Part 10 (1/2)

We took the third horse along as a precautionary measure. At a boulder down the ridge we left him, together with their belts, as Mac had promised. The only bit of their property we kept besides the horses was a pair of field-gla.s.ses--something that we knew would be priceless to men who were practically outlawed. For the next two hours we slunk like coyotes in coulee-bottoms and deep washouts, until we saw the commissary wagon cross the ridge west of Lost River, saw from a safe distance the brown specks that were riders, casting in wide circles for sight of us or our trail.

Then MacRae leaned over his saddle-horn and made a wry face at them.

”Hunt, confound you,” he said, almost cheerfully. ”We'll give you some hunting to do before you're through with us.”

CHAPTER XIV.

A CLOSE CALL.

We were standing in a brushy pocket on the side of a hill, and as there was no immediate danger of our being seen, MacRae continued, by the aid of the gla.s.ses, to follow the movements of our would-be captors.

”D'you know that plunder can't be far away; those fellows haven't had much time to make their _cache_,” he reflected, more to himself than to me. ”I wonder how they accounted to Lessard for us. Just think of it--somewhere within twenty miles of us there's in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars of stolen money, planted till they can get it safely; and the men that got away with it are helping the law to run us down. That's a new feature of the case; one, I must say, that I didn't look for.”

He lowered the gla.s.ses, and regarded me soberly.

”They fight fire with fire in a gra.s.s country,” he observed. ”The Mounted Police are a hard formation to buck against--but I've a mind to see this thing to a finish. How do you feel about it, Sarge? Will you go through?”

”All the way and back again,” I promised recklessly. I wasn't sure of what he had in mind, but I knew _him_--and seeing that we were in the same boat, I thought it fitting that we should sink or swim together.

”We'll come out on top yet,” he confidently a.s.serted. ”Meantime we'd better locate some secluded spot and give our nags a chance to fill up on gra.s.s and be fresh for to-morrow; we're apt to have a hard day.”

”It wouldn't be a bad scheme to fill ourselves at the same time,” I suggested. ”I'm feeling pretty vacant inside. The first bunch of buffalo that has a fat calf along is going to hear from me.”

”If we can get over this ridge without being seen, there's a canyon with some cottonwoods and a spring in it. That will be as good a place to hole up for the night as we can find,” Mac decided. ”And there will likely be some buffalo near there.”

So we ascended cautiously to the top of the divide, keeping in the coulees as much as possible, for we knew that other field-gla.s.ses would be focused on the hills. Once over the crest, we halted and watched for riders coming our way. But none appeared. Once I thought I glimpsed a moving speck on the farther bank of Lost River. MacRae brought the gla.s.ses to bear, and said it was two Policemen jogging toward camp. Then we were sure that our flight had not been observed, and we dropped into a depression that gradually deepened to a narrow-bottomed canyon. Two miles down this we came to the spring of which MacRae had spoken, a tiny stream issuing from a crevice at the foot of the bank. What was equally important, a thick clump of cottonwood and willow furnished tolerably secure concealment.

The fates smiled on us in the matter of food very shortly. I'm not enamored of a straight meat diet as a rule, but that evening I was in no mood to carp at anything half-way eatable. While we were on our stomachs gratefully stowing away a draught of the cool water, I heard a buffalo bull lift his voice in challenge to another far down the canyon.

We tied our horses out of sight in the timber and stole in the direction of the sound. A glorious bull-fight was taking place when we got within shooting-distance, the cows and calves forming a noisy circle about the combatants, each s.h.a.ggy brown brute bawling with all the strength of bovine lungs; in that pandemonium of bellowing and trampling I doubt if the report of Mac's carbine could have been heard two hundred yards away. The shot served to break up the fight and scatter the herd, however, and we returned to the cottonwoods with the hind-quarter of a fat calf.

Hungry as we were, we could hardly bolt raw meat, so, taking it for granted that no one was likely to ride up on us, we built a fire in the grove, being careful to feed it with dry twigs that would make little smoke. Over this we toasted bits of meat on the end of a splinter, and presently our hunger was appeased. Then we blotted out the fire, and, stretching ourselves on the ground, had recourse to the solace of tobacco.

The longer we laid there the more curious did I become as to what line of action MacRae purposed to follow. He lay on his back, silent, staring straight up at the bit of sky that showed through the branches above, and I'd just reached the point of asking, when he sat up and forestalled my questions.

”This is going to be risky business, Sarge,” he began. ”But so far as I can see, there is only one way that we can hope to get the thing straightened out. If we can get hold of Hicks or Bevans, any one of the four, in fact, I think we can _make_ him tell us all we need to know.

It's the only chance for you and Lyn to get your money back, and for me to square myself.”

”I shouldn't think,” I put in resentfully, ”that you'd want to square yourself, after the dirty way you've been treated. I'd as soon take to herding sheep, or was.h.i.+ng dirty clothes like a Chinaman, as be a member of the Mounted Police if what I've seen in the last ten days is a fair sample of what a man can expect.”

”Fiddlesticks!” Mac impatiently exclaimed. ”You don't know what you're talking about. I tell you a man in the Police, if he has any head at all, can control his own destiny. You'll be a heap more sane when you get that old, wild-west notion, that every man should be a law unto himself, out of your head. I'll venture to say that the Northwest will be a safer and more law-abiding place five years from now than south of the line will be in twenty--and the men in red coats will make it so.

Why, I wouldn't miss helping tame this country for half a dozen such sc.r.a.pes as I'm in now. This is merely the result of a rotten spot in the personnel, a rotten spot that will soon be cut out if things come about logically; it isn't the fault of the system. There never was any great movement in developing a new country that didn't have a quota of d.a.m.ned rascals to eliminate from within itself. If you didn't have such a perverted idea of independence, you'd see that I'm in no danger of losing either my ident.i.ty or my self-respect simply because I've become a unit in a body of six hundred fighting-men. I don't intend to remain in the insignificant-unit cla.s.s.”

”Your intentions,” I interrupted, ”will cut a mighty small figure if your friend Lessard gets hold of you in the next day or two.”

”That's the melancholy truth,” he returned seriously. ”I imagine we'd get a pretty rough deal; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that troop has received orders, by now, to shoot first and arrest afterward. Still, I'm willing to gamble that if we rode into Fort Walsh and gave ourselves up, it would only be a matter of a few weeks in the guardhouse for us before the thing was cleared up.”

”Maybe,” I responded skeptically. ”If that's your belief, why don't you act accordingly?”