tell—they'd have time to ride to Mexico, while we sucked our thumbs in the guardhouse waiting for the rest of the Police to get wise by degrees."

"Then I tell yuh what let's do," Piegan abruptly decided. "I like t' know what's liable t' happen when I'm on a jaunt uh this kind. One of us better head in for the Crossin' an' find out for sure if any uh them fellers come t' the camp, an' what he wanted there. An' seein' nobody outside uh Horner knows I'm in on this play, I reckon I better go m'self. If there should happen t' be a stray trooper hangin' round there, the same would be mighty awkward for you fellers. So I'll go. You poke along the trail slow, an' I'll overhaul yuh."

"All right," MacRae agreed, and Piegan forthwith departed for the Crossing.

After Piegan left us we rode at a walk, and even then it was something of a task to follow the faint impression. In the course of an hour a cluster of dark objects appeared on the bench, coming rapidly toward us. MacRae brought the glasses to bear on them at once, for there was always the unpleasant possibility of Mounted Policemen cutting in on our trail; the riders of every post along the line were undoubtedly on the watch for us.

"It's Piegan and another fellow," Mac announced shortly. "They're leading two extra horses, and Piegan has changed mounts himself. I wonder what's up—they seem to be in a dickens of a hurry."

We got off and waited for them, wondering what the change of horses might portend. They swung down to us on a run, and it needed no second glance at the features of Piegan Smith to know that he brought with him a fresh supply of trouble. His scraggly beard was thrust forward aggressively, and his deep-set eyes fairly blazed between narrowed lids.

"Slap your saddles on them fresh hosses," he grated harshly from the back of a deep-chested, lean-flanked gray. "Let the others go—to hell if they want to!"

"What's up?" I asked sharply, and MacRae flung the same query over one shoulder as he fumbled at the tight-drawn latigo-knot.

Piegan rose in his stirrups and raised a clenched fist; the seamed face of him grew purple under its tan, and the words came out like the challenge of a range-bull.

"Them—them —— —— —— —— —— has got your girl!" he roared.

The latigo dropped from MacRae's hand. "What?" he turned on Piegan savagely, incredulously.

"I said it—I said it! Yuh heard me, didn't yuh!" Piegan shouted. "This mornin' about sunrise. That Hicks—the damned —— —— —— he come t' Baker's as they hooked up t' leave the Spring. He had a note for her, an' she dropped everything an' jumped on a hoss he'd brought an' rode away with him, cryin' when she left. He told Horner you'd bin shot resistin' arrest, an' wanted t' see her afore yuh cashed in. They ain't seen hide nor hair uh her since. Aw, don't stand starin' at me thataway. Hurry up! They ain't got twelve hours' start—an' by God I'll smell 'em out in the dark for this!"

It was like a knife-thrust in the back; such a devilish and unexpected turn of affairs that for half a second I had the same shuddery feeling that came to me the night I stooped over Hans Rutter and gasped at sight of what the fiends had done. MacRae whitened, but the full import of Piegan's words stunned him to silence. The bare possibility of Lyn Rowan being at the dubious mercy of those ruthless brutes was something that called for more than mere words. He hesitated only a moment, nervously twisting the saddle-strings with one hand, then straightened up and tore loose the cinch fastening.

After that outburst of Piegan's no one spoke. While Mac and I transferred our saddles to the Baker horses, Piegan swung down from his gray and, opening the pack on the horse we had been leading, took out a little bundle of flour and bacon and coffee and tied it behind the cantle of his saddle. A frying-pan and coffee-pot he tossed to me. Then we mounted and took to the trail again, stripped down to fighting-trim, unhampered by a pack-horse.

Of daylight there yet remained a scant two hours in which we could hope to distinguish a hoof-mark. Piegan leaned over his saddle-horn and took hills and hollows, wherever the trail led, with a rush that unrolled the miles behind us at a marvelous rate. For an hour we galloped silently, matching the speed of fresh, wiry horses against the dying day, no sound arising in that wilderness of brown coulee banks and dun-colored prairie but the steady beat of hoofs, and the purr of a rising breeze from the east. Then I became aware that Piegan, watching the ground through half-closed eyelids, was speaking to us. From riding a little behind, to give him room to trail, we urged our horses alongside.

