CHAPTER XI.
THE GENTLEMAN WHO RODE IN THE LEAD.
It took us all of the next day to make the trip to Stony Crossing andback by way of the place where Rutter was buried. Goodell had no fancy,he said, for a night camp on the prairie when it could be avoided. Heplanned to make an early start from Pend d' Oreille, and thus reach Walshby riding late the next night. So, well toward evening, we swung back tothe river post. Goodell and his fellows were nowise troubled by thepresence of dead men; they might have been packing so much merchandise,from their demeanor. But I was a long way from feeling cheerful. Theghastly burdens, borne none too willingly by the extra horses, put adamper on me, and I'm a pretty sanguine individual as a rule.
When we had unloaded the bodies from the uneasy horses, and laid themcarefully in a lean-to at the stable-end, we led our mounts inside.Goodell paused in the doorway and emitted a whistle of surprise at sightof a horse in one of the stalls. I looked over his shoulder andrecognized at a glance the rangy black MacRae had ridden.
"They must have given Mac's horse to another trooper," I hazarded.
"Not that you could notice," Goodell replied, going on in. "They don'tswitch mounts in the Force. If they have now, it's the first time to myknowledge. When a man's in clink, his nag gets nothing but mild exercisetill his rightful rider gets out. And MacRae got thirty days. Well,we'll soon find out who rode him in."
I pulled the saddle off my horse, slapped it down on the dirt floor, andwent stalking up to the long cabin. The first man my eyes lighted uponas I stepped inside was MacRae, humped disconsolately on the edge of abunk. I was mighty glad to see him, but I hadn't time to more than say"hello" before Goodell and the others came in. Mac drew a letter fromhis pocket and handed it to Goodell.
He glanced quickly through it, then swept the rest of us with aquizzical smile. "By Jove! you must have a pull with the old man, Mac,"he said to MacRae. "I suppose you know what's in this epistle?"
"Partly." Mac answered as though it were no particular concern of his.
"I'm to turn Hicks and Gregory over to you," he read the note again tobe sure of his words, "see that you get a week's supply of grub here,and then leave you to your own devices. What's the excitement, now?Piegans on the war-path? Bull-train missing, or whisky-runners gettingtoo fresh, or what? My word, the major has certainly established aprecedent; you're the first man I've known that got thirty days in clinkand didn't have to serve it to the last, least minute. How the deuce didyou manage it? Put me on, like a good fellow--I might want to get asentence suspended some day. Any of us are liable to get it, y'know."Goodell's tone was full of gentle raillery.
"The high and mighty sent me out to lead a forlorn hope," Mac drylyresponded. "Does that look like a suspended sentence?" He turned his armso that we could see the ripped stitching where his sergeant's stripeshad been cut away.
"Tough--but most of us have been there, one time or another," Goodellobserved sympathetically; and with that the subject rested.
Though I was burning to know things, we hadn't the least chance to talkthat evening. Nine lusty-lunged adults in that one room prohibitedconfidential speech. Not till next morning, when we rode away from Pendd' Oreille with our backs to a sun that was lazily clearing thehill-tops, did MacRae and I have an opportunity to unburden our souls.When we were fairly under way in the direction of Writing-Stone, Hicksand Gregory--the breed scout--lagged fifty or sixty yards behind, andMacRae turned in his saddle and gave me a queer sort of look.
"I wasn't joking last night when I told Goodell that this was somethingof a forlorn hope," he said. "Are you ready to take a chance on gettingyour throat cut or being shot in the back, Sarge?"
I stared at him a second. It was certainly an astounding question,coming from that source--more like the language of the villain in ahowling melodrama than a cold-blooded inquiry that called for a seriousanswer. But he was looking at me soberly enough; and he wasn't in thehabit of saying startling things, unless there was a fairly solid basisof truth in them. He was the last man in the world to accuse of sayingor doing anything merely for the sake of effect.
"That depends," I returned. "Why?"
"Because if we find what we're going after that's the sort of formationwe may have to buck against until we get that stuff to Walsh," hereplied coolly. "Beautiful prospect, eh? I reckon you'll understandbetter if I tell you how it came about.
