by Unknown
Tom Morse reflected swiftly. His uncle's firm had taken a chance of this very finale when it had sent a convoy of liquor into forbidden territory. Better to lose the stock than to be barred by the Canadian Government from trading with the Indians at all. This officer was not one to be bribed or bullied. He would go through with the thing he had started.
"Why, no! How could I have any objections?" Morse said.
He shot a swift, slant look at Barney, a look that told the Irishman to say nothing and know nothing, and that he would be protected against the law.
"Glad you haven't," Constable Beresford replied cheerfully--so very cheerfully in fact that Morse suspected he would not have been much daunted if objections had been mentioned. "Perhaps you'll help me with my little job, then."
The trader grinned. He might as well go the limit with the bluff he was playing. "Sure. I'll help you make a fourth o' July outa the kegs. Lead me to 'em."
"You don't know where they are, of course?"
"In the gully, you said," Morse replied innocently
"So I did. Righto. Down you go, then." The constable turned to Barney. "You next, friend."
A well-defined trail led down the steep side of the gulch. It ended in a thick growth of willow saplings. Underneath the roof of this foliage were more than a score of whiskey-casks.
After ten minutes with the rifle butt there was nothing to show for the cache but broken barrels and a trough of wet sand where the liquor had run down the bed of the dry gully.
It was time, Morse thought, to play his own small part in the entertainment.
"After you, gentlemen," Beresford said, stepping aside to let them take the trail up.
Morse too moved back to let Barney pass. The eyes of the two men met for a fraction of a second. Tom's lips framed silently one word. In that time a message was given and received.
The young man followed Barney, the constable at his heels. Morse stumbled, slipped to all fours, and slid back. He flung out his arms to steady himself and careened back against the constable. His flying hands caught at the scarlet coat. His bent head and shoulders thrust Beresford back and down.
Barney started to run.
The officer struggled to hold his footing against the awkward incubus, to throw the man off so that he could pursue Barney. His efforts were vain. Morse, evidently trying to regain his equilibrium, plunged wildly at him and sent him ploughing into the willows. The Montanan landed heavily on top, pinned him down, and smothered him.
The scarlet coat was a center of barrel hoops, bushes, staves, and wildly jerking arms and legs.
Morse made heroic efforts to untangle himself from the clutter. Once or twice he extricated himself almost, only to lose his balance on the slippery bushes and come skating down again on the officer just as he was trying to rise.
It was a scene for a moving-picture comedy, if the screen had been a feature of that day.
When at last the two men emerged from the gulch, Barney was nowhere to be seen. With him had vanished the mount of Beresford.
The constable laughed nonchalantly. He had just lost a prisoner, which was against the unwritten law of the Force, but he had gained another in his place. It would not be long till he had Barney too.
"Pretty work," he said appreciatively. "You couldn't have done it better if you'd done it on purpose, could you?"
"Done what?" asked Morse, with bland naïveté.
"Made a pillow and a bed of me, skated on me, bowled me over like a tenpin."
"I ce'tainly was awkward. Couldn't get my footin' at all, seemed like. Why, where's Barney?" Apparently the trader had just made a discovery.
"Ask of the winds, 'Oh, where?'" Beresford dusted off his coat, his trousers, and his cap. When he had removed the evidence of the battle of the gulch, he set his cap at the proper angle and cocked an inquiring eye at the other. "I suppose you know you're under arrest."
"Why, no! Am I? What for? Which of the statues, laws, and ordinances of Queen Vic have I been bustin' without knowin' of them?"
"For aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner."
"Did I do all that? And when did I do it?"
"While you were doing that war-dance on what was left of my manhandled geography."
"Can you arrest a fellow for slippin'?"
"Depends on how badly he slips. I'm going to take a chance on arresting you, anyhow."
"Gonna take away my six-shooter and handcuff me?"
"I'll take your revolver. If necessary, I'll put on the cuffs."
Morse looked at him, not without admiration. The man in the scarlet jacket wasted nothing. There was about him no superfluity of build, of gesture, of voice. Beneath the close-fitting uniform the muscles rippled and played when he moved. His shoulders and arms were those of a college oarsman. Lean-flanked and clean-limbed, he was in the hey-day of a splendid youth. It showed in the steady eyes set wide in the tanned face, in the carriage of the close-cropped, curly head, in the spring of the step. The Montanan recognized in him a kinship of dynamic force.
"Just what would I be doing?" the whiskey-runner asked, smiling.
Beresford met his smile. "I fancy I'll find that out pretty soon. Your revolver, please." He held out his hand, palm up.
"Let's get this straight. We're man to man. What'll you do if I find I've got no time to go to Fort Macleod with you?"