"Them fellers at Baker's camp," he said, without looking up, "would 'a' come in a holy minute if there'd been hosses for 'em t' ride. But they only had enough saddle-stock along t' wrangle the bulls—an' I took three uh the best they had. Three of us is enough, anyhow. We kain't ride up on them fellers now an' go t' shootin'. They're all together again. I seen, back a ways, where them two hoss-tracks angled back from the spring. They must 'a' laid up at that camp we passed till sometime before daylight—seein' that damned Hicks come t' Baker's early this mornin'. An' if they didn't travel very fast t'-day—which ain't likely, 'cause they probably figure they're dead safe, and their track don't show a fast gait—there's just a chance that we'll hit 'em by dark if we burn the earth. We're good for thirty miles before night covers up their track. Don't yuh worry none, old boy," he bellowed at MacRae. "Old Injun Smith'll see yuh through. God! I could 'a' cried m'self when I hit that camp an' the old nigger woman went t' bawlin' when I told her yuh was both out on the bench, sound as a new dollar. That was the first they suspicioned anythin' was wrong. Them dirty, low-lived —— —— ——!"

Piegan lapsed into a string of curses. MacRae, apparently unmoved, nodded comprehension. But I knew what he was thinking, and I knew that when once we got within striking distance of Hicks, Gregory & Co., there would be new faces in hell without delay.

We slowed our horses to a walk to ascend an abrupt ridge. When we gained the top a vast stretch of the Northwest spread away to the east and north. Piegan lifted his eyes from the trail for an instant.

"Great Lord!" he said. "Look at the buffalo. It'll be good-by t' these tracks before long."

As far as the eye could reach the prairie was speckled with the herds, speckled with groups of buffalo as the sky is dotted with clusters of bright stars on a clear night. They moved, drifting slowly, in a southerly direction, here in sharply defined groups, there in long lines, farther in indistinct masses. But they moved; and the air that filled our nostrils was freighted with the tang of smoke.

We did not halt on the ridge. There was no need. We knew without speculating what the buffalo-drift and the smoke-tinged air presaged; and it bade us make haste before the tracks were quite obliterated.

So with the hill behind us, and each of us keeping his thoughts to himself—none of them wholly pleasant, judging by my own—we galloped down the long slope, a red sunset at our backs and in our faces a gale of dry, warm wind, tainted with the smell of burning grass. And at the bottom of the slope, in the depths of a high-walled coulee where the evening shadows were mustering for their stealthy raid on the gilded uplands, we circled a grove of rustling poplars and jerked our horses up short at sight of a scarlet blotch among the gloom of the trees.



CHAPTER XVIII.

HONOR AMONG THIEVES.

We knew, even as our fingers instinctively closed on the handles of our six-shooters, that we had not come upon the men we wanted; in such a case there would have been an exchange of leaden courtesies long before we managed to get in their immediate vicinity. It was unlikely that they would cease to exercise the cunning and watchfulness that had, so far, carried their infernal schemes through with flying colors. And a second look showed us that the scarlet coat belonged to a man who half-sat, half-lay on the ground, his shoulders braced against the trunk of a fallen tree. We got off our horses and went cautiously up to him.

"Be not afraid; it is only I!" Goodell raised his head with an effort and greeted us mockingly. "I am, as you can see, hors de combat. What is your pleasure, gentlemen?"

The weakness of his tone and the pallid features of him vouched for the truth of his statement. Stepping nearer, we saw that the light-colored shirt showing between the open lapels of his jacket was stained a tell-tale crimson. The hand he held against his breast was dabbled and streaked with the blood that oozed from beneath the pressing fingers; the leaf-mold under him was saturated with it.

"Where is the rest of the bunch?" MacRae asked him evenly. "You seem to have got a part of what is coming to you, but your skirts aren't clear, for all that."

"You have a bone to pick with me, eh?" Goodell murmured. "Well, I don't blame you. But don't adopt the role of inquisitor—because I'm as good as dead, and dead men tell no tales. My mouth will be closed forever in a little while—and I can die as easily with it unopened. But if you'll get me a drink of water, and be decent about it, I'll unfold a tale that's worth while. I assure you it will be to your interest to give me a hearing."

Piegan turned and strode out of the timber. He unfastened the coffee-pot from my saddle, and made for the coulee channel we had crossed, in which a buffalo-wallow still held water from the recent rain.

