While the light of day grew stronger and the smoke eddied in heavier wreaths above, one of them swung up on a horse and came down the bottom at a fast lope. We had no means of knowing what his mission might be, but I did know that the square shoulders, the lean eagle face, could only belong to one man; and I dropped the glasses and drew a bead on his breast. I hesitated a second, squinting along the barrel of the carbine; I wanted him to round the point that jutted out from the other side of the canyon, so that his partners could not see his finish. If they did not see him go down, nor observe the puff of smoke from behind the rock, they might think he had fired a shot himself. And while I waited, grumbling at the combination of circumstances that made it necessary to shoot down even a cold-blooded brute like him in such a way, Mac took the matter out of my hands in his own characteristic fashion.

Lessard turned the point, and as the carbine-hammer clicked back under the pull of my thumb, MacRae sprang to his feet from behind a squatty clump of sage, right in Lessard's path. Nervy as men are made, MacRae worshiped at the shrine of an even break, a square deal for friend or foe. And Lessard got it. There among the sage-brush he got a fair chance for his life, according to the code of men who settle their differences at the business end of a six-shooter. But it wasn't Lessard's hour. Piegan Smith and I saw his hand flash to his pistol, saw it come to a level, heard the single report of MacRae's gun. It was a square deal—which Lessard had not given us. He crumpled in the saddle; sprawled a moment on the neck of his horse, and dropped to the ground. MacRae sank behind the sage again, and we waited for the others.



CHAPTER XXI.

AN ELEMENTAL ALLY.

But they did not come. One of them must have seen Lessard fall, for at the crack of MacRae's gun men and horses, already half-hidden by the thickening smoke, vanished into the brush. Piegan fired one ineffectual shot as they flicked out of sight. So far we had seen nothing of Lyn. I was satisfied she was not in the party, unaccountable as that seemed to be.

"Darn 'em," Piegan grunted disgustedly. "They're next, now. An' they don't aim t' run the gantlet till they have t'. We got 'em penned, anyway; they can't get out uh that patch uh brush without showin' themselves."

"Oh, Piegan!" MacRae called to us. He lay within easy shouting-distance, and managed to make himself heard without rising.

"Hello!" Piegan answered.

"Can you fellows keep them from going up the canyon?"

"I reckon we can," Smith called back, "unless this smoke gets so blame thick we kain't see at all."

"All right. I'm going up on top, and throw it into them from above. Maybe I can drive them out of the brush."

Piegan slapped me on the shoulder. "Darn our fool hearts," he exclaimed. "We ought to 'a' thought uh that before. Why, he c'n pick 'em off like blackbirds on a fence, from up there on the bench!"

We did not see MacRae go, but we knew that he must have crawled through the sage-brush to the creek channel, where, by stooping, he could gain the mouth of the canyon unseen. Anyway, our time was fully occupied in watching the brush-patch that sheltered our plundering friends. They held close to their concealment, however, nor did they waste any powder on us—for that matter, I don't think they knew just where we were, and they were familiar enough with the gentle art of bushwhacking to realize that the open was a distinctly unhealthy place for either party to prospect.

It was a long time till we heard from MacRae again, and, lying there passively, we grew afraid that after all they would give us the slip; for the smoke was now rolling in black clouds above the gorge. So far the thickest of it had blown overhead, but any moment a change of wind might whip it down the canyon bottom like an ocean fog, and that would mean good-by to Hicks & Co.

"That fire's mighty close, an' comin' on the jump," Piegan remarked, with an upward glance. "I wish she'd let up long enough for us t' finish this job. That smoke's as good as they want, once it begins t' settle in the gorge. What in thunder d'yuh s'pose Mac's doin' all this time. He ought t' show pretty quick, now."

He showed, as Piegan put it, very shortly. From the top of the opposite bank he fired a shot or two, and drew for the first time a return from the enemy. Then he broke off, and when he next gave hint of his whereabouts, it was to hail us from the nearest point on the canyon rim.

"Quit your hide-out and pull for the mouth of the gorge. Quick! I'll be there."

"What the hell's up now!" Piegan muttered. "Well, I guess we'll have t' take a chance. If they don't wing us before we get across this bald place, we'll be all right. Run like yuh was plumb scairt t' death, Flood."