"The day you left, Lessard had me up on the carpet again. When he gotthrough cross-questioning me, he considered a while, and finally saidthat under the circumstances he felt that losing my stripes would bepunishment enough for the rank insubordination I'd been guilty of, andhe would therefore revoke the thirty-day sentence. I pricked up my earsat that, I can tell you, because Lessard isn't built that way at all.When a man talks to any officer the way I did to him, he gets all that'scoming, and then some for good measure. I began to see light prettyquick, though. He went on to say that he had spoken to Miss Rowan abouther father, and had learned that without doubt those two old fellowswere headed this way with between forty and fifty thousand dollars ingold-dust, that they'd washed on Peace River. Since I'd been on the spotwhen Rutter died, and knew the Writing-Stone country so well, he thoughtI would stand a better show of finding their _cache_ than any one elsehe could send out. He wanted to recover that stuff for Miss Rowan, if itwere possible. So he wrote that order to Goodell and started me out tojoin you--with a warning to keep our eyes open, for undoubtedly the menwho killed Rutter and held you up would be watching for a chance at usif we found that gold."
"Very acute reasoning on his part, I'm sure," I interrupted. "We knewthat without his telling. And if he thinks those fellows are hangingabout waiting for a whack at that dust, why doesn't he get out with abunch of his troopers and round them up?"
"That's what," Mac grinned. "But wait a minute. This was about three inthe afternoon, and he ordered me to start at once so as to catch youfellows as soon as possible. I started a few minutes after three. Youremember the paymaster's train left that morning. He had a mountedescort of six or seven besides his teamster. The MacLeod trail runs lessthan twenty miles north of here, you know. I followed it, knowing aboutwhere they'd camp for the night, thinking I'd make their outfit and getsomething to eat and a chance to sleep an hour or two; then I could comeon here early in the morning. I got to the place where I had figuredthey would stop, about eleven o'clock, but they had made better timethan usual and gone farther, so I quit the trail and struck across thehills, for I didn't want to ride too far out of my way. When I got ontop of the first divide I ran onto a little spring and stopped to watermy horse and let him pick a bit of grass; I'd been riding eight hours,and still had quite a jaunt to make. I must have been about three milessouth of the trail then."
He stopped to light the cigarette he had rolled while he talked, and Ikept still, wondering what would come next. MacRae wasn't the man to gointo detail like that unless he had something important to bring out.
"I sat there about an hour, I reckon," he continued. "By that time itwas darker than a stack of black cats, and fixing to storm. I thought Imight as well be moving as sit there and get soaked to the hide. While Iwas tinkering with the cinch I thought I heard a couple of shots. Ofcourse, I craned my neck to listen, and in a second a regular fusilladebroke out--away off, you know; about like a stick of dry wood cracklingin the stove when you're outside the cabin. I loped out of the hollowby the spring and looked down toward the trail. The red flashes werebreaking out like a bunch of firecrackers, and with pretty much the samesound. It didn't last long--a minute or so, maybe. I listened for awhile, but there was nothing to be seen and I heard no more shooting.Now, I knew the pay-wagon was somewhere on that road, and it struck methat the bunch that got Hans and Rowan and held us up might have triedthe same game on it; and from the noise I judged it hadn't been awalkaway. It was a wild guess; but I thought I ought to go down and see,anyway. Single-handed, and in that dark you could almost feel, I knew Iwas able to sidestep the trouble, if it sh
ould be Indians or anything Ididn't care to get mixed up in.
"I'd gone about a mile down the slope when the lightning began to tearthe sky open. In five minutes the worst of it was right over me, and oneflash came on top of the other so fast it was like a big eye winkingthrough the clouds. One second the hills and coulees would show plain asday, and next you'd have to feel to find the ears of your horse. Ipulled up, for I didn't care to go down there with all thatlightning-play to make a shining mark of me, and while I sat therewondering how long it was going to last, a long, sizzling streak wentzig-zagging up out of the north and another out of the east, and whenthey met overhead and the white glare spread over the clouds, it waslike the sun breaking out over the whole country. It lit up every ridgeand hollow for two or three seconds, and showed me four riders tearingup the slope at a high run. I don't think they saw me at all, for theypassed me, in the dark that shut down after that flash of lightning, soclose that I could hear the pat-a-pat of the hoofs. And when the nextflash came they were out of sight.
"Right after that the rain hit me like a cloudburst. That was overquick, and by the time it had settled to a drizzle I was down in thepaymaster's camp. Things were sure in an uproar there. Two men killed,two more crippled, and the paymaster raving like a maniac. I hadn't beenfar wide of the mark. The men that passed me on the ridge had held upthe outfit--and looted fifty thousand dollars in cold cash."
"Fifty thousand--the devil!" I broke in. "And they got away with it?"
"With all the ease in the world," MacRae answered calmly. "They made asneak on the camp in the dark, clubbed both sentries, and had their gunson the rest before they knew what was wrong. They got the money, andevery horse in camp. The shooting I heard came off as they started awaywith the plunder. Some of the troopers grabbed up their guns and cutloose at random, and these hold-up people returned the compliment withdeadly effect.