Goodell coughed, and a red, frothy stream came from his lips. It isn't in the average man to be utterly callous to the suffering of another, even if that other richly deserves his pain. Notwithstanding the deviltry he and his confederates had perpetrated, I couldn't help feeling sorry for Goodell—what little I'd seen of him had been likable enough. I found it hard to look at him there and believe him guilty of murder, robbery, and kindred depredations. He was beyond reach of earthly justice, anyway; and one can't help forgiving much to a man who faces death with a smile.

"Are you in any pain, Goodell?" I asked.

"None whatever," he answered weakly. "But I'm a goner, for all that. I have a very neat knife-thrust in the back. Also a bullet somewhere in my lungs. You see in me," he drawled, "a victim of chivalry. I've played for big stakes; I've robbed gaily, and killed a man or two in the way of fighting; all of which sits lightly on my conscience. But there are two things I haven't done. I want you to remember distinctly that I have not dragged that girl into this—nor had any hand in torturing a wounded old man."

"You mean Lyn Rowan? Is she safe?" Mac squatted beside him, leaning eagerly forward to catch the reply. Piegan returned with the water as Goodell was about to answer. He swallowed thirstily, took breath, and went on.

"Yes, I mean her," he said huskily. "I'll tell you quick, for I know I won't last long, and when I'm done you'll know where to look for them. I started this thing—this hold-up business—no matter why. Lessard was away in the hole—gambling and other things—I hinted the idea to him; he jumped at it, as I thought he would. And——"

"Lessard!" I interrupted. "He was in on this, then?"

"Was he?" Goodell echoed. "He is the whole thing."

I had suspected as much, but sometimes it is a surprise to have one's suspicions confirmed. I glanced at Mac and Piegan.

"I was sure of it all along," Mac answered my unspoken thought. Piegan merely shrugged his shoulders.

"I wanted to get that government money in the pay-wagon, that was all—at first," Goodell continued. "We planned a long time ahead, and we had to take in those three to make it go. Then Lessard found out about those two old miners, and put Hicks and Gregory on their trail unknown to me—I had no hand in that foul business. You know the result—the finish—that night you lost the ten thousand—it was hellish work. I wanted to kill Hicks and Gregory when they told me. Poor old Dutchman! Lessard put Bevans on your trail, Flood. He followed you from Walsh that day, and you played into his hands that night when you stirred up the fire. Only for running into his partners, he would probably have murdered you for that ten thousand some night while you slept. Give me another drink."

I lifted the pot of water to his lips again, and he thanked me courteously.

"Then Lessard conceived the theory that you fellows had learned more than you told. We were fixed to get the paymaster on that trip. We shook you, and did the job. MacRae was on the way—you know. He sent you to the Stone with those devils to keep cases on you. It seemed a pity to let slip that gold-dust after they had gone so far. You know how that panned out. We had a stake then. Lessard was the brains, the guiding genius; we did the work. The original plan was to make a clean-up, divide with him, and get out of the country—while he used his authority to throw the Force off the track till we were well away. Then the girl appeared, and Lessard lost his head. She turned him down; and at the last moment he upset our plans by deciding to cut loose and go with us. I believe now that he hatched this latest scheme when she refused him. I tell you he was fairly mad about her. He took advantage of this last trip to loot the post of all the funds he could lay hands on. We have—or, rather, they have," he corrected, "about a hundred and fifty thousand altogether.

"We couldn't ford Milk River on account of the storm. You tracked us? You saw our last camp? Yes. Well, we left there early this morning. And when Hicks turned off opposite Baker's outfit with an extra horse, I thought nothing of it—it was perfectly safe, and we needed more matches, Lessard said. Not until he joined us later with the girl did I suspect that there were wheels within wheels; a kidnapping had never occurred to me; I hadn't thought his infatuation would carry him that far. She realized at once that she had been hoodwinked, and appealed to Lessard. He laughed at her, and told her that he had abandoned the modern method of winning a mate, and gone back to the primitive mode.

"I've put myself beyond the pale; outlaw, thief, what you like—I'm not sensitive to harsh names. But a woman—a good woman! Well, I have my own ideas about such things. And when we camped here, I had made up my mind. I told Lessard she must go back. That was a foolish move. I should have got the drop and killed him out of hand. While I argued with him, Hicks slipped a knife into my back, and as I turned on him Lessard shot me. Ah, well—it'll be all the same a hundred years from now. But I'd like to put a spoke in their wheel for the sake of that blue-eyed girl.