We sprinted like a pair of quarter-horses across the thirty yards of bare ground that spread in front of the rock, a narrow enough space, to be sure, but barren of cover for a jack-rabbit, much less two decent-sized men. My heart was pumping double-quick when we threw ourselves headlong in the welcome sage-brush—they had done their level best to stop us, and some of those forty-four caliber humming-birds buzzed their leaden monotone perilously close to our heads. That is one kind of music for which I have a profound respect.

From there to the creek-channel we crawled on all fours, as MacRae had done. Stooping, lest our heads furnish a target, we splashed along in the shallow water till we reached the mouth of the canyon. There we slipped carefully to higher ground. MacRae was scrambling and sliding down from above, barely distinguishable against the bank. Far up the gorge dense clouds of black smoke swooped down from the benchland. Already the patch of brush in which lay the renegade Policemen was hidden in the smudge, shut away from our sight. We hailed MacRae when he reached the foot of the hill, and he came crashing through sage and buck-brush and threw himself, panting, on the ground.

"The fire," he gasped, "is coming down the gorge. They're cut off at the other end. They've got to come out here in a little while—or roast. The smoke would choke a salamander, on top, right now. We can't miss them in this narrow place, no matter how thick it gets. Look yonder!"

A wavering red line licked its way to the canyon-edge on the east side, wiped out the grass, and died on the bald rim-rock. Away up the creek a faint crackling sounded.

"Dry timber," Piegan muttered. "It'll get warm 'round here pretty directly."

The smoke, blacker now, more dense, hot as a whiff from a baker's oven, swooped down upon us in choking eddies. It blew out of the canyon-mouth like a gust from a chimney, rolling over and over in billowy masses. The banks on either hand were almost invisible. We knew that our time of waiting was short. The popping of dry, scrubby timber warned us that our position would soon be untenable. The infernal vapors from the unholy mixture of green and dry grass, berry bushes, willow scrub, and the ubiquitous sage, made breathing a misery and brought unwilling tears to our stinging eyes. And presently, above the subdued but menacing noises of the fire, the beat of galloping hoofs uprose.

They burst out of the mouth of the canyon, a smoke-wreathed whirlwind, heading for the protection of the river. The pack-horses, necked together, galloped in the lead, and behind them Hicks, Gregory, and Bevans leaned over the necks of their mounts. They knew that we were waiting for them, but at the worst they had a fighting chance with us, and none with what came behind. So thick hung the smoky veil that they were right on top of us before they took tangible shape; and when we rose to our knees and fired, the crack of their guns mingled with that of our own. Gregory, so near that I could see every feature of his dark face, the glittering black eyes, the wide mouth parted over white, even teeth, wilted in his saddle as they swept by. Bevans and his horse went down together. But Hicks the wily, a superb horseman, hung in his off stirrup and swerved away from us, and the smoke closed behind him to the tune of our guns.

It was done in less time than it has taken to tell of it. There was no prolonged hand-to-hand struggle with buckets of blood marring the surrounding scenery, and a beautiful heroine wringing her hands in despair; merely a rush of horses and men out of the smoke, a brief spasm of gun-fire—it was begun and ended in five seconds. But there were two fallen men, and Piegan Smith with a hole through the big muscle of his right arm, to show that we had fought.

The pack-horses, with no riders at their heels to guide them, had tangled each other in the connecting-rope and stopped. Hicks was gone, and likely to keep going. So we turned our attention to Gregory and Bevans. Gregory was dead as the proverbial door-nail, but Bevans, on investigation, proved to be very much alive—so much so that if he had not been partly stunned by the fall, and thereafter pinned to the ground by a thousand-pound horse, he would have potted one or two of us with a good heart. As it was, we reached the gentleman in the same moment that he made a heroic effort to lay hold of the carbine which had luckily—for us—fallen beyond the length of his arm.

"Yuh lay down there an' be good!" Piegan, out of the fullness of his heart, emphasized his command with the toe of his boot. "Where's that girl, yuh swine?"

"Go to hell!" Bevans snarled.

"Here," MacRae broke in hastily, "we've got to move pretty pronto, and get across the river. That fire will be on us in five minutes. Sarge and I will gather up their horses. You keep an eye on Bevans, Piegan; he'll answer questions fast enough when I get at him."

