STONY CROSSING.
"There's Stony Crossing, Sarge; and over yonder, at the west end of that
blue ridge, is Writing-on-the-Stone."
At the foot of the long slope on which we stood Milk River glinted in
the sunshine, deceptively beautiful--a shining example of the truth of
that old saw about distance lending enchantment, for, looking down on
the placid stream slipping smoothly along between fringes of scrubby
timber, one would never guess that miles and miles of hungry quick-sands
lined the river-edge, an unseen trap for the feet of the unwary.
Stony Crossing I could see, even without Mac's guiding finger. The Whoop
Up trail, a brown streak against the vivid upland green, dipped down the
hillside to our right, down to the sage-grown flat, and into the river
by the great boulders that gave the ford its name. The blue ridge up
the river I gave scant heed to; the Writing-Stone was only a name to me,
for I'd never seen the place. My attention was all for the scene at
hand. The patch of soft green that I knew for the cottonwoods Rutter had
spoken of drew my roving gaze whether I would or no. I have ridden on
pleasanter missions than the one that took us to Stony Crossing that
day.
"It's sure tough," I voiced a thought that had been running in my mind
all morning, "to think that a good old fellow like Hank Rowan has been
murdered and left to rot on the prairie like a skinned buffalo. Hanged
if I can make myself really believe we'll find him down there."
"The more I think of it, the more I'm inclined to believe that we will,"
MacRae answered evenly. "We'll know beyond a doubt in the next hour. So
we might as well go on."
If I hadn't known him so well I might have thought he didn't care a damn
what we found at Stony Crossing, that he was as unmoved as the two
case-hardened troopers who rode with us. But that repression was just as
natural to him as emotional flare-ups are to some. Whatever he felt he
usually kept bottled up inside, no matter how it hurt. I never saw him
fly to pieces over anything. He was something of an anomaly to me, when
I first knew him. I was always so prone to do and say things according
to impulse that I thought him cold-blooded, a man without any particular
feeling except a certain pride in holding his own among his fellows.
But I revised my opinion when I came to know him better. Under the
surface he was sensitive as a girl; one could wound him with a word or a
look. Paradoxically, he was absolutely cold-blooded toward a declared
enemy. He would fight fair, but without mercy. Side by side with the
sensitive soul of him, and hidden always under an impassive mask of
self-control, lay the battling spirit, an indomitable fighting streak;
it cropped out in a cool, calculating manner of taking desperate chances
when the sleeping devil in him was roused. He would sidestep
trouble--and one met the weeping damsel at many turns of the road in
those raw days--if he could do it without loss of self-respect; but the
man who stirred him up needlessly, or crowded him into retaliation,
always regretted it--when he had time to indulge in vain regrets. And
you can bet your last, lone _peso_, and consider it won, that MacRae
meant every word when he said to old Hans Rutter: "We'll make them sweat
blood for this."
When we got down into the bottom Mac turned aside to the deep-worn trail
and glanced sharply down at the ruts. The dust in them lay smooth, and
the hoof-marks that showed were old and dim.
"I wondered if there had been any freight teams pass lately," he
explained. "But there hasn't--not for a day or two, anyway. Let's look
in the timber."
That was a long time ago, and since then I have seen much of life and
death in many countries, but I can recall as distinctly as if it were
yesterday the grim sight that met us when we rode in among the
whispering cottonwoods. We found Hank Rowan in a little open place,
where rifts of sunlight filtered through the tangled branches; one
yellow bar, full of quivering motes, rested on the wide-open eyes and
mouth, tinting the set features the ghastly color of a plaster cast. The
horse he had ridden lay dead across his legs, and just beyond, a
crumpled heap against the base of a tree, was the carcass of a mule,
half-hidden under a bulky pack. The thing that sickened me, that stirs
me even yet, was a circular, red patch that crowned his head where
should have been thick, iron-gray hair.
"The damned hounds!" MacRae muttered. "They tried to make it look like
an Indian job."
The pack-ropes had been cut and the pack searched. In the same manner
they had gone through his pockets and scattered a few papers and letters
on the ground. These we gathered carefully together, against the time of
meeting Lyn, and then--for time pressed, and a dead man, though he may
be your friend and his passing a sorrow, is out of the game forever--we
dragged him from beneath the dead horse, wrapped him in the canvas
pack-cover, and buried him in the soft leaf-mold where he lay, as we
had buried his lifetime partner early in the morning. When we had
finished, MacRae ordered his two troopers back to Pend d' Oreille, and we
mounted our horses and turned their heads toward Fort Walsh.
It is seventy miles in an air-line from Stony Crossing to the fort. That
night we laid out, sleeping without hardship in a dry buffalo-wallow,
and noon of the next day brought us to Walsh, a huddle of log buildings
clustering around a tall pole from which fluttered the union jack.