"MacRae, you and Smith know the mouth of Sage Creek, and the ford there. That's where they'll camp to-night. I doubt if they'll cross the river till morning. If you ride you can make it in three hours. From there they plan to follow Milk River to the Missouri and catch a down-stream boat. But you'll get them to-night. You must. Now give me another drink—and drift!"

"We'll get them, Goodell." MacRae rose to his feet as he spoke. "You're white, if you did get off wrong. I'll remember what you did—for her. Is there anything we can do for you?"

Goodell shook his head. "I tell you," he said, and turned his head to look wistfully up at the eastern coulee-rim, all tinted with the blazing sunset. "I'll go out over the hills with the shadows. An hour—maybe two. It's my time. I've no complaint to make. All I want is a drink. You can do no good for a dead man; and the living are sorely in need. It'll be a bit lonesome, that's all."

"No message for anybody?" MacRae persisted.

"No—yes!" The old mocking, reckless tone crept into his voice again. "If you should have speech with Lessard before you put his light out, tell him I go to prepare a place for him—a superheated grid! Now drift—vamos—hit the trail. Remember, the gorge at the mouth of Sage Creek. Good-by."

Soberly we filed out from among the trees, now swaying in the grip of the wind, their leafy boughs rustling sibilantly; as though the weird sisters whispered in the nodding branches that here was another thread full-spun and ready for the keen shears. Soberly we swung to the saddle and rode slowly away, lest the quick beat of hoofs should bring a sudden pang of loneliness to the intrepid soul calmly awaiting death under the shivering trees. I think that one bold effort to right a wrong will more than wipe out the black score against him when the Book of Life is balanced.

A little way beyond the poplar-grove Piegan drew rein, and held up one hand.

"Poor devil," he muttered. "He's a-calling us."

But he wasn't. He was fighting off the chill of loneliness that comes to the strongest of us when we face the unknowable, the empty void that there is no escaping. Dying there in the falling dusk, he was singing to himself as an Indian brave chants his death-song when the red flame of the torture-fire bites into his flesh.

Sing heigh, sing ho, for the Cavalier! Sing heigh, sing ho, for the Crown. Gentlemen all, turn out, turn out; We'll keep these Roundheads down! Down—down—down—down. We'll ke—ep these Round—heads down!

Once—twice, the chorus of that old English Royalist song rose up out of the grove. Then it died away, and we turned to go. And as we struck home the spurs, remembering the mouth of Sage Creek and the dark that was closing down, a six-shooter barked sharply, back among the trees.

I swung my horse around in his tracks and raced him back to the poplars, knowing what I would find, and yet refusing to believe. I will not say that his big heart had failed him; perhaps it did not seem to him worth while to face the somber shadows to the bitter end, lying alone in that deep hollow in the earth. It may be that the night looked long and comfortless, and it was his wish to go out with the sun. He lay beside the fallen tree, his eyes turned blankly to the darkening sky, the six-shooter in his hand as he had held it for the last time. I straightened his arms, and covered his face with the blood-stained coat and left him to his long sleep. And even old Piegan lifted his hat and murmured "Amen" in all sincerity as we turned away.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE BISON.

When we reached high ground again the twilight was fading to a semicircle of bloodshot gray in the northwest. The wind still blew squarely in our faces. Down in the coulee we had not noticed it so much, but now every breath was rank with the smell of grass-smoke, and each mile we traversed the stink of it grew stronger.

"We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire before mornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll come a-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uh dry grass an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard down in this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?"

Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more. It grew dark—dark in the full sense of the word. The smoke-burdened atmosphere was impervious to the radiance of the stars. Only by Smith's instinctive sense of direction did we make any headway toward the mouth of Sage Creek. Even MacRae owned himself somewhat at fault, once we came among the buffalo. They barred our path in dimly-seen masses that neither halted, scattered, nor turned aside when we galloped upon them in the gloom. We were the ones who gave the road, riding now before, now behind the indistinct bulk of a herd, according as we judged the shorter way.

More dense became the brute mass. Whirled this way and that, as Piegan led, I knew neither east, west, north or south from one moment to another. Betimes we found a stretch of open country, and gave our horses the steel, but always to bring up suddenly against the bison plodding in groups, in ranks, in endless files. They were ubiquitous; stolid obstructions that we could neither avoid nor ride down. Our progress became monotonous, a succession of fruitless attempts to advance; hopeless, like wandering in a subtle maze. Bison to the right of us, bison to the left of us, an uncounted swarm behind us, and as many before—but they neither bellowed nor thundered; they passed like phantoms in the night, soundlessly save for the muffled trampling of cloven hoofs, and here and there upon occasion hoarse coughings that were strangled by the wind.