"Take you with me."
"Dead or alive?"
"No, alive."
"And if I won't go?" asked Morse.
"Oh, you'll go." The officer's bearing radiated a quiet, imperturbable confidence. His hand was still extended, "If you please."
"No hurry. Do you know what you're up against? When I draw this gun I can put a bullet through your head and ride away?"
"Yes."
"Unless, of course, you plug me first."
"Can't do that. Against the regulations."
"Much obliged for that information. You've got only a dead man's chance then--if I show fight."
"Better not. Game hardly worth the candle. My pals would run you down," the constable advised coolly.
"You still intend to arrest me?"
"Oh, yes."
As Morse looked at him, patient as an animal of prey, steady, fearless, an undramatic Anglo-Saxon who meant to go through with the day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable; and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to kill or be killed. It came to him that he was up against a new order which would wipe Bully West and his kind from the land.
He handed his revolver to Beresford. "I'll ride with you."
"Good. Have to borrow your horse till we reach Whoop-Up. You won't mind walking?"
"Not at all. Some folks think that's what legs were made for," answered Morse, grinning.
As he strode across the prairie beside the horse, Morse was still puzzling over the situation. He perceived that the strength of the officer's position was wholly a moral one. A lawbreaker was confronted with an ugly alternative. The only way to escape arrest was to commit murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier.
Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. Some of them had been put out of business. Their property had been destroyed and confiscated. Fines had been imposed on them. The current whisper was that the whiskey-smugglers would retaliate against the constables in person whenever there was a chance to do so with impunity. Some day a debonair wearer of the scarlet coat would ride out gayly from one of the forts and a riderless horse would return at
dusk. There were outlaws who would ask nothing better than a chance to dry-gulch one of these inquisitive riders of the plains.
But Beresford rode into the stockade and swung from the saddle with smiling confidence. He nodded here and there casually to dark, sullen men who watched his movements with implacably hostile eyes.
His words were addressed to Reddy Madden. "Can you let me have a horse for a few days and charge it to the Force? I've lost mine."
Some one sniggered offensively. Barney had evidently reached Whoop-Up and was in hiding.
"Your horse came in a while ago, constable," Madden said civilly. "It's in the corral back of the store."
"Did it come in without a rider?" Beresford asked.
The question was unnecessary. The horse would have gone to Fort Macleod and not have come to Whoop-Up unless a rider had guided it here. But sometimes one found out things from unwilling witnesses if one asked questions.
"Didn't notice. I was in the store myself."
"Thought perhaps you hadn't noticed," the officer said. "None of you other gentlemen noticed either, did you?"
The "other gentlemen" held a dogged, sulky silence. A girl cantered through the gate of the stockade and up to the store. At sight of Morse her eyes passed swiftly to Beresford. His answered smilingly what she had asked. It was all over in a flash, but it told the man from Montana who the informer was that had betrayed to the police the place of the whiskey cache.
To the best of her limited chance, Jessie McRae was paying an installment on the debt she owed Bully West and Tom Morse.
CHAPTER VIII
AT SWEET WATER CREEK
Before a fire of buffalo chips Constable Beresford and his prisoner smoked the pipe of peace. Morse sat on his heels, legs crossed, after the manner of the camper. The officer lounged at full length, an elbow dug into the sand as a support for his head. The Montanan was on parole, so that for the moment at least their relations were forgotten.
"After the buffalo--what?" asked the American. "The end of the Indian--is that what it means? And desolation on the plains. Nobody left but the Hudson's Bay Company trappers, d'you reckon?"
The Canadian answered in one word. "Cattle."
"Some, maybe," Morse assented. "But, holy Moses, think of the millions it would take to stock this country."
"Bet you the country's stocked inside of five years of the time the buffalo are cleared out. Look at what the big Texas drives are doing in Colorado and Wyoming and Montana. Get over the idea that this land up here is a desert. That's a fool notion our school geographies are responsible for. Great American Desert? Great American fiddlesticks! It's a man's country, if you like; but I've yet to see the beat of it."
Morse had ceased to pay attention. His head was tilted, and he was listening.
"Some one ridin' this way," he said presently. "Hear the hoofs click on the shale. Who is it? I wonder. An' what do they want? When folks' intentions hasn't been declared it's a good notion to hold a hand you can raise on."
Without haste and without delay Beresford got to his feet. "We'll step back into the shadow," he announced.
"Looks reasonable to me," agreed the smuggler.
They waited in the semi-darkness back of the camp-fire.
Some one shouted. "Hello, the camp!" At the sound of that clear, bell-like voice Morse lifted his head to listen better.