Off to one side of the fort a bunch of work-bulls fed peacefully. Down
in the creek bottom a tent or two flapped in the mid-day breeze, and in
their neighborhood uprose the smoke of half a dozen dinner fires. By the
post storeroom, waiting their turn to unload, was ranged a line of the
tarpaulin-covered wagons, wheeled galleons of the plains, that brought
food and raiment to the Northwest before the coming of steam and steel.
"That looks to me like Baker's outfit, from Benton," I said to MacRae,
as we swung off our horses before the building in which the officer of
the day held forth. "They must have come by way of Assiniboine."
"Probably," Mac answered. "And over yonder's the paymaster's train. At
least, he's due, and I can't account for a bunch of horses in charge of
a buck trooper any other way."
We clanked into the ante-room--that's what I call it, anyway. It
happened that I didn't stay around those police posts long enough to get
familiar with the technical terms for everything. Not that they wouldn't
have welcomed my presence; faith, their desire for my company was only
equaled by my reluctance to accept their hospitality. There was a while
when I developed a marvelous capacity for dodging invitations to Fort
Walsh. And if the men in scarlet had been a bit swifter, or I a little
slower, I'd have had ample leisure to observe life in the Force from the
inside--of the guardhouse. As I said, we went into the ante-room, and
there I got my first peep at the divinity that doth hedge--not a king,
but a commissioned officer in Her Majesty's N. W. M. P. An orderly held
us up, and when MacRae had convinced him that our business was urgent,
and not for his ears, he graciously allowed us to enter the
Presence--who proved to be a heavy-set person with sandy, mutton-chop
whiskers set bias on a vacuous, round, florid countenance. His
braid-trimmed uniform was cut to fit him like the skin of an exceedingly
well-stuffed sausage, and from his comfortable seat behind a flat-topped
desk he gazed upon us with the wisdom of a tree-full of owls and the
dignity of a stage emperor.
MacRae's heels clicked together and his right hand went up in the stiff
military salute. The red-faced one acknowledged it by a barely
perceptible flip of a fat paw, then put a little extra stiffening into
his spinal column and growled, in a voice that seemed to come booming up
from the region of his diaphragm, "Pro-ceed."
MacRae proceeded. But he didn't get very far. In fact, he'd barely
articulated, 'I have to report, sir, that----' when the human sausage
bethought himself of something more important, and held up one hand for
silence. He produced a watch and studied it frowningly, then dismissed
us and the recital of our troubles with a ponderous gesture.
"Repawt again," he rumbled, away down in his chest cavity, "at
hawf--pawst--one."
"Yes, sir," MacRae saluted again, and we withdrew.
"A beautiful specimen; a man of great force," I unburdened myself when
we got outside. "Have you many like him? I'd admire to see him cavorting
around on the pinnacles after horse-thieves or whisky-runners or a bunch
of bad Indians. A peaceable citizen would sure do well on the other side
of the line if sheriffs and marshals took a lay-off to feed themselves
when a man was in the middle of his complaint. How long do you suppose
it will take that fat slob to get a squad of these soldier-policemen on
the trail of that ten thousand?"
MacRae laughed dryly. "Old Dobson is harmless, all right, so far as
hunting outlaws is concerned. But he doesn't cut much figure around
here, one way or the other; no more than two or three other 'haw-haw'
Englishmen who got commissions in the Force on the strength of their
family connections. Lessard--the major in charge--is the brains of the
post. He gets out and does things while these fatheads stay in quarters
and untangle red tape. Personally, I don't like Lessard--he's a damned
autocrat. But he's the man to whip this unorganized country into shape.
I imagine he'll paw up the earth when he hears our story."
We mounted and rode to the stables. When we'd unsaddled and put up our
horses, Mac led the way toward a row of small, whitewashed cabins set
off by themselves, equidistant from barrack and officers' row.
"Sometimes I eat with the sergeants' mess," Mac said. "But generally I
camp with 'Bat' Perkins when I drop in here. Bat's an ex-stock-hand like
ourselves, and we'll be as welcome as payday. And he'll know if Lyn
Rowan has come to Walsh."
I wasn't in shape, financially, to have any choice in the matter of a
stopping-place. Forty or fifty dollars of expense money covered the
loose cash in my pockets when I left Walsh for Benton; and, while I may
have neglected to mention the fact, those two coin-collectors didn't
overlook the small change when they held me up for La Pere's roll. There
was a sort of sheebang--you couldn't call it a hotel if you had any
regard for the truth--on the outskirts of Walsh, for the accommodation
of wayfarers without a camp-outfit, but most of the time you couldn't
get anything fit to eat there. So I was mighty glad to hear about Bat
Perkins.