And we rode as silently as the bison marched. For each one of us had seen that one-minded pilgrimage of the brown cattle take place in moons gone by. I recalled a time when a trail-herd lay on the Platte and the buffalo barred their passing for two days—even made fourteen riders and three thousand Texas steers give ground. Is it not history that the St. Louis-Benton river-boats backed water when the bison crossed the Missouri in the spring and fall? Remembering these, and other times that the herds had gathered and swept over the plains, a plague of monstrous locusts, pushing aside men and freight-trains, I knew what would happen should the buffalo close their ranks, marshal the scattered groups into closer formation, quicken the pace of the multitude that poured down from the north. And presently it happened.

Insensibly the number of moving bodies increased. The consolidation was imperceptible in the murk, but nevertheless it took place. We ceased to find clear spaces where we could gallop; a trot became impossible. We were hemmed in. A rank animal odor mingled with the taint of smoke. Gradually the muffled beat of hoofs grew more pronounced, a shuffling monotone that filled the night. We were mere atoms in a vast wave of horn and bone and flesh that bore us onward as the tide floats driftwood.

The belated moon stole up from its lair, hovered above the sky-line, a gaudy orange sphere in the haze of smoke. It shed a tenuous glimmer on the sea of bison that had engulfed us; and at the half-revealed sight MacRae lifted his clenched hands above his head and cursed the circumstance that had brought us to such extremity. That was the first and only time I knew him to lose his poise, his natural repression. Still water runs deep, they say; and a glacial cap may conceal subterranean fires. Trite similes, I grant you—but, ah, how true. The good Lord help those phlegmatics who can stand by unmoved when a self-contained man reveals the anguish of his soul in one passionate outburst. Could the fury that quivered in his voice have wreaked itself on the bison and the men we followed, the stench of their blasted carcasses would have reached high heaven. But the bison surrounded us impassively, bore us on as before; somewhere, miles beyond, Lessard pursued the evil tenor of his way; and MacRae's futile passion, like a wave that has battered itself to foam against a sullen cliff, subsided and died. Later, while we three cast-aways drifted with the bovine tide, he spoke to Piegan Smith.

"How are we going to get through?"

"Dunno. But we will get through, yuh c'n gamble on that." Optimism rampant was the dominating element in Piegan's philosophy of life.

As if to prove that he was a true prophet, the herd split against a rocky pinnacle, and on this we stranded. So much, at least, we had gained—we were no longer being carried willy-nilly out of our way.

"If they'd only scatter a little," MacRae muttered.

But for a long two hours the bison streamed by our island, dividing before and closing behind the insensate peak that alone had power to break their close-packed ranks. Then came an opening, a falling apart; slight as it was, we plunged into it with joy. Thereafter we were buffeted like chips in the swirling maw of a whirlpool; we fought our way rod by rod. Here an opening, and we shot through; there a solid wall of flesh for whose passing we halted, lashing out with quirts and spurring desperately to hold our own—a war for the open road against an enemy whose only weapon was his unswerving bulk. And we won. We pushed, twisted, spurred our way through the ranks of a hundred thousand bison. Jostling, cursing the brute swarm, we crowded our horses against the press, and lo! of a sudden we reined up on open ground—the bison, like a nightmare, were gone. Off in the gloom to one side of us a myriad of hoofs beat the earth, the hoarse coughings continued, the animal odor exhaled—but it was no longer a force to be reckoned with. We were free. We had outflanked the herd.



CHAPTER XX.

THE MOUTH OF SAGE CREEK.

With that opposing force behind us, we bore away across the shrouded benches, straight for the mouth of Sage Creek. What method we would pursue when we got there was not altogether clear to me, and the same thing evidently bothered Piegan, for, after a long interval, he addressed himself pointedly to MacRae.

"We ought t' hit the river in an hour or so," he said. "It's time we figured on how we're goin' t' work, eh? I wish t' the Lord it was daylight."

