SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
[Illustration: SERGEANT DICK TOOK IN ALL THESE PARTICULARS.]
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SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
A Thrilling Story of the Canadian Woods
By JOHN G. ROWE
AUTHOR OF “CRUSOE ISLAND,” “LIGHTSHIP PIRATES,”
“THE MYSTERY OF THE DERELICT,” ETC.
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
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SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
By JOHN G. ROWE
Large 12 mo. Illustrated. Jacket in Full Colors.
ROWE BOOKS FOR BOYS
CRUSOE ISLAND
THE ISLAND TREASURE
THE MYSTERY OF THE DERELICT
THE SECRET OF THE MYSTERY IDOL
THE LIGHTSHIP PIRATES
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York
Copyright, 1929, by
Cupples & Leon Company
Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted Police
Printed in U. S. A.
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CONTENTS
I. The Hooded Rustlers
II. Muriel Arnold
III. The House in the Lake
IV. Inside “Water Castle”
V. A Running Fight
VI. The Trapper and His Sons
VII. Howling Wolf
VIII. The Siege of “Water Castle”
IX. The Ark in Danger
X. An Unexpected Illumination
XI. The Defense of the Ark
XII. Saved by a Woman’s Wit
XIII. Sergeant Dick’s Determination
XIV. The Ambush
XV. Lost in the Woods
XVI. A Startling Discovery
XVII. A Surprise, and a Rescue
XVIII. Back at “Water Castle”
XIX. The Second Siege of “Water Castle”
XX. A Cooler for the Invaders
XXI. The Dash for the Ark
XXII. The Rout of the Besiegers
XXIII. The Plan to Round up the White Hoods
XXIV. In the Hands of Merciless Foes
XXV. On the Track
XXVI. The Threatening Letter
XXVII. The Clew of the Lamp
XXVIII. The Return to “Water Castle”
XXIX. The Failure to Surprise “Water Castle”
XXX. The End of the White Hoods, and of the Story
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SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
CHAPTER I--THE HOODED RUSTLERS
Sergeant John Dick, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was
leading his horse up a steep and rugged gorge in the great southwest
region of Canada. It was close by the United States border, and
practically in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
A fine, military-looking figure, Sergeant Dick cut, in his scarlet
tunic, riding-breeches, and “Stetson” or broad-brimmed, bell-crowned
hat. He carried his rifle at the trail in his left hand, and had the
bridle of his horse looped over his right arm.
The animal was limping painfully. It had got a thorn in its hoof
lower down the trail, where this was on the open prairie, and had
gone dead lame before its master discovered its injury and could
extract the thorn.
The accident was particularly annoying to Sergeant Dick, for it was
almost imperative he should be at the Paquita Island Reservation,
just over the United States border, by sundown, and the lord of day
was already well down the western sky.
A howling hurricane of wind made progress still more difficult,
blowing dead in his teeth as it was. No ordinary gusty gale was
this, but a ceaseless avalanche of wind tearing with a terrific howl
along the gorge, raging against man and beast in insensate fury.
At times Sergeant Dick would turn his back to the storm, and the
horse, with head also turned, would sidle along almost broadside to
it, the better to keep its feet and hold its own.
Man and horse were thus maneuvering one of the turns in the gorge
when, high above the howl of the hurricane, rang the sharp,
air-splitting crack of a rifle close by--just in front--and
simultaneously Sergeant Dick staggered and nearly fell, feeling a
sudden numbing, burning pain upon the right side of the head, above
his ear.
His Stetson hat, which had so long resisted the tugging of the wind,
was whirled from his head, and went rolling like a wheel, on its
brim, away down the pass before the gale.
With a thrill of anger, rather than of any bodily fear, the sergeant
promptly dived behind his horse, drawing it by the reins at the same
time fully broadside across the rocky pass.
As he did so, he beheld for the first time a startling tableau or
drama being enacted ahead, round the bend in the gorge.
The track still ascended, but the precipitous, seventy to two
hundred feet high cliffs, which shut him in and almost excluded the
westering sun, became at the scene gentle acclivities, thickly
covered with dense undergrowth and forest trees from the edge of the
road to their summits.
It was an ideal spot for an ambuscade, and such was what had taken
place. The stage-coach from Settleford, to Paquita Springs over the
border, was halted in the dim twilight of the leafy avenue, and the
driver and passengers were all lined up at one side of the road,
with their hands in the air--women as well as men--under the menace
of two _ghost-like_ bandits or “rustlers,” pointing an automatic
pistol in either hand and with rifles on backs.
Ghost-like indeed the bandits were. There was no other word for
their bizarre and spectral appearance.
There were four others, likewise attired, busy around the coach,
from which they were taking bags and boxes, and loading up a round
dozen of horses. Two of the horses had evidently been taken from the
traces of the coach, which was always drawn by four.