While Mac dashed across the creek I captured Gregory's horse, which had stopped when his rider fell; and as I laid hand on the reins I thought I heard a shot off beyond the river. But I couldn't be certain. The whine of the wind that comes with a fire, the crackle of the fire itself, the manifold sounds that echoed between the canyon walls and the pungent, suffocating smoke, all conspired against clear thinking or hearing. I listened a moment, but heard no more. Then, with time at a premium, I hastened to straighten out the tangle of pack-animals. Mac loomed up in the general blur with Lessard's body on his horse, as I led the others back to where Piegan stood guard over Bevans.

"Ain't this hell!" he coughed. "That fire's right on top of us. We got t' make the river in a hurry."

It was another minute's work to lash Gregory's body on one of the pack-horses, and release the sullen Bevans from the weight of his dead mount. As an afterthought, I looked in the pockets on his saddle, and the first thing I discovered was a wad of paper money big enough to choke an ox, as Piegan would say. I hadn't the time to investigate further, so I simply cut the anqueros off his saddle and flung them across the horn of my own—and even in that swirl of smoke and sparks I glowed with a sense of gratification, for it seemed that at last I was about to shake hands with the ten thousand dollars I had mourned as lost. Then Piegan and I drove Bevans ahead of us and moved the spoils of war to the river brink, while MacRae hurried to the cottonwood grove after our own neglected mounts; they had given us too good service to be abandoned to the holocaust.

MacRae soon joined us with the three horses; out into the stream, wading till the water gurgled around our waists, we led the bunch. Then we were compelled to take our hats and slosh water over packs and saddles till they were soaked—for the fire was ravaging the flat we had just left, and showers of tiny sparks descended upon and around us. Thus proof against the fiery baptism, though still half-strangled by the smoke, our breathing a succession of coughs, we mounted and pushed across.

The high water had abated and the river was now flowing at its normal stage, some three hundred yards in width and nowhere swimming-deep on the ford. We passed beyond spark-range and splashed out on a sand-bar that jutted from the southern bank. Midway between the lapping water and the brush that lined the edge of the flat, a dark object became visualized in the shifting gray vapor. We rode to it and pulled up in amaze. Patiently awaiting the pleasure of his master, as a good cavalry horse should, was the bay gelding Hicks had ridden; and Hicks himself sprawled in the sand at the end of the bridle-reins. I got down and looked him over. He was not dead; far from it. But a bullet had scored the side of his head above one ear, and he was down and out for the time.

We stripped the pistol-belt off him, and a knife. At the same time we rendered Bevans incapable of hostile movement by anchoring both hands securely behind his back with a pack-rope. That done, Piegan's bleeding arm came in for its share of attention. Then we held a council of war.



CHAPTER XXII.

SPEECHLESS HICKS.

When I spoke of holding a council of war, I did so largely in a figurative sense. Literally, we set about reviving Hicks, with a view to learning from him what had become of Lyn Rowan. He and Bevans undoubtedly knew, and as Bevans persisted in his defiant sullenness, refusing to open his mouth for other purpose than to curse us vigorously, we turned to Hicks. A liberal amount of water dashed in his face aided him to recover consciousness, and in a short time he sat up and favored us with a scowl.

"What has become of that girl you took away from Baker's freight-train yesterday morning?" MacRae dispassionately questioned.

Hicks glared at him by way of answer.

"Hurry up and find your tongue," MacRae prompted.

"I dunno what you're drivin' at," Hicks dissembled.

"You will know, in short order," MacRae retorted, "if you harp on that tune. We've got you where we want you, and I rather think you'll be glad to talk, before long. I ask you what became of that girl between the time you knifed Goodell and this morning?"

Hicks started at mention of Goodell. His heavy face settled into stubborn lines. He blinked under MacRae's steady look. Of a sudden he sprang to his feet. I do not know what his intention may have been, but he got little chance to carry out any desperate idea that took form in his brain, for MacRae knocked him back on his haunches with a single blow of his fist.

"Answer me," he shouted, "or by the Lord! I'll make you think hell is a pleasure-garden compared to this sand-bar."

"Kick a few uh his ribs out uh place for a starter," Piegan coolly advised. "That'll he'p him remember things."