"So do I," MacRae moodily responded. "For that matter, it won't be long. I've been thinking that the best way would be to get down on the flat at the north of the creek and cache our horses in the timber. Then we can sneak around without making any noise. If they're not camped on the flat, we'll find them somewhere up the gorge. Of course, there's a chance that they have crossed the river—but if they didn't get there in daylight, and the river is still high, I hardly think they'd risk fording in the dark."

"That's about the way I had sized it up," Piegan replied. "The flat ain't bigger'n a good-sized flapjack, nohow, an' if they're on that or up in Sage Creek canyon, we're bound t' locate 'em; kain't help hearin' their hosses snort or cough or make some sort uh noise, if we go careful. The worst of it is, we kain't start the ball a-rollin' till we get that girl spotted—that's the hell of it! Like as not she'd be the first one t' get hurt. An' if we get rambunctious an' stir 'em up in the dark, an' don't put the finishin' to 'em right then an' there—why, they got all the show in the world t' make a hot-foot getaway. Sabe? While I ain't lookin' for a chance t' sidestep the game, for I know how yuh feel, I'd say locate 'em if we can, an' then back up a little and wait for day."

"Oh, I know, I know!" Mac burst out. "That's sense. But it gives me the creeps to think—to think——"

"Sure; we know it," Piegan answered softly. "We kain't tell till we get there, anyway. Maybe we'll get 'em dead t' rights. No tellin' what'll come up when we get into that canyon. When we get 'em spotted we c'n make up our minds what t' do—if we have any time t' talk about it," he finished, in an undertone.

As we rode, the crimson-yellow reflection of burning prairies began to tint the eastern sky; once, from the crest of a hill, we saw the wavering line of flame, rising and falling in beautiful undulations. And presently we galloped across a mile or two of level grassland and pulled up on the very brink of Sage Creek canyon.

"Easy, easy, from here on," Piegan whispered caution. "We may be right above 'em, for all we know. We hit it a little too high up. How far d'yuh reckon it is t' the mouth, Mac?"

"Not more than half a mile," MacRae returned. "We're not far out. I know where there's a good place to get down."

We turned sharply to the right, coming out on a narrow point. Without mishap we reached the foot of the steep hill. At the bottom the wind was almost wholly shut off, so that sounds were easier to distinguish. The moon had passed its zenith long since, and half of the flat lay in dense shadow. Beyond the shadow a pall of smoke lay over everything, a shifting haze that made objects near at hand indefinite of outline, impossible to classify at a glance. A horse or a tree or a clump of brush loomed up grotesquely in the vaporous blur.

Mac, to whom the topography of that gloomy place was perfectly familiar, led the way. A black, menacing wall that rose before us suddenly resolved itself into a grove of trees, great four-foot cottonwoods. He stole into the heart of the grove and satisfied himself that our game had not appropriated it as a camping-place. That assured, we followed with our horses and tied them securely, removing saddles and bridles, lest the clank of steel or creaking of leather betray our presence to listening ears. On any noise our horses might make we had no choice but to take a chance. Then we looked to our guns and set out on a stealthy search.

A complete circle of that tiny bottom—it was only a shelf of sage-brown land lying between the river and the steep bank—profited us nothing, and Piegan whispered that now we must seek for them in the gorge.

Cautiously we retraced our steps from the lower end of the flat, and turned into the narrow mouth of the canyon. We had no more than got fairly between the straight-up-and-down walls of it than Piegan halted us with a warning hand. We squatted in the sage-brush and listened. Behind us, from the river, came a gentle plashing.

"Beaver," I hazarded.

"Too loud," Piegan murmured. "Let's go back an' see."

We reached the river-edge just in time to hear the splashing die away; and though we strained our eyes looking, we could make out no movement on the surface of the river or in the dimly-outlined scrub that fringed the opposite bank. Piegan turned on the instant and ran to where we had tied our horses; but they stood quietly as we had left them.

"I got a hunch they'd got onto us, an' maybe set us afoot for a starter," Piegan explained. "I reckon that must 'a' been a deer or some other wild critter."

Once more we turned into the canyon, and this time followed its narrow, scrub-patched floor some three hundred yards up from the river. It was dark enough for any kind of deviltry in that four-hundred foot gash in the earth; the sinking moon lightened only a strip along the east wall, near the top; lower down, smoke mingling with the natural gloom cast an impenetrable veil from bank to bank; not a breath of air stirred the tomblike stillness. Directly in front of us a horse coughed. We dropped on all fours, listened a moment, then crept forward. Without warning, we found ourselves foul of a picket-line, and the vague forms of grazing horses loomed close by. Piegan halted us with a touch, and we lay flat; then with our heads together he whispered softly:

"We must be right on top uh them. It's a cinch their camp ain't far from their livestock. I wonder——"

To the left of us a horse snorted nervously; we heard him trot with high, springy strides to the end of his rope, and snort again. Then a voice cut the stillness that followed: "Here, you fool, what's the matter with you?"