"That isn't all," he continued moodily. "I stayed there till daylight,and then gathered up their stock. All the thieves wanted of the horseswas to set the outfit afoot for the time being--a trick which bears theearmarks of the bunch that got in their work on us. They had turned thehorses loose a mile or so away, and I found them grazing together. WhenI'd brought them in I got a bite to eat and came on about my ownbusiness.
"Up on the ridge, close by the spring I had stopped at, I came slap ontheir track; the four horses had pounded a trail in the wet sod that akid could follow. I tore back to the paymaster's camp and begged him toget his men mounted and we would follow it up. But he wouldn't listen tosuch a thing. I don't know why, unless he had some money they hadoverlooked and was afraid they might come back for another try at him.So I went back and hit the trail alone. It led south for a while, andthen east to Sage Creek. This was day before yesterday, you _sabe_. Nearnoon I found a place where they'd _cached_ two extra horses in the brushon Sage Creek. After that their track turned straight west again, and itwas hard to follow, for the ground was drying fast. Finally I had toquit--couldn't make out hoof-marks any more. And it was so late I had tolie out that night. I got to Pend d' Oreille yesterday morning two orthree hours after you fellows left for the crossing."
I haven't quite got a gambler's faith in a hunch, or presentiment, orintuitive conclusion--whatever term one chooses to apply--but from themoment he spoke of seeing four riders on a ridge during that frolic ofthe elements, a crazy idea kept persistently turning over and over in mymind; and when Mac got that far I blurted it out for what it was worth,prefacing it with the happenings of the trip from Walsh to Pendd' Oreille. He listened without manifesting the interest I looked for,tapping idly on the saddle-horn, and staring straight ahead with an oddpucker about his mouth.
"I was just going to ask you if you all came through together," heobserved, in a casual tone. "I neglected to say that I got a pretty fairlook at those fellows. In fact, I wouldn't hesitate to swear to the faceof the gentleman who rode in the lead of the four."
"You did? Was it--was my hunch right?" I demanded eagerly.
"I could turn in my saddle and shoot his eye out," MacRae respondedwhimsically. "And I don't know but that would be more than justice. Ofcourse, the others were the men, but I'm positive of Gregory. You seewhat we're up against, Sarge.
"That's why," he soberly concluded, "I think we'll have our hands fullif we do locate that stuff. It's a big chunk of money, and a littlething like killing a man or two won't trouble them. We'll be watchedevery minute of the time that we prowl around those painted rocks;that's a cinch. And when we've pulled the chestnut out of the firethey'll gobble it--if there's the ghost of a chance."
While I was digesting this unpalatable information, Hicks and Gregoryspurred abreast of us; for the remainder of the journey we four rodeelbow to elbow, and conversation was scant.
Mid-afternoon found us camped under the Stone. Once on the ground, Ibegan to think we were in no immediate danger of getting our throats cutfor the sake of the treasure. Rutter had said "under the Stone"--and thevagueness of his words came home to me with considerable force, for theStone, roughly estimated, was a good mile in length. It paralleled theriver, a perpendicular wall of gray sandstone. An aptly-named place;wherever a ledge offered foothold, and even in places that seemed whollybeyond reach of human hands, the bald front of the cliff was chiseledwith rude traceries--the picture-writing of the Blackfoot tribe. Thehistory of a thousand battles and buffalo-hunts was written there. Andsomewhere at the foot of that mile-long cliff, under the uncouth figurescarved by the red men in their hour of triumphant ease, rested thatwhich we had come to find. I sat with my back against a cottonwood andsmoked a cigarette while I considered the impassive front ofWriting-On-the-Stone; and the fruit of my consideration was that he whosought for the needle in the haystack had no more difficult task thanours.
In due time we ate supper, and dark spread its mantle over the land.Then MacRae and I crawled up on a projecting ledge of rock to roll outour blankets--in a place where we could not well be surprised. Not thateither of us anticipated anything of the sort so early in the game; whenwe had found what we were after, that would come. But the mere factthat we were all playing a part made us incline to caution. I don't knowif we betrayed our knowledge or suspicions to Hicks and Gregory, but itwas a good deal of an effort to treat those red-handed scoundrels as ifthey were legitimate partners in a risky enterprise. We had to do it,though. Until they showed their hand we could do nothing but stand patand wait for developments; and if they watched us unobtrusively, we didthe same by them. It is not exactly soothing to the nerves, however, tobe in touch all day and then lie down to sleep at night within a fewfeet of men whom you imagine are only awaiting the proper moment tointroduce a chunk of lead into your system or slip a knife under yourfifth rib. I can't truthfully say that I slept soundly on that ledge.