Yet for all their threats Hicks obstinately refused to admit that he had ever seen Lyn Rowan. What his object was in denying knowledge we knew he possessed did not transpire till later. He knew the game was lost, so far as he was concerned, and he was mustering his forces in a last effort to save himself. And MacRae's patience snapped like a frayed thread before many minutes of futile query.

"Get me a rope off one of those pack-horses, Sarge," he snapped.

I brought the rope; and I will brazenly admit that I should not have balked at helping decorate the limb of a cottonwood with those two red-handed scoundrels. But I was not prepared for the turn MacRae took. Hicks evidently felt that there was something ominous to the fore, for he fought like a fiend when we endeavored to apply the rope to his arms and legs. There was an almost superhuman desperation in his resistance, and while MacRae and I hammered and choked him into submission Piegan gyrated about us with a gun in his left hand, begging us to let him put the finishing touches to Hicks. That, however, was the very antithesis of MacRae's purpose.

"I don't want to kill him, Piegan," he said pointedly, when Hicks was securely tied. "If I had, do you suppose I'd dirty my hands on him in that sort of a scramble when I know how to use a gun? I want him to talk—you understand?—and he will talk before I'm through with him."

There was a peculiar inflection about that last sentence, a world of meaning that was lost on me until I saw Mac go to the brush a few yards distant, return with an armful of dry willows and place them on the sand close by Hicks. Without audible comment I watched him, but I was puzzled—at first. He broke the dry sticks into fragments across his knee; when he had a fair-sized pile he took out his knife and whittled a few shavings. Not till he snapped his knife shut and put it in his pocket and began, none too gently, to remove the boots from Hicks' feet, did I really comprehend what he was about. It sent a shiver through me, and even old Piegan stood aghast at the malevolent determination of the man. But we voiced no protest. That was neither the time nor place to abide by the Golden Rule. Only the law of force, ruthless, inexorable, would compel speech from Hicks. And since they would recognize no authority save that of force, it seemed meet and just to deal with them as they had dealt with us. So Piegan Smith and I stood aloof and watched the grim play, for the fate of a woman hung in the balance. Hicks' salient jaw was set, his expression unreadable.

MacRae stacked the dry wood in a neat pyramid twelve inches from the bare soles of Hicks' feet. He placed the shavings in the edge of the little pile. Then he stood up and began to talk, fingering a match with horrible suggestiveness.

"Perhaps you think that by keeping a close mouth there's a chance to get out of some of the deviltry you've had a hand in lately. But there isn't. You'll get what's coming to you. And in case you're bolstering up your nerve with false hopes in that direction, let me tell you that we know exactly how you turned every trick. I don't particularly care to take the law into my own hands; I'd rather take you in and turn you over to the guard. But there's a woman to account for yet, and so you can take your choice between the same deal you gave Hans Rutter and telling me what became of her."

He paused for a moment. Hicks stared up at him calculatingly.

"I'll tell you all I know about it if you turn me loose," he said. "Give me a horse and a chance to pull my freight, and I'll talk. Otherwise, I'm dumb."

"I'll make no bargains with you," MacRae answered. "Talk or take the consequences."

Hicks shook his head. MacRae coughed—the smoke was still rolling in thick clouds from over the river—and went on.

"Perhaps it will make my meaning clearer if I tell you what happened to Rutter, eh? You and Gregory got him after he was wounded, didn't you? He wouldn't tell where that stuff had been cached. But you had a way of loosening a man's tongue—I have you to thank for the idea. Oh, it was a good one, but that old Dutchman was harder stuff than you're made of. You built a fire and warmed his feet. Still he wouldn't talk, so you warmed them some more. Fine! But you didn't suppose you'd ever get your feet warmed. I'm not asking much of you, and you'll be no deeper in the mire when you answer. If you don't—well, there's plenty of wood here. Will you tell me what I want to know, or shall I light the fire?"

Still no word from Hicks. MacRae bent and raked the match along a flat stone.

"Oh, well," he said indifferently, "maybe you'll think better of it when your toes begin to sizzle."

He thrust the flaring match among the shavings. As the flame crept in among the broken willows, Hicks raised his head.

"If I tell you what become of her, will you let me go?" he proposed again. "I'll quit the country."

"You'll tell me—or cook by inches, right here," Mac answered deliberately. "You can't buy me off."

