A TALE HALF TOLD.
When they were gone we let our hands down to their natural level and
drew a long breath.
"We appear to have got considerably the worst of this transaction," I
observed. "The La Pere outfit is shy something like ten thousand
dollars--we're afoot, minus everything but cigarette material. It's a
wonder they didn't take that, too. A damn good stroke of business, all
right," I finished, feeling mighty sore at myself. When it was too late,
I could think of half a dozen ways we might have avoided getting held
up.
"I got you into it, too," MacRae said calmly. "But don't get excited and
run on the rope this early in the game, Sarge; you'll only throw
yourself. Brace up. We've been in worse holes before." Never a word of
what it might mean to him; never even hinted that the high moguls at
Fort Walsh were more than likely to put him on the rack for letting any
such lawless work be carried out successfully, in his own district. A
Mounted Policeman can make no excuses for letting a tough customer slip
through his fingers; the only way he can escape censure is to be brought
in feet first.
He motioned to the poor devil lying by the fire.
"Look at him, Sarge," he went on, in a different tone. "You always had a
pretty good memory for faces. So have I, for that matter, but--go
ahead--look."
I bent over the man, looked closely at the still features, dropped on
one knee and turned his face toward the firelight to make sure. I
recognized him instantly, and I knew that MacRae had no doubts of his
identity, for each of us had broken bread and slept in the same blankets
with that quiet figure.
"It's Rutter," I whispered, and MacRae nodded silently.
"He's done for, too--no, by God, he isn't!" I cried, and shrank
involuntarily, for his eyeballs rolled till only the whites showed in a
way that made me shudder. "He's not dead, yet, Mac!"
"One of you fellows get some water," Mac commanded. He squatted beside
me, holding up Rutter's head. In a minute Bruce was back with his hat
full of water from the creek that whimpered just beyond the willow
patch. I peeled off my coat and spread it over the marred limbs, and
Bruce held the water so that I could dip in my hand and sprinkle
Rutter's face. After a little his mouth began to twitch. Queer gurgling
sounds issued from his throat. He moved his head slightly, looking from
me to MacRae. Presently he recognized us both; his face brightened.
"Gimme a drink," he whispered huskily.
Mac propped him up so that he could sip from the hat. He came near going
off again, but rallied, and in a second or two his lips framed a
question:
"Did yuh--get 'em?"
I shook my head. "You might say that they got us," I answered.
"Who were they, Hans?" MacRae questioned eagerly. "And why did they do
this to you? We'll make them sweat blood for this night's work. Did you
know them? Tell us if you can."
"No," Rutter spoke with a great effort. Each sentence came as if torn
piecemeal from his unwilling tongue; short, jerky phrases, conceived in
pain and delivered in agony. "We--me'n Hank Rowan--comin' from the
North--made a stake on the Peace. They started it--at the Stone--yuh
know--Writin'-Stone. Hank an' me--you'll find Hank in the
cottonwoods--Stony Crossin'. I tried--tried t' make Walsh. Two of
'em--masked--tried t' make me tell--tell 'em--where we made the _cache_.
I'm--I'm done--I guess. The dust, it's--it's--_a-a-ah_----"
The gnarled hands shut up into clenched fists, and the feeble voice
trailed off in an agonized moan.
I laved his pain-twisted face with the cool water and let a few drops
trickle into his open mouth. He gasped a few times, then, gathering
strength again, went on with that horrible spasmodic recitation.
"They were after us--a long time. Lyn's at Walsh. There's a--a good
stake. Get it--for her. It's _cached_--under the Stone--yuh
know--Writin'-Stone. Three sacks. That's what--they wanted.
You'll--you'll--on the rock above--marked--gold--raw gold--that's
it--gold--raw gold--Mac--I want--I want----"
That was all. The tense muscles relaxed. His head fell back limp on
MacRae's arm, and the rest of the message went with the game old
Dutchman across the big divide. We laid him down gently, folded his arms
on his breast, and for a moment held our peace in tribute to his
passing.
MacRae was first to speak.
"There's a lot back of this that I can't understand," he said, more to
himself than to the rest of us. "It beats me why these two old cowmen
should be here in this country, tangled up with buried gold-dust, and
being hunted like beasts for its possession. Old Hans was certainly in
his right mind or he wouldn't have known us; and if he told us right,
Hank Rowan has been murdered too. If Lyn is at Walsh, she may be able to
shed some light on this. But I'll swear I feel like a man groping in a
dark room."
"If Lyn is at Walsh," I asserted stoutly, "she got there since I left
this morning. I was there two days, and I wasn't in the background by
any means; and she's the sort of girl that isn't backward about hailing
a friend. We know one thing--the men that killed Rutter are the ones
that held us up, and got off with that money of mine. And say--how did
those fellows know I had that money and where I was carrying it? Good
Lord! it sounds like the plot of a dime novel."