We hugged the ground like frightened rabbits. It hardly seemed possible that we could be within speaking-distance of them—yet that was Gregory's clear enunciation; I would know his speech in a jabberfest of several nations.

"What's the matter?" That, by the curt inflection, the autocratic peremptoriness, was Lessard. I had one hand on MacRae's shoulder, and I felt a tremor run through his body, like the rising of a cat's fur at sight of an adversary.

"Oh, nothing much," Gregory answered carelessly. "I was just speaking to one of these fool horses. They seem to be as nervous as you are." And we could hear him chuckle over this last remark.

After that there was nothing but the muffled tr-up, tr-up of grazing horses. Piegan or MacRae, I could not tell which, tugged gently at my arm, and the three of us retreated slowly, crawling both literally and figuratively. When we were well away from the camp of that ungodly combination, Piegan rose to his feet and we proceeded a little faster until we reached a distance that permitted of low-toned conversation.

"Now," Piegan declared, "we have 'em located. An' I'm here t' declare that it's plumb foolish t' mix things with that layout till we can see t' shoot tolerable straight. If we go against 'em now, it'll be all same goin' blindfolded into a barn t' pick out the best hoss. The first gun that pops they'll raise up an' quit the earth like a bunch uh antelope. They ain't got nothin' t' win in a fight—unless they're cornered. I did think uh tryin' t' get off with their hosses, but I figured it wouldn't pay with that sharp-eared cuss on the watch. Whenever it comes day, we got all the best uh things—though I don't reckon we'll have a walkaway. We want t' make a clean job once we start in, an' we kain't do that in the dark. Furthermore, as I said before, if we go t' throwin' lead when we kain't see ten feet in front of us, we'd just about hit that girl first rattle out uh the box. She ain't comin' t' no harm just now, or it wouldn't be so blamed peaceful around there. It's only a matter of a couple uh hours t' daylight, anyhow. What d'yuh think?"

"Under the circumstances, the only thing we can do is to wait," MacRae assented, and I fancied that there was a reluctant quiver in his usually steady voice. "It's going to be smoky at daybreak, but we can see their camp from this first point, I think. There's a big rock over here—I'll show you—you and Sarge can get under cover there. I'll lie up on the opposite side, so they'll have to come between us. Let them pack and get started. When they get nearly abreast, cut loose. Shoot their saddle-horses first, then we can fight it out. Come on, I'll show you that rock."

MacRae's bump of location was nearly as well developed as Piegan's. He picked his way through the sage-brush to the other side of the canyon, bringing us in the deepest gloom to a great slab of sandstone that had fallen from above, and lay a few feet from the base of the sheer wall. It was a natural breastwork, all ready to our hand. There, without another word, he left us. Crouching in the shelter of that rock, not daring to speak above a whisper, denied the comforts of tobacco, it seemed as if we were never to be released from the dusky embrace of night. In reality it was less than two hours till daybreak, but they were slow-footed ones to me. Then dawn flung itself impetuously across the hills, and the naked rim of the canyon took form in a shifting whirl of smoke. Down in the depths gloom and shadows vanished together, and Piegan Smith and I peered over the top of our rock and saw the outlaw camp—men and horses dim figures in the growing light. We scanned the opposite side for sight of MacRae, but saw nothing of him; he kept close under cover.

"They're packin' up," Piegan murmured, with a dry chuckle. "I reckon things won't tighten nor nothin' in a few minutes, eh? But say, damn if I see anything among that layout that resembles a female. Do you?"

I did not, even when I focused the field-glasses on that bunch at that short distance. Certainly she was not there—at least she was not to be seen, and I could almost read the expression on each man's features, so close did the glasses draw them up. And failing to see her started me thinking that after all she might have given them the slip. I hoped it might be so. Lyn was no chicken-hearted weakling, to sit down and weep unavailingly in time of peril. Bred on the range, on speaking-terms with the turbulent frontier life, her wits weren't likely to forsake her in a situation of that kind.