Part 7 (1/2)

remarked Trooper Medlicott, riding up to his side.

Sergeant Silk shook his head.

”It isn't that,” he decided. ”It's not the best time of the year to start for the diggings, winter coming on. And besides, a woman--a girl--would hardly be going alone on a journey like that.”

Young Rapson looked at him sharply.

”A girl?” he repeated wonderingly. ”But you can't possibly see her, all this way off! How do you know?”

”Come to that, I don't know--with any certainty,” Silk returned. ”And, of course, as you say, I couldn't see her all this distance off, even if she were not hidden under the awning. Who could?”

”But you never say things like that at random,” pursued Rapson. ”You've always got a good reason for everything you do and say.”

”Exactly,” Silk nodded. ”But it's only my surmise that there's a girl in that wagon. I don't insist that she's alone. There's the teamster and the off man taking charge of the outfit, even if their pa.s.senger had no other companion than her dog. She's young,” he went on, as if speaking to himself, ”and I guess she has fair hair. A bit of an artist, I believe. Paints landscapes. I'm inclined to promise that if you were to overhaul her fixings, Percy, you'd find she has a sketch of Minnew.a.n.ka Peak in her portfolio.”

”My hat!” exclaimed Percy. ”Say, you're clever to have figured out all that!”

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.

”Clever? Not at all,” he protested. ”I've only found out what you or Medlicott or any one else might have discovered equally well. It's quite simple. I merely happened to notice a few little things back along the trail where we halted to have our grub. You noticed yourself that somebody'd been camping there in front of us, didn't you?”

”Yes,” Rapson signified. ”I couldn't help seeing the ashes of their bivouac fire; and, of course, I've noticed the track of their wagon wheels all along the trail, as well as the footmarks of a rather big dog. But I fail to understand how you can make out all that information about the girl having fair hair and bein' an artist.”

Sergeant Silk smiled as he turned to lead the way down the slope of the hill trail into the valley.

”That's only because you don't smoke a pipe that needs occasional cleaning out,” he responded. ”Mine needed cleaning, see? and while you and Bob Medlicott were down at the creek, watering the horses, I looked about for a stalk of sage-gra.s.s or something that would go into the stem. I found just the very thing I wanted--a hair-pin. You'll allow that a hair-pin is peculiarly a feminine piece of furniture. It's reasonable to infer that it wasn't a man who lost it; and since the one I picked up was made of gilt wire, I guess it wasn't the property of a woman with black hair. What? Don't you agree with me?”

Percy Rapson was laughing.

”It's too ridiculously obvious to be disputed,” he acknowledged. ”But,”

he added inquiringly, ”how about the supposed sketch of Minnew.a.n.ka Peak?

That's a corker!”

Silk pushed back his hat.

”For one thing,” he explained, ”she sharpened a black-lead pencil, leaving the chips lying around, close beside the marks in the soil where her easel and camp-stool had stood, the dog sitting near. She had thrown away a bit of rag on which she had cleaned her paint-brushes. She'd used more azure blue than any other colour, and, say, I don't know anything quite so blue as Minnew.a.n.ka Peak, of which she had an excellent view from where she had propped her easel.”

”Rather a jolly idea, that--touring about Canada takin' sketches of the scenery,” observed Percy Rapson. ”I've often wished to be an artist. Do you suppose that she would let us have a look at her sketches, Silk?”

”There'd be no great harm in your asking her,” the sergeant answered.

”But we shall hardly have time to loiter around. You see, Medlicott and I are on special duty. We're not here to occupy our time with strangers; unless, of course, we can be of some help to them. We've got to follow up the trail of Nick-By-Night and his gang, and hale them off to prison--if we're lucky enough to lay hands on them.”

Percy Rapson glanced forward to the cloud of dust.

”Risky for an unprotected girl to be travellin' about when there are such characters as Nick-By-Night on the trail,” he said. ”I wonder n.o.body warned her against the possibility of bein' held-up by bandits.”

”There is certainly that danger,” Silk said with a tone of anxiety in his voice. ”It was only half-a-dozen miles beyond where we are now that the bandits, as you call them, escaped from the patrol a week ago.

Nick's secret hiding-place is somewhere over the hills there, on Ghost Pine Creek.”