Part 1 (1/2)

Sergeant Silk the Prairie Scout.

by Robert Leighton.

CHAPTER I

'LIKE A DESt.i.tUTE TRAMP'

”If you ask me, there's nothing like riding across the open prairie for quickening a fellow's eyesight,” remarked the Honourable Percy Rapson, breaking a long spell of silence. ”There's so little to be seen, anyhow, except the gra.s.s and the flowers, that he's bound to catch sight of anything unusual.”

Sergeant Silk smiled at his companion's boyish enthusiasm for the open-air life of the plains. Percy had been sent out to Western Canada to learn farming, but there was no doubt that he was learning a lot that had no direct connection with agriculture. Owing largely to his friends.h.i.+p with Sergeant Silk, of the North-West Mounted Police, he was learning to be manly and self-reliant, and he was beginning to know so much scout-craft that his remark concerning the quickening of his powers of observation was quite justified.

”That is so,” the sergeant acknowledged. ”The prairie teaches you a lot.

It's like being on the sea, where everything that isn't water or sky attracts your attention. I'm bound to say that your own eyesight is improving wonderfully by practice. You don't miss a great deal. What do you make of the stranger that we're coming up to?”

Percy glanced at the red-coated soldier policeman in sharp surprise.

”Stranger?” he repeated inquiringly. ”I haven't noticed one. Where?”

Silk returned the boy's glance with a curious lift of the eyebrows.

”Why, I supposed it was your spotting him that prompted your remark about eyesight,” he said lightly. And he pointed towards a clump of bushes some little distance in advance of them across the fresh green prairie gra.s.s. ”He's sitting hunched up alongside of that patch of cactus scrub in front of us, with his head in his hands, as if he had something tremendously serious to think about. Ah, he's moving now. He hears us. What's he mooching around here for, I wonder?”

”You appear to know him?” said Percy.

Sergeant Silk nodded.

”I know him, yes. It's a chap named Charlie Fortescue.”

Percy saw the stranger plainly now, a slightly built, rather good-looking young fellow, dressed as an ordinary plainsman, standing upright and looking expectantly towards the two riders who were approaching him. He waited until they came to a halt in front of him.

Sergeant Silk dropped his bridle rein over the horn of his saddle and slowly regarded the man from the toes of his boots to the crown of his wide felt hat.

”Something gone wrong, Charlie?” he casually inquired. ”Where's your pony? What are you doing hanging around here, like a dest.i.tute tramp?”

Charlie shrugged his shoulders.

”That's sure what I am, Sergeant,” he answered with an awkward attempt at a smile, ”a dest.i.tute tramp.”

”Eh?” exclaimed Silk. He evidently did not believe him. ”D'you mind explaining? I don't understand--unless you mean that you've had a disagreement with old man Crisp?”

”You've hit the mark, first shot,” said Charlie. ”But it's something more than a mere disagreement. I've quitted the ranch. I'm not going back--ever.”

”That's bad,” reflected Sergeant Silk, taking out his pipe to indicate that he had leisure enough to listen to the explanation that he had invited. ”Real bad, it is. You were such friends, he and you. He was shaping to take you into partners.h.i.+p, and--well, there's that pretty daughter of his. I've heard you were likely to marry her. Surely you haven't broken off with Dora, as well as her father?”

”I'm afraid so,” Charlie gloomily answered. ”I couldn't expect her to marry a man whom her father has accused of committing a crime.”

”A crime?” Sergeant Silk looked at him in perplexity. ”A crime?” he repeated. ”That's the way of the wind, is it? Tell me about it.”

Charlie Fortescue nibbled nervously at an end of his moustache.