Part 5 (1/2)
Once out of the official atmosphere, I hesitated over my next move.
Lessard's high-handed squelching of MacRae had thrown everything out of focus. We'd planned to report at headquarters, see Lyn, if she were at Walsh, and then with Pend d' Oreille as a base of operations go on a still hunt for whatever the Writing-Stone might conceal. That scheme was knocked galley-west and crooked, for even when MacRae's term expired he'd get a long period of duty at the Fort; he'd lost his rank, and as a private his coming and going would be according to barrack-rule instead of the freedom allowed a sergeant in charge of an outpost like Pend d' Oreille--I knew that much of the Mounted Police style of doing business. And so far as my tackling single-handed a search for Hank Rowan's _cache_--well, I decided to see Lyn before I took that contract.
I hated that, too. It always went against my grain to be a bearer of ill tidings. I hate to make a woman cry, especially one I like. Some one had to tell her, though, and, much as I disliked the mission, I felt that I ought not to hang back and let some stranger blurt it out. So I nailed the first trooper I saw, and had him show me the domicile of Mrs.
Stone--who, I learned, was the wife of Lessard's favorite captain--and thither I rambled, wis.h.i.+ng mightily for a good stiff jolt out of the keg that Piegan Smith and Mac had clashed over. But if there was any bottled nerve-restorer around Fort Walsh it was tucked away in the officers'
cellars, and not for the benefit of the common herd; so I had to fall back on a cigarette.
Lyn was sitting out in front when I reached the place. Another female person, whom I put down as Madam Stone, arose and disappeared through an open door at my approach. Lyn motioned me to a camp-stool close by. I sat down, and immediately my tongue became petrified. My think-machinery was running at a dizzy speed, but words--if silence is truly golden, I was the richest man in Fort Walsh that afternoon, for a few minutes, at least. And when my vocal organs did at last consent to fulfil their natural office, they refused to deliver anything but empty commonplaces, the kind one's tongue carries in stock for occasional moments of barren speech. These oral inanities only served to make Lyn give me the benefit of a look of amused wonder.
”Dear me,” she laughed at last. ”I wonder what weighty matter is crus.h.i.+ng you to the earth. If you've got anything on your conscience, Sarge, for goodness' sake confess. I'll give you absolution, if you like, and then perhaps you'll be a little more cheerful.”
”No, there's nothing particular weighing me down,” I lied flatly.
”Anyway, I don't aim to unload my personal troubles on you. I came over here to acquire a little information. How came you away up here by your lonesome, and what brought your father and old Hans----”
Her purple-shaded eyes widened, each one a question-mark.
”Who told you that Hans was up North? I know I didn't mention him,” she cut in quickly. ”Have you seen them?”
It's a wonder my face didn't betray the fact that I was holding something back. I know I must have looked guilty for a second. That was a question I would gladly have pa.s.sed up, but her eyes demanded an answer.
”Well,” I protested, ”it occurred to me that if you expected to meet your father here in a day or two, Rutter would naturally be with him, seeing that they've paddled in the same canoe since a good many years before you were born, my lady. What jarred you all loose from Texas? And what the mischief did you do to MacRae that he quit the South next spring after I did, and straightway went to soldiering in this country?”
She s.h.i.+ed away from that query, just as I expected. ”We had oceans of trouble after you left there, Sarge,” she told me, turning her head from me so that her gaze wandered over the barrack-square. ”It really doesn't make pleasant telling, but you'll understand better than some one that didn't know the country. You remember d.i.c.k Feltz, and that old trouble about the Conway brand that dad bought a long time back?”
I nodded; I remembered Mr. Feltz very well indeed, for the well-merited killing of one of his hired a.s.sa.s.sins was the main cause of my hasty departure from Texas.
”Well, it came to a head, one day, in Fort Worth. They shot each other up terribly, and a week or so later Feltz died. His people in the East got it into their heads that it was a case of murder. They stirred up the county authorities till every one was taking sides. Of course, dad was cleared; but that seemed to be the beginning of a steady run of bad luck. The trial cost an awful lot of money, and made enemies, too. Feltz had plenty of friends of his own calibre--you know that to your sorrow, don't you, Sarge?--and they started trouble on the range. It was simply terrible for a while. Dad can supply the details when he comes.” (”when he comes”--I tell you, that jarred me.) ”Finally things got to such a pa.s.s that dad had to quit. And what with a deal in some Mexican cattle that didn't turn out well, and some other business troubles that I never quite understood, we were just about finished when we closed out.”
She let her eyes meet mine for an instant, and they were smiling, making light of it all. Most women, I thought, would have had a good cry, or at least pulled a long face, over a hard-luck story like that. But she was really more of a woman than I had thought her, and I thanked the Lord she was game when I remembered what I had to tell her before I was through.
”Dad and Hans Rutter, as you know, weren't the sort of men to sit around and mourn over anything like that,” she laughed. ”I don't know where they got the idea of going to Peace River. But dad settled me and Mammy Thomas in a little cottage in Austin, and they started. I wanted to go along, but dad wouldn't hear of it. They've been gone a little over two years. I'd get word from them about every three months, and early this spring dad wrote that they had made a good stake and were coming home.
He said I could come as far as Benton to meet them, and we would take the boat from there down to St. Louis. So I looked up the lay of the country, and sent him word I would come as far as Walsh. He had said they would come out by way of this place. And then I rounded up Mammy Thomas and struck out. I've rather enjoyed the trip, too. They should be here any day, now.”
My conscience importuned me to tell her bluntly that they would only come into Walsh feet first. But I dodged the unpleasant opening. There was another matter I wanted to touch upon first.
”Look here, Lyn,” I said--rather dubiously, it must be confessed, for I didn't know how she would take it, ”I'm going to tell you something on my own responsibility, and you mustn't get the idea that I'm trying to mix into your personal affairs without a warrant. But I have a hunch that you're laboring under a mistaken impression, right now; that is, if you care anything about an old friend like MacRae.”
”I can't really say that I do, though,” she a.s.sured me quickly, but she colored in a way that convinced me that her feeling toward MacRae was of the sort she would never admit to any one but himself.
”Well,” I continued, ”I imagined you would think it queer that he should pa.s.s you up as he did a while ago. But here at Fort Walsh we're among a cla.s.s of people that are a heap different from Texas cow-punchers. These redcoats move along social lines that don't look like much to a cowman; but once in the Force you must abide by them. It was consideration for you that forbade MacRae to stop. Any woman in the company of an officer is taboo to an enlisted man, according----”
”I know all that,” she interrupted impatiently. ”Probably they'd cut me, and all that sort of thing. I understand their point of view, exactly, but I'm not here to play the social game, and I shall talk to whom it pleases me. Do you or Gordon MacRae honestly believe I care a snap for their petty conventions?”
”No, I know you better than that,” I responded. ”All the same, this is a pretty rough country for a woman, and if you've made friends among the people on top, they may come in handy. For that matter,” I concluded, ”you won't get a chance to have the cold shoulder turned to you for a.s.sociating with MacRae; not for some time, anyway.”
”What do you mean?” she demanded, in that answer-me-at-once way I knew of old.