The blaze flickered higher. I watched it, with every fiber of my being revolting against such savagery, and the need for it. I glanced at Piegan and Bevans. The one looked on with grim repression, the other with blanched face. And suddenly Hicks jerked up his knees and heaved himself bodily aside with a scream of fear.

"Put it out! Put it out!" he cried. "I'll tell you. For God's sake—anything but the fire!"

"Be quick, then," MacRae muttered, "before I move you back."

"Last night," Hicks gasped, "when we pulled into the gorge to camp, she jerked the six-shooter out uh Lessard's belt and made a run for it. She took to the brush. It was dark, and we couldn't follow her. I don't know where she got to, except that she started down the creek. We hunted for her half the night—didn't see nothin'. That's the truth, s'help me."

"Down the creek—say, by the great Jehosophat!" Piegan exclaimed. "D'yuh remember that racket in the water this mornin'? Yuh wait." He turned and ran down-stream. Almost instantly the smoke had swallowed him.

MacRae stood staring for a second or two, then turned and scattered the fire broadcast on the sand with a movement of his foot. He lifted his hat, and I saw that his forehead and hair was damp with sweat.

"That was a job I had mighty little stomach for," he said, catching my eye and smiling faintly. "I thought that sulky brute would come through if I made a strong bluff. I reckon I'd have weakened in another minute, if he hadn't."

"Ugh!" I shuddered. "It gave me the creeps. I wouldn't make a good Indian."

"Nor I," he agreed. "But I had to know. And I feel better now. I'm not afraid for Lyn, since I know she got away from them."

Piegan, at this moment, set up a jubilant hallooing down the river, and shortly came rushing back to us.

"Aha, I told yuh," he cried exultantly. "That was her crossed the river this mornin'. I found her track in the sand. One uh yuh stand guard, and the other feller come with me. We c'n trail her."

"Go ahead," I told MacRae—a superfluous command, for I could not have kept him from going if I had tried.

So I was left on the sand-bar with two dead thieves, and two who should have been dead, and a little knot of horses for company. Hicks and Bevans gave me little concern. I had helped tie both of them, and I knew they would not soon get loose. But it was a weary wait. An hour fled. I paced the bar, a carbine in the crook of my arm and a vigilant eye for incipient outbreaks for freedom on the part of those two wolves. The horses stood about on three legs, heads drooping. The smoke-clouds swayed and eddied, lifted a moment, and closed down again with the varying spasms of the fire that was beating itself out on the farther shore. I sat me down and rested a while, arose and resumed my nervous tramping. The foglike haze began to thin. It became possible to breathe without discomfort to the lungs; my eyes no longer stung and watered. And after a period in which I seemed to have walked a thousand miles on that sandy point, I heard voices in the distance. Presently MacRae and Piegan Smith broke through the willow fringe on the higher ground—and with them appeared a feminine figure that waved a hand to me.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SPOILS OF WAR.

All things considered, it was a joyous knot of humanity that gathered on that sand-bar—if one excepts the two plunderers who were tied hard and fast, their most cheerful outlook a speedy trial with a hangman's noose at the finish. I recollect that we shook hands all around, and that our tongues wagged extravagantly, regardless of whoever else might be speaking. We settled down before long, however, remembering that we were not altogether out of the woods.

The fire by this time had, to a great extent, beaten itself out on the opposite bank, and with nothing left but a few smoldering brush-patches, the smoke continued to lift and give us sundry glimpses of the black desolation that spread to the north. So far as we knew, the wind had carried no sparks across the river to fire the south side and drive us back to the barrenness of the burned lands. And with the certainty that Lyn was safe, and that we were beyond disputing masters of the situation, came consciousness of hunger and great bodily weariness. It was almost twenty-four hours since we had eaten, and we were simply ravenous. As a start toward an orderly method of procedure, we began by re-dressing Piegan's punctured arm, which had begun to bleed again; though it was by no means as serious a hurt as it might have been. Piegan himself seemed to consider it a good deal of a joke on him, and when I remarked that I failed to see how a bullet-hole through any part of one's person could be regarded in a humorous light, Piegan snorted, and told me that I would know more when I grew up. A little ventilation, he declared, was something a man's system needed every year or two.