It was a stubborn riddle for us to try and read. And our surroundings at
that particular moment were not the most favorable to coherent thought
or plausible theory-building. When a man has been robbed at the point of
a gun, and set afoot in the heart of an unpeopled waste, with a dead man
and a dying fire for company, his nerves are apt to get a little bit on
edge. Things that wouldn't tax your fortitude in daylight look like the
works of the devil when you have to face them in the black hours of the
night. None of us are so far removed from savagery that a few grains of
superstition don't lurk in our souls, all ready to bob up if the setting
is appropriate. If it should ever be my lot to take the Long Trail at
short notice, I hope it will be under a blue sky and a blazing sun. It
was hard to be philosophic, or even decently calm, standing there in the
sickly glow of the fading coals with old Hans mutely reminding us that
life is a tenuous thread, easily snipped.
A little night breeze rustling the willows about us brought into my mind
the fact that our masked acquaintances could easily sneak up and pot us
if, as an afterthought, they decided to do a really workmanlike job.
Doubt it? Wasn't the dead man stretched in the shadow convincing proof
of their capacity for pure devilishness? Read the history of those days
along the line, and you'll turn some red pages. There were no half-way
measures in the code of an outlaw then; the pair who held us up would
have taken our lives as nonchalantly as they relieved us of our material
possessions had we proved in the least degree troublesome.
I hinted what was in my mind to MacRae, and when he agreed that it was a
possible contingency, we filed out of the treacherous light and squatted
in the edge of a quaking-asp grove where we couldn't be seen, and where
a coyote, much less a man, couldn't steal up on us without the crackle
of dry brush betraying him.
"What do you think you'll do, Sarge?" Mac whispered to me, while we sat
there undecided as to our next move. "Go on to Benton, or stay here on
the chance of breaking even?"
"I've got to stick; it's the only thing I can do," I growled back. "I've
been sure enough whipsawed this deal, but I'm still in the game, and
when it comes to calling the last turn I'll be there with a stack of
blues. How in hell can I show my face in Benton while some other fellow
is packing the money La Pere trusted me to bring back? If I can rustle
horses I'll send these two boys on home, with a note to the old man
explaining how the play came up. If those jaspers flash any part of the
roll in the Territory before snowfall, I'll get them. I've got to get
them, to square myself."
"That would be my idea, if I were in your place," he answered. "If
they're like the average run of men that turn a trick of that kind,
they'll give themselves away in the long run. It's lucky, in a way, that
you had paper money instead of gold; the big bills will be their
downfall if they undertake to spend them in this country--and if old
Hans had it straight, they're not going to pull out with a measly ten
thousand dollars. It's an ugly mess, and liable to be worse before it's
cleaned up. If there is a stake like that _cached_ around the Stone,
these land pirates will camp mighty close on the trail of anybody that
goes looking for it. And it won't be any Sunday-school picnic dealing
with them--they showed a strong hand there," he motioned to the place
where Rutter lay.
"The best thing we can do," he continued, "is to drag it for Pend
d' Oreille, afoot. We have two extra horses there. We can get a little
sleep and move early in the morning. I'll have to report this thing in
person at Walsh, but before I do I want to know if Hank Rowan was really
killed at Stony Crossing. If we find him there as Rutter said, you can
gamble that trouble has camped in our dooryard for a lengthy stay. And
it might be a good idea for you to give your men a gentle hint to keep
their mouths closed about this affair--all of it. There's a slim chance
at the best of finding that gold, even if it's there, and it won't help
us nor the rest of the Force to run down the men who held us up, if
everybody on both sides of the line gets to talking about it."
"I'll tell them," I agreed. "I reckon you have the right idea. I think
it's a cinch that if we land the men that set us afoot and got away with
the money, we'll have the cold-blooded brutes that put Hans Rutter's
light out. But I don't _sabe_, Mac, why those old-timers should be mixed
into a deal of this kind. Their cattle and range on the Canadian had a
gold-mine beat to death for money-making; old men like them don't jump
two thousand miles from home without mighty strong reasons."
"They probably had, if we only knew," MacRae muttered. "I reckon we'd
better start; we can't do any good here."
Mac led the way. The four of us slipped through the brushy bottom as
silently as men unaccustomed to walking might go, for we had no
hankering, unarmed as we were, to bring those red-handed marauders after
us again, if they happened to be lurking in that canyon. Rutter's body
we had no choice but to leave undisturbed by the blackening fire. In the
morning we would come back and bury him, but for that night--well, he
was beyond any man's power to aid or injure, lying there alone in the
dark.