At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a
written order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a
heavy police wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.
The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a
defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a
game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and
in his speech there was the savor of London fog.
"What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he
addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do
so now!"
"You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.
"My word! we're always doing that, always--that's what we're here for,
to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."
There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened
on Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major,
a procession headed for the car of interest.
The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open,
the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak
barrels.
The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at
Bulldog Carney.
It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of
astonishment over this exhibit.
At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major,
turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take
this stuff to the fort."
The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing
this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too
greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."
"Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner,"
the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at
Carney. "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men
bring a sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be
destroyed; the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."
One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on
end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge.
At the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup
fluttered up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.
"Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time,
Major."
A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the
turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped
their dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of
appreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat
man! Him damn good; break him more!"
"Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.
This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled
waters--literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.
The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste
these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.
The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in
his objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've
roped something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights
answering correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will
want to know what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods.
The Superintendent of the Western Division will want to know why I
side-track freight billed through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take
responsibility, but you've given me a big lot of work, and I ain't none
too well paid as it is. Somebody's doublecrossed you."
"And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have
to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.
Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels
of sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas,
beans--in fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered
grocery store rather than the duplicate of a barroom.
The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been
wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.
He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert
were several small places on the line where there were neither police
nor men who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the
station master, saying:
"Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky
cut off? I believe it's on that train."
"How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside
my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay,
and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try
to cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages
back in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the
Superintendent of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole
thing to your Commissioner at Regina."
Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the
broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H.
B. Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of
something for nothing.
The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.
Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying,
as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country;
Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on
you yet, old top."
"Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."
The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair.
He would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was
handicapped by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of
contention everybody's hand would be against the force--the very train
men, if they could get away with it.
Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained
groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through
with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was
sent that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars--one of goods and one of
whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John
Ross was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper
in the next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither
car would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,
either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not
matter.
Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were
going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot
through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the
suspected car.
Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a
consultation. Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen
from the position of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game;
besides, which was almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.
"Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool
kind that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to
round him up, for we haven't got a thing on him--not a thing. He's so
well liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin
Hood used to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped
your hands on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll
be run into the plains--there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of
it, and swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this
law, sir. They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."
The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major
to send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of
this consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."
So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.
Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was
accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten
dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot
of whisky as it was being run the following night.
The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the
Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened
breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the
ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the
trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert
itself.
This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still
wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information
to the Major.
"We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will
sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."
When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt,
Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates,
and, skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the
southwest.
At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of
a little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses
had been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern
fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide
was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the
cut-bank to the stream.
They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had
hung in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed
ridge of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and
a sombre gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the
belly of the valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a
penciled line of silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock.
The stillness was oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the
night passed; no animal of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the
solemn hush; nobody spoke; in each one's mind was the unworded thought
that they waited for a man that was known to be without fear, a man to
whom odds meant little or nothing.
As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivoted
his body on elbows close to Sergeant Jerry and whispered: "I'm glad,
man, you suggested the flare. In the dark, wi' promiscuous shootin',
there might be killin', and I'd no like to pot Bulldog myself', even if
he is a whisky runner."
Jerry laughed a soft, throaty chuckle. "You'd have a fine chance, Mac,
with that old .44 Enfield pepper-box against Carney with his .45 Colt;
he just plays it like a girl fingerin' the keys of a piano; those gray
cat-eyes of his can see in the dark."
"Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won't
wait for a better chance."
"We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us the
slip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, and
it was proved after he had nothing to do with it. But listen to this,
Scottie, we both like Bulldog, but if he bucks us, we belong to the
Force."
"Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thank
us to spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with this
outfit?"
"Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into Fort
Calbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk and
not be there."
But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It's
no sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."
Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through the
sandy wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy,
slipping, sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were being
shoved along the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dull
thump of an axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud of
muffled hoofs.
The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length over
the deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice of
Sergeant Platt rang out in a sharp command:
"Halt! hands up--you are covered! If you move we fire!"
At the first word, "Halt!" the bull's-eye threw its arrogant glare of
light upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bank
the bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidable
figure of the Honorable Reginald Fordyce-Anstruther--that was all.
That is to say, all but five square tins, atop of which sat the outlaw,
Reggie.
It was a goblined, pathetically inadequate figure sitting atop the tins,
the lean attenuated arms held high as if in beseechment.
Sergeant Jerry cursed softly; then he laughed; and Corporal McBane
exclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."
But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keep
out of the light; it may be a blind."