Part 41 (1/2)

”A frozen foot's bad enough, if you have to walk until it galls,” Curtis admitted. ”A hand's easier looked after, though I've three fingers I'm never quite sure of. That's one reason it took so much shooting before I plugged Glover's horse.”

”You were pretty cute about his jacket,” Stanton remarked.

”That was easy enough. The thing was too big for him and newer than his trousers. Soon as I noticed it, I knew I'd dropped on to something worth following up.”

”I can't see what you made of it, and you haven't told me yet.”

”I was too dog-goned cold and tired to talk; wanted to make the post and get to sleep. However, though I gave Crane's boys no hint, I'll show you what I've been figuring on. Consider yourself a jury and tell me how it strikes you. You have as much intelligence as the general run of them.”

”If I hadn't any more than the kind of jurymen we're usually up against, I'd quit the service,” Stanton declared.

The corporal's eyes twinkled.

”If you'll learn to think and not hustle, you'll make a useful man some day. Anyhow, the first thing I caught on to was that Glover had taken off his jacket because there was something in it he didn't want us to find.

Next, that it was money or valuables, because he could have put any small thing into the stove or hid it in the snow before he lit out. Now, Glover knew it was kind of dangerous to leave his jacket with Jepson, who might find the bills, and as he couldn't tell you were in the ravine he must have thought he had a good chance of getting clear away; but, for all that, he wouldn't risk taking the wad along. Guess there's only one explanation--he'd a reason for being mighty afraid of those bills falling into our hands. That was plain enough when I asked him about his jacket.”

”Yes,” Stanton said thoughtfully; ”I guess you have got it right. But what was his reason? He knows Crane can have him sent up for horse-stealing.”

Curtis, opening a drawer, took out a slip of paper with some numbers on it, and then laid the wad of bills on the table.

”Twenty dollars each, Merchants' Bank, and quite clean,” he said.

”It was a five-dollar bill on the same bank we found at the muskeg!”

cried Stanton, starting.

”It was.” Curtis took up the list. ”Now here are the numbers of the twenty-dollar bills Morant at Sebastian got from the bank a day or two before he made the deal with Jernyngham; it was with those bills he paid him the night he disappeared.” He paused and added significantly, ”I guess we have got some of them here.”

This proved to be correct when they had compared them with the list. Then Curtis leaned back in his chair and filled his pipe.

”It's a mighty curious case,” he remarked.

”Sure,” replied Stanton. ”You get no farther with it. You have points against three different men, and it's pretty clear that they haven't been working together. They can't all have killed the man.”

”That's true. Well, I've made a report for Regina, and they'll keep Glover safe until we want him. I can't tell what our chiefs will do; but as Glover's not likely to tell them anything, I guess they'll hold this matter over until we find out more.” He locked up the money. ”Now we'll quit talking about it. I want to give my mind a rest.”

Curtis had few of the qualities needed for the making of a great detective; he was merely a painstaking, determined man, with a capacity for earnest work, which is perhaps more useful than genius in the ranks of the Northwest Police. He could tirelessly follow the dog-sleds, sometimes on the scantiest rations, for hundreds of miles over the snow, sleeping in the open in the arctic frost. He had made long forced marches to succor improvident settlers starving far out in the wilds; in the fierce heat of summer he made his patrols, watching the progress of the gra.s.s-fires, sternly exacting from the ranchers the plowing of the needed guards; and cattle-thieves prudently avoided the district that he ruled with firm benevolence. The man was a worthy type of his people, the new nation that is rising in the West: forceful, steadfast, direct, and, as a rule, devoid of mental subtleties. He admitted that the Jernyngham mystery, every clue to which broke off as he began to follow it, was hara.s.sing him.

While he spent the evening, lounging in well-earned leisure beside the stove, Mrs. Colston was talking seriously to her sister in a room of the Leslie homestead. Owing to the number of its inmates, she had found it difficult to get a word with the girl alone, and now that an opportunity had come, she felt that she must make the most of it.

”Muriel,” she said, ”do you think it's judicious to speak so strongly in Prescott's favor as you have done of late? You were rude to Gertrude last night.”

The girl colored. She had, as a matter of fact, lost her temper, which was generally quick.

”I hate injustice!” she broke out. ”Gertrude and her father make such an unfair use of everything they can find against him, and I think Gertrude's the worse of the two.” She looked hard at her sister. ”She shows a rancor against the man which even the disappearance of her brother doesn't account for.”

The same idea had occurred to Mrs. Colston, but it was a side issue and she was not to be drawn away from the point.

”You stick to the word disappearance,” she said.