Then we unsaddled and unpacked the horses, and moved them up on the grassy flat. Piegan elected himself guard over the prisoners, while the rest of us cooked a belated breakfast, and he assured them repeatedly that he would be delighted to have them make a break, so that he could have the pleasure of perforating their individual and collective hides. I really believe the old rascal meant it, too; he succeeded, at least, in giving that impression, and his crippled arm was no handicap to him—he could juggle a six-shooter right or left-handed with amazing dexterity.

Lyn substantiated Goodell's story in every detail, so far as it had dealt with her, and she told me, while we pottered about the fire, how she waited her chance when they made camp in Sage Creek, and, snatching Lessard's gun, ran for it in the dark.

"I didn't really know where I was," she told me naively. "So I thought I'd better hide till daylight and watch them go before I started. Then I could try and make my way back to the freight outfit—I felt sure they would either wait for me or send a man back to Walsh when I didn't come back. I was hiding in those cottonwoods when you came stealing in there this morning. You were so quiet, I couldn't tell who it was—I thought perhaps they were still hunting for me; they did, you know—they were rummaging around after me for a long time. But I never dreamed it could be you and Gordon. So I sneaked down to the river and crossed; I was deadly afraid they'd find me, and I thought once I was on the other side I could hear them coming, and scuttle away in the brush. Then about daylight I heard some shooting, and wondered if they had been followed. I didn't dare cross the river and start over the hills with that fire coming, and the smoke so thick I couldn't tell a hill from a hollow. I waited a while longer—I was in this brush up here"—she pointed to a place almost opposite—"and in a little while I heard more shooting, and in a minute or so, he"—indicating Hicks—"came splashing through the river. He was on the sand-bar before I could see him clearly, and coming straight toward where I was huddled in the brush. Oh, but I was frightened, and before I knew it, almost, I poked the gun between the branches and fired at his head as straight as I could—and he fell off his horse. Then I ran, before any more of them came. And that's really all there is to it. I was plodding up the river, when I heard Gordon shouting two or three hundred yards behind. Of course I knew his voice, and stopped. But dear me! this seems like a bad dream, or maybe I ought to say a good one. I hope you won't all disappear in the smoke."

"Don't you worry," MacRae assured her. "When we vanish in the smoke we'll take you with us."

After we had eaten we made a systematic search of packs and saddle-pockets, and when we had finished there was more of the root of all evil in sight than I have laid my eyes on at any one time before or since. The gold that had drawn us into the game was there in the same long, buckskin sacks, a load for one horse. The government money, looted from the paymaster, part gold coin and part bills, they had divided, and it was stowed in various places. Lessard's saddle-pockets were crammed, and likewise those of Hicks and Gregory. Bevans' anqueros, which I had taken from his dead horse, yielded a goodly sum. Altogether, we counted some seventy-odd thousand dollars, exclusive of the gold-dust in the sacks.

"There's a good deal more than that, according to Goodell's figures," MacRae commented. "Lessard must have got away with quite a sum from the post. I daresay the pockets of the combination hold the rest. But I don't hanker to search a dead man, and that can wait till we get to Walsh."

"Yuh goin' t' lug this coyote bait t' Fort Walsh?" Piegan inquired. "I'd leave 'em right here without the ceremony uh plantin'. An' I vote right here an' now t' neck these other two geesers together an' run 'em off'n a high bank into deep water."

"I'd vote with you, so far as my personal feeling in the matter goes," MacRae replied. "But we've got a lot of mighty black marks against us, right now, and we're going in there to relate a most amazing tale. Of course, we can prove every word of it. But I reckon we'll have to take these two carcasses along as a sort of corroborative evidence. Every confounded captain in the Force will have to view them officially; they wouldn't take our word for their being dead. So it would only delay the clearing up of things to leave them here. These other jaspers will lend a fine decorative effect to the noosed end of a three-quarter-inch rope for their part in the play—unless Canadian justice miscarries, which doesn't often happen if you give it time enough to get at the root of things."