The constable answered the call.
Two riders came into the light. One was a girl, the other a slim, straight young Indian in deerskin shirt and trousers. The girl swung from the saddle and came forward to the camp-fire. The companion of her ride shadowed her.
Beresford and his prisoner advanced from the darkness.
"Bully West's after you. He's sworn to kill you," the girl called to the constable.
"How do you know?"
"Onistah heard him." She indicated with a wave of her hand the lithe-limbed youth beside her. "Onistah was passing the stable--behind it, back of the corral. This West was gathering a mob to follow you--said he was going to hang you for destroying his whiskey."
"He is, eh?" Beresford's salient jaw set. His light blue eyes gleamed hard and chill. He would see about that.
"They'll be here soon. This West was sure you'd camp here at Sweet Water Creek, close to the ford." A note of excitement pulsed in the girl's voice. "We heard 'em once behind us on the road. You'd better hurry."
The constable swung toward the Montanan. His eyes bored into those of the prisoner. Would this man keep his parole or not? He would find out pretty soon.
"Saddle up, Morse. I'll pack my kit. We'll hit the trail."
"Listen." Jessie stood a moment, head lifted. "What's that?"
Onistah moved a step forward, so that for a moment the firelight flickered over the copper-colored face. Tom Morse made a discovery. This man was the Blackfoot he had rescued from the Crees.
"Horses," the Indian said, and held up the fingers of both hands to indicate the numbers. "Coming up creek. Here soon."
"We'll move back to the big rocks and I'll make a stand there," the officer told the whiskey-runner. "Slap the saddles on without cinching. We've got no time to lose." His voice lost its curtness as he turned to the girl. "Miss McRae, I'll not forget this. Very likely you've saved my life. Now you and Onistah had better slip away quietly. You mustn't be seen here."
"Why mustn't I?" she asked quickly. "I don't care who sees me."
She looked at Morse as she spoke, head up, with that little touch of scornful defiance in the quivering nostrils that seemed to express a spirit free and unafraid. The sense of superiority is generally not a lovely manifestation in any human being, but there are moments when it tells of something fine, a disdain of actions low and mean.
Morse strode away to the place where the horses were picketed. He could hear voices farther down the creek, caught once a snatch of words.
"... must be somewheres near, I tell you."
Noiselessly he slipped on the saddles, pulled the picket-pins, and moved toward the big rocks.
The place was a landmark. The erosion of the ages had played strange tricks with the sandstone. The rocks rose like huge red toadstools or like prehistoric animals of vast size. One of them was known as the Three Bears, another as the Elephant.
Among these boulders Morse found the party he had just left. The officer was still trying to persuade Jessie McRae to attempt escape. She refused, stubbornly.
"There are three of us here. Onistah is a good shot. So am I. For that matter, if anybody is going to escape, it had better be you," she said.
"Too late now," Morse said. "See, they've found the camp-fire."
Nine or ten riders had come out of the darkness and were approaching the camping-ground. West was in the lead. Morse recognized Barney and Brad Stearns. Two of the others were half-breeds, one an Indian trailer of the Piegan tribe.
"He must 'a' heard us comin' and pulled out," Barney said.
"Then he's back in the red rocks," boomed West triumphantly.
"Soon find out." Brad Stearns turned the head of his horse toward the rocks and shouted. "Hello, Tom! You there?"
No answer came from the rocks.
"Don't prove a thing," West broke out impatiently. "This fellow's got Tom buffaloed. Didn't he make him smash the barrels? Didn't he take away his six-gun from him and bring him along like he hadn't any mind of his own? Tom's yellow. Got a streak a foot wide."
"Nothin' of the kind," denied Stearns, indignation in his voice. "I done brought up that boy by hand--learned him all he knows about ridin' and ropin'. He'll do to take along."
"Hmp! He always fooled you, Brad. Different here. I'm aimin' to give him the wallopin' of his life when I meet up with him. And that'll be soon, if he's up there in the rocks. I'm goin' a-shootin'." Bully West drew his revolver and rode forward.
The constable had disposed of his forces so that behind the cover of the sandstone boulders they commanded the approach. He had tried to persuade Jessie that this was not her fight, but
a question from her had silenced him.
"If that Bully West finds me here, after he's killed you, d' you think I can get him to let me go because it wasn't my fight?"
She had asked it with flashing eyes, in which for an instant he had seen the savagery of fear leap out. Beresford was troubled. The girl was right enough. If West went the length of murder, he would be an outlaw. Sleeping Dawn would not be safe with him after she had ridden out to warn his enemy that he was coming. The fellow was a primeval brute. His reputation had run over the whole border country of Rupert's Land.