All six “rustlers” were clad in loose white linen frocks, which
descended to mid-thigh or even lower, and had great white peaked
hoods, like monks’ cowls, drawn completely over their heads and
faces!
Only two holes for the eyes showed in each hood; so the reader can
well imagine how weird and ghostly they looked in the twilight of
the leafy archway, in spite of the rifles slung across their backs
or the Browning automatic pistols in their hands, and the top boots
showing under the white frocks.
Sergeant Dick took in all these particulars--the whole thrilling
tableau before him--at a single glance of course. And, even as he
did so, he comprehended that it was not one of the six hooded,
ghostly figures beside the stage-coach who had shot at him and so
narrowly missed ending his career.
The marksman was clearly a seventh member of the gang--on the
look-out, and without a doubt perched upon the rocks at either hand.
Sergeant Dick swiftly removed his eyes from the tableau under the
storm-tossed trees ahead, and ran them over the two bold cliffs
forming the jaws of the pass at that end. He caught sight of a small
cloudlet of smoke, still hanging limply in the air above a ledge
just below the summit of the right-hand rock.
The rock behind the ledge acted as a wind-screen, and, although a
hurricane was shrieking overhead and sweeping the rocky pass below,
the air at the point was as still as if there were no wind at all.
Just as the Sergeant sighted the cloudlet of smoke, a jet of flame
darted from behind a boulder on the ledge, the gorge rang again to
the echoing detonation of a rifle, and he felt the noble animal
shielding him give a convulsive shudder, which told him it had been
hit.
It yet stood stockstill and upright before him, however, and so he
was satisfied that it could not have been struck in a vital spot.
Swift as the thought itself, Dick brought his own rifle to his
shoulder, and leveled it across the saddle at a white triangular tip
of cloth, showing above the boulder on the ledge, alongside the new
cloudlet of smoke. That white triangular tip he knew was the peaked
headgear of another of the dreaded White Hood Rustlers.
He got that triangular tip of white cloth dead in front of his
sights with the quickness of considerable practice and rare skill;
and simultaneously he pressed the trigger.
As the report of his rifle, blown along by the furious wind, went
echoing down the rocky pass, a white-clad, hooded form leaped up
from behind the boulder and went scuttling into a little cleft
beside the ledge, vanishing as swiftly as a rabbit diving into its
hole.
Sergeant Dick smiled a little grimly. He was used to seeing well
entrenched foes skedaddle--vacate their quarters as a little too
warm--under his straight shooting.
He knew for a certainty that his bullet had gone clean through the
white hood of the fugitive rustle-sentinel, within an inch or two of
its rascally wearer’s skull. The bullet would have bored a hole
through _that_ if only a little more than just the tip or peak of
the white hood had been showing.
It was a splendid shot, like hitting a card torn in half and stuck
on the chimney pot of a three- or four-story house.
Besides, the shot was such a swift reply to the one preceding it. No
wonder it scared its recipient from his strong position--“shook him
up some,” to use the language of the country.
The six bandits in the leafy avenue in front of Sergeant Dick had
all turned in his direction at the first shot. The four who had been
removing the loot from the coach were now making warily for
him--scattered in a line across the avenue, with rifles at the
ready, like hunters stalking game.
He turned his attention to them, wondering not a little why they did
not pour a volley into him or his breastwork of horseflesh. It was
evident they considered him their “meat”--a “dead goner” already,
and were anxious to take his horse, if not himself, alive.
A live horse is always desirable property in the Far West.
But the ghostly, white-robed and hooded ruffians speedily discovered
that they were reckoning without their host. Their attention was
somewhat distracted by the sudden appearance of the comrade they had
posted as “look-out man” upon the bluff, and
then--crack--crack--crack!
Sergeant Dick’s rifle pealed out sharply, and as many of the four
rustlers advancing upon him staggered or stumbled.
But to the police officer’s amazement, none of the three fell,
although he believed he had hit all three badly.
Recovering immediately from the effects of their hurts, the fellows
rushed forward, firing wildly and furiously at the plucky young
policeman. Then, suddenly, in a lull of the hurricane, came the
clatter of rapidly approaching hoofs _behind Sergeant Dick_, and
immediately afterwards two shrill, sharp whistles from the bluff or
cliff above him.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of the hooded sentinel within the cleft
in the rock, evidently returning to that coign of vantage, with a
view to helping to shoot him down--saw the fellow put his left hand
under his hood.
It was this man, undoubtedly, who had uttered those two warning
whistles, for he now immediately vanished again inside the cleft.
Simultaneously the four rustlers firing at Dick wheeled about, and
ran for the shelter of the woods on either hand.