Much as we had accomplished, we still had a problem or two ahead of us. While we didn't reckon on having to defend ourselves against the preposterous charge of holding up the paymaster, there was that little matter of violent assault on the persons of three uniformed representatives of Northwestern law—assault, indeed, with deadly weapons; also the forcible sequestration of government property in the shape of three troop-horses with complete riding appurtenances; the uttering of threats; all of which was strictly against the peace and dignity of the Crown and the statutes made and provided. No man is supposed, as MacRae had pointed out to me after we'd held up those three troopers, to inflict a compound fracture on one law in his efforts to preserve another. But it had been necessary for us to do so, and we had justified our judgment in playing a lone hand and upsetting Lessard's smoothly conceived plan to lay us by the heels while he and his thugs got away with the plunder. We had broken up as hard a combination as ever matched itself against the scarlet-coated keepers of the law; we had gathered them in with the loot intact, and for this signal service we had hopes that the powers that be would overlook the break we made on Lost River ridge. Lessard had created a damnatory piece of evidence against himself by lifting the post funds; that in itself would bear witness to the truth of our story. It might take the authorities a while to get the proper focus on the tangle, but we could stand that, seeing that we had won against staggering odds.

From the mouth of Sage Creek to Fort Walsh it is a fraction over fifty miles, across comparatively flat country. By the time our breakfast was done we calculated it to be ten o'clock. We had the half of a long mid-summer day to make it. So, partly because we might find the full fifty miles an ash-strewn waste, fodderless, blackened, where an afternoon halt would be a dreary sojourn, and partly for the sake of the three good horses we had pushed so unmercifully through the early hours of the night, we laid on the grassy river-bottom till noon. Then we packed, placed the sullen captives in the saddle with hands lashed stoutly, mounted our horses and recrossed the river. Once on the uplands we struck the long trot—eight hours of daylight to make fifty miles. And we made it.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PIPE OF PEACE.

Twenty minutes after the sunset gun awoke the echoes along Battle Creek we slipped quietly into Fort Walsh and drew rein before the official quarters of the officer of the day; a stiffened, saddle-weary group, grimy with the sooty ash of burned prairies. From the near-by barracks troopers craned through windows, and gathered in doorways. For a moment I thought the office was deserted, but before we had time to dismount, the captain ranking next to Lessard appeared from within, and behind him came a medium-sized man, gray-haired and pleasant of countenance, at sight of whom MacRae straightened in his saddle with a stifled exclamation and repeated the military salute.

The captain stared in frank astonishment as MacRae got stiffly out of his saddle and helped Lyn to the ground. Then he snapped out some sharp question, but the gray-haired one silenced him with a gesture.

"Softly, softly, Stone," he said. "Let the man explain voluntarily."

"Beg to report, sir," MacRae began evenly, "that we have captured the men who robbed Flood, murdered those two miners, and held up the paymaster. Also that we have recovered all the stolen money."

"What sort of cock-and-bull story is this?" Stone broke in angrily. "Preposterous! Orderly, call——"

"Easy, easy now, Captain Stone," the older man cut in sharply. "A man doesn't make a statement like that without some proof. By the way," he asked abruptly, "how did you manage to elude Major Lessard and get in here?"

MacRae pointed to one of the horses. "We didn't elude him. You'll find what's left of the black-hearted devil under that canvas," he answered coolly. "Lessard was at the bottom of the crookedness. We've packed him and Paul Gregory fifty miles for you to see."

"Ha!" the old fellow seemed not so surprised as I had expected. He glanced over the lot of us and let another long-drawn "ha" escape.

"May I ask a favor, Colonel Allen?" MacRae continued. "This lady has had a hard day. Will you excuse her, for the present? We have a story to tell that you may find hard to credit."

The colonel (I'd heard of him before; I knew when MacRae spoke his name that he was Commander-in-Chief of the Northwest Mounted Police, the biggest gun of all) favored us with another appraising stare.

"These men, I take it, are prisoners?" he said, pointing to Hicks and Bevans.

"You bet your sweet life them's prisoners," Piegan broke in with cheerful assurance. "Them gentlemen is candidates for a rope necktie apiece—nice perfessional assassins t' have in the Police!"

Allen turned to the orderly. "A detail of four from the guardhouse on the double-quick," he commanded.

