THE SPOILS OF WAR.
All things considered, it was a joyous knot of humanity that gathered on
that sand-bar--if one excepts the two plunderers who were tied hard and
fast, their most cheerful outlook a speedy trial with a hangman's noose
at the finish. I recollect that we shook hands all around, and that our
tongues wagged extravagantly, regardless of whoever else might be
speaking. We settled down before long, however, remembering that we were
not altogether out of the woods.
The fire by this time had, to a great extent, beaten itself out on the
opposite bank, and with nothing left but a few smoldering brush-patches,
the smoke continued to lift and give us sundry glimpses of the black
desolation that spread to the north. So far as we knew, the wind had
carried no sparks across the river to fire the south side and drive us
back to the barrenness of the burned lands. And with the certainty that
Lyn was safe, and that we were beyond disputing masters of the
situation, came consciousness of hunger and great bodily weariness. It
was almost twenty-four hours since we had eaten, and we were simply
ravenous. As a start toward an orderly method of procedure, we began by
re-dressing Piegan's punctured arm, which had begun to bleed again;
though it was by no means as serious a hurt as it might have been.
Piegan himself seemed to consider it a good deal of a joke on him, and
when I remarked that I failed to see how a bullet-hole through any part
of one's person could be regarded in a humorous light, Piegan snorted,
and told me that I would know more when I grew up. A little ventilation,
he declared, was something a man's system needed every year or two.
Then we unsaddled and unpacked the horses, and moved them up on the
grassy flat. Piegan elected himself guard over the prisoners, while the
rest of us cooked a belated breakfast, and he assured them repeatedly
that he would be delighted to have them make a break, so that he could
have the pleasure of perforating their individual and collective hides.
I really believe the old rascal meant it, too; he succeeded, at least,
in giving that impression, and his crippled arm was no handicap to
him--he could juggle a six-shooter right or left-handed with amazing
dexterity.
Lyn substantiated Goodell's story in every detail, so far as it had
dealt with her, and she told me, while we pottered about the fire, how
she waited her chance when they made camp in Sage Creek, and, snatching
Lessard's gun, ran for it in the dark.
"I didn't really know where I was," she told me naively. "So I thought
I'd better hide till daylight and watch them go before I started. Then I
could try and make my way back to the freight outfit--I felt sure they
would either wait for me or send a man back to Walsh when I didn't come
back. I was hiding in those cottonwoods when you came stealing in there
this morning. You were so quiet, I couldn't tell who it was--I thought
perhaps they were still hunting for me; they did, you know--they were
rummaging around after me for a long time. But I never dreamed it could
be you and Gordon. So I sneaked down to the river and crossed; I was
deadly afraid they'd find me, and I thought once I was on the other side
I could hear them coming, and scuttle away in the brush. Then about
daylight I heard some shooting, and wondered if they had been followed.
I didn't dare cross the river and start over the hills with that fire
coming, and the smoke so thick I couldn't tell a hill from a hollow. I
waited a while longer--I was in this brush up here"--she pointed to a
place almost opposite--"and in a little while I heard more shooting, and
in a minute or so, he"--indicating Hicks--"came splashing through the
river. He was on the sand-bar before I could see him clearly, and coming
straight toward where I was huddled in the brush. Oh, but I was
frightened, and before I knew it, almost, I poked the gun between the
branches and fired at his head as straight as I could--and he fell off
his horse. Then I ran, before any more of them came. And that's really
all there is to it. I was plodding up the river, when I heard Gordon
shouting two or three hundred yards behind. Of course I knew his voice,
and stopped. But dear me! this seems like a bad dream, or maybe I ought
to say a good one. I hope you won't all disappear in the smoke."
"Don't you worry," MacRae assured her. "When we vanish in the smoke
we'll take you with us."
After we had eaten we made a systematic search of packs and
saddle-pockets, and when we had finished there was more of the root of
all evil in sight than I have laid my eyes on at any one time before or
since. The gold that had drawn us into the game was there in the same
long, buckskin sacks, a load for one horse. The government money, looted
from the paymaster, part gold coin and part bills, they had divided, and
it was stowed in various places. Lessard's saddle-pockets were crammed,
and likewise those of Hicks and Gregory. Bevans' _anqueros_, which I had
taken from his dead horse, yielded a goodly sum. Altogether, we counted
some seventy-odd thousand dollars, exclusive of the gold-dust in the
sacks.
"There's a good deal more than that, according to Goodell's figures,"
MacRae commented. "Lessard must have got away with quite a sum from the
post. I daresay the pockets of the combination hold the rest. But I
don't hanker to search a dead man, and that can wait till we get to
Walsh."
"Yuh goin' t' lug this coyote bait t' Fort Walsh?" Piegan inquired. "I'd
leave 'em right here without the ceremony uh plantin'. An' I vote right
here an' now t' neck these other two geesers together an' run 'em off'n
a high bank into deep water."
"I'd vote with you, so far as my personal feeling in the matter goes,"
MacRae replied. "But we've got a lot of mighty black marks against us,
right now, and we're going in there to relate a most amazing tale. Of
course, we can prove every word of it. But I reckon we'll have to take
these two carcasses along as a sort of corroborative evidence. Every
confounded captain in the Force will have to view them officially; they
wouldn't take our word for their being dead. So it would only delay the
clearing up of things to leave them here. These other jaspers will lend
a fine decorative effect to the noosed end of a three-quarter-inch rope
for their part in the play--unless Canadian justice miscarries, which
doesn't often happen if you give it time enough to get at the root of
things."
Much as we had accomplished, we still had a problem or two ahead of us.
While we didn't reckon on having to defend ourselves against the
preposterous charge of holding up the paymaster, there was that little
matter of violent assault on the persons of three uniformed
representatives of Northwestern law--assault, indeed, with deadly
weapons; also the forcible sequestration of government property in the
shape of three troop-horses with complete riding appurtenances; the
uttering of threats; all of which was strictly against the peace and
dignity of the Crown and the statutes made and provided. No man is
supposed, as MacRae had pointed out to me after we'd held up those three
troopers, to inflict a compound fracture on one law in his efforts to
preserve another. But it had been necessary for us to do so, and we had
justified our judgment in playing a lone hand and upsetting Lessard's
smoothly conceived plan to lay us by the heels while he and his thugs
got away with the plunder. We had broken up as hard a combination as
ever matched itself against the scarlet-coated keepers of the law; we
had gathered them in with the loot intact, and for this signal service
we had hopes that the powers that be would overlook the break we made on
Lost River ridge. Lessard had created a damnatory piece of evidence
against himself by lifting the post funds; that in itself would bear
witness to the truth of our story. It might take the authorities a while
to get the proper focus on the tangle, but we could stand that, seeing
that we had won against staggering odds.
From the mouth of Sage Creek to Fort Walsh it is a fraction over fifty
miles, across comparatively flat country. By the time our breakfast was
done we calculated it to be ten o'clock. We had the half of a long
mid-summer day to make it. So, partly because we might find the full
fifty miles an ash-strewn waste, fodderless, blackened, where an
afternoon halt would be a dreary sojourn, and partly for the sake of the
three good horses we had pushed so unmercifully through the early hours
of the night, we laid on the grassy river-bottom till noon. Then we
packed, placed the sullen captives in the saddle with hands lashed
stoutly, mounted our horses and recrossed the river. Once on the uplands
we struck the long trot--eight hours of daylight to make fifty miles.
And we made it.