Captain Stone stood by gnawing his mustache while Allen listened unmoved as MacRae pointed out the horse on which was packed the bulk of the loot, and gave him a brief outline of the abduction and the subsequent fight at the mouth of Sage Creek. The orderly returned with the detail, and Allen courteously sent him to escort Lyn to the hospitality of Bat Perkins' wife, as MacRae asked. After which the guard marshaled Piegan, MacRae, and me, along with Hicks and Bevans, into the room where MacRae and Lessard had clashed that memorable day. Then they carried in the two bodies and laid them on the floor, and last of all the pack that held Hank Rowan's gold and the government currency.

While this was being done an orderly flitted from house to house on officers' row; the calm, pleasant-voiced, shrewd old Commissioner gathered his captains about him for a semi-official hearing. The dusk faded into night. Here and there about the post lights began to twinkle. We stood about in the ante-room, silent under the vigilant eye of the guard. After an uncertain period of waiting, the orderly called "Gordon MacRae," and the inquisition began.

One at a time they put us on the rack—probing each man's story down to the smallest detail. It was long after midnight when the questioning was at an end. The finale came when a trooper searched the bodies of Lessard and Gregory, and relieved Hicks and Bevans of the plunder that was still concealed about their persons. They counted the money solemnly, on the same desk by which Lessard stood when MacRae flung that hot challenge in his teeth, and lost his stripes as the penalty. Outside, the wind arose and whoo-ee-ed around the corner of the log building; inside, there was a strained quiet, broken only by the occasional rattle of a loose window, the steady chink—chink of coin slipping through fingers, the crisp rustle of bills, like new silk. And when it was done Allen leaned back in his chair, patting the arm of it with one hand, and surveyed the neatly piled money and the three buckskin sacks on the desk before him. Then he stood up, very erect and stern in the yellow lamplight.

"Take those men to the guardhouse," he ordered curtly, pointing an accusing finger at Hicks and Bevans. "Iron them securely—securely!"

He turned to me. "I regret that it will be necessary for you to wait some little time, Flood, before your money can be restored to you," he said in a pleasanter tone. "There will be certain formalities to go through, you understand. You will also be required as a witness at the forthcoming trial. We shall be glad to furnish you and Smith with comfortable quarters until then. It is late, but MacRae knows these barracks, and doubtless he can find you a temporary sleeping place. And, in conclusion, I wish to compliment all three of you on the courage and resource you displayed in tracking down these damnable scoundrels—damnable scoundrels."

He fairly exploded that last phrase. I daresay it was something of a blow to his pride in the Force to learn that such deviltry had actually been fathered by one of his trusted officers; something the same sorrowful anger that stirs a man when one of his own kin goes wrong. Then, as if he were half-ashamed of his burst of feeling, he dismissed us with a wave of his hand and a gruff "That's all, to-night."

* * * * *

That practically was the finish of the thing. There was, of course, a trial, at which Hicks and Bevans were convicted out of hand and duly sentenced to be hung—a sentence that was carried out with neatness and despatch in the near future. Also, I did manage, in the fullness of time, to deliver La Pere's ten thousand dollars without further gun-play.

Colonel Allen knew a good man when he saw one—he was not long in demonstrating that fact. When everything was straightened out, MacRae—urged thereto by Lyn—made a straightforward request for honorable discharge But he did not get it. Instead, the gray-haired Commissioner calmly offered him promotion to an Inspectorship, which is equivalent to the rank of a captain, and carries pay of two thousand a year. And MacRae, of course, accepted.

The day he cast off the old red jacket of the rank and file and put on the black uniform with braid looped back and forth across the front of it, and gold hieroglyphics on the collar, Piegan Smith and I stood up with him and Lyn and helped them get fitted to double harness. Not that there was any lack of other folk; indeed, it seemed to me that the official contingent of Fort Walsh had turned out en masse to attend the ceremony. But Piegan and I were the star guests.

* * * * *

Ah, well, we can't always be young and full of the pure joy of living. One must grow old. And inevitably one looks back with a pang, and sighs for the vanished days. But Time keeps his scythe a-swinging, and we go out—like a snuffed candle. We lived, though, we who frolicked along the forty-ninth parallel when Civilization stood afar and viewed the scene askance; but she came down upon us and took possession fast enough when that wild land was partly tamed, and now few are left of those who knew and loved the old West, its perils, its hardships, its bigness of heart and readiness of hand. Such of us as remain are like the buffalo penned in national parks—a sorry remnant of the days that were.

THE END.