A DOUBLE-BARRELLED CASE
Sergeant Russell Seymour of the Royal Canadian again was
mounted--actually astride a horse with spur at heel and a fine feel
of leather between his knees. The best part of the continent
separated him from the Montreal fairyland and the regal beauty in
whom his ambition and hope lay centered.
An exigency of the service--the policing of the mushroom gold camp
which he was approaching--had been responsible for the sudden shift
of action's scene. Not that the hunt for the Armistice embezzler had
been forgot or abandoned, but with the idea that a cold trail might
warm if left alone for a while, its crossing effected when least
expected.
The problem at Gold, British Columbia, was so large a one that the
authorities had overlooked no advantage. The fact that Seymour had
never seen service in the province presented the attractive
possibility of his making a preliminary survey in plain clothes,
severely plain, in truth--as plain as stained khaki, scuffed leather
and battered felt could materialize.
The fact that the region was that selected by Moira's father for his
missionary activities and that she proposed soon to join the parent
did not make the summer prospect less attractive for the big
policeman. The lovely creature riding beside him, however, was not
the Irish girl but another he had overtaken entirely by chance.
"Of course," he was saying to her, "it wouldn't be a worth-while gold
rush if there wasn't plenty of crowds and excitement. Do you think
I'm in time?"
"Oh, there's still a chance for you to locate a pay claim--if luck's
riding with you," she said cheerfully. "Scarcely a day passes
without someone reporting a new 'discovery.' But you're just three
days too late for our first real excitement. One of the B.C.X.
stages was held up and robbed last Monday."
Almost did the sergeant give himself away at this crime report. In
more ways than his fair informant could possibly imagine, he felt too
late.
At a recent conference in Hazelton, a railroad town on the Grand
Trunk Pacific, Assistant Commissioner Baxter, in command of the
division in which the new diggings lay, had decided that the sergeant
should remain incognito until he had had opportunity to study the
field of his new important command. In the role of one of the
gold-crazed "rushers" the news of the camp would float unrestrained
in his presence. He should be able to get an advance line on those
who were prone to lawlessness, as well as identify the element which
might be counted on the side of law and order. Moreover, he could
form an unbiased opinion as to the prospective permanency of the camp
and the number of constables needed to police it satisfactorily.
He had shipped a "war bag" containing his uniforms and personal
effects by the stage line of this same British Columbia Express which
the girl had just mentioned. The charges were prepaid and the
baggage was to be held until called for. Then he had set out on a
rangy police horse, Kaw, over the Old Sun Trail, a time-blazed path
into the Yukon country, from which a cross-cut had let him into
Argonaut Valley.
"Did the robbers get--make their escape?" he asked, remembering in
time to cut the professional tone from his question.
"Clean as a whistle. They killed the driver at the reins so there
isn't a clew even to what they looked like or how many there were."
"But the passengers?" he ventured to ask.
The girl shrugged shapely shoulders. The face that looked from
beneath the shielding brim was framed in ash-blond wavelets. The
figure that had looked so boyish from a distance, while he was
overtaking her, was now rounded into exquisite feminine lines. Her
corduroy riding trousers were frankly worn without hint of a skirt,
but her gray flannel shirt was V'd at the neck to show a marble
throat such as no boy could have endured. And in the belt that
pouched a man-weight automatic was the final touch--a small bouquet
of waxen snowflowers.
In answer to his question she told him that there were no passengers
in the coach. "It was the inbound baggage wagon they held up, you
see--doubtless by mistake."
As he pondered the unusual circumstance of road agents mistaking a
baggage wagon for a passenger-carrying coach, they were startled by
gun fire. Seymour's expert ears placed it a short distance ahead and
to the right of them--a bit nearer town. He recognized the snarl of
a rifle and, a moment later, the bark of a pistol. Unquestionably,
the reports had come from different weapons.
A half-stifled scream drew his attention to the girl at his side.
The effect on her was surprising. She could not have showed greater
alarm if one of the bullets had perforated her hat. Every trace of
color had fled her cheeks.
"Oh, that it's just some hunter and not----"
If she finished her prayerful expression, Seymour did not hear it,
for she had dug heels into her horse and the animal was skimming the
trail.
Kaw took after the cayuse full tilt; his rider, the while, listening
for other shots, but heard none. Ahead, he saw the girl round a
sharp turn into what seemed to be a through road into town. If she
was seeking the source of the shots they had heard, he knew she need
not go far.
When his black negotiated the turn and the road was spread out before
him, he saw that she had arrived. Her horse stood nosing another and
she was kneeling in the trail beside an indistinct figure. In a
moment he had dismounted and stood beside her.
"Too late," she cried, looking up at him with a terrified expression.
"If only I hadn't slowed to chat with you--I feared they would get
him and was riding to warn him. I thought there was plenty of time
to get to town before he started."
She did not blame him for the delay; seemed only to accuse herself.
For the sergeant, there was enough of surprise in the figure of the
slain man to occupy his mind and eyes.
"Who--who is he?" he asked after staring a moment.
"He's our new mounted police officer, Sergeant Russell Seymour," she
said, her voice hushed. "Don't you know the uniform when you see it?"
Seymour did recognize that particular uniform far better than she
possibly could have imagined, but he refrained from admitting it.
Reaching down, the sergeant raised the girl to her feet; but he did
not set her right on the mistake in identity. The case looked
double-barrelled to him inasmuch as it gave him an inside line on the
holdup of the express company's stage and a lead toward at least one
element of the heterogeneous camp which was opposed to the coming of
the Dominion's law-bringers. He meant to handle both angles with the
utmost effect and the fact that they existed must for a time remain
his secret.
"Looks like murder," he said, his eyes leaving the stolen uniform and
focusing on the wound, the clean hole of a steel bullet in the right
temple.
"It is murder--from ambush," the girl declared, her voice sharp with
conviction.
But Seymour was not so sure. Without disturbing a convulsive death
grip, he examined the revolver held in an outflung hand. It had been
discharged once.
"'Twasn't a complete ambush, anyway," he reasoned. "He had some hint
of what was coming. Couldn't have drawn his gun after that bullet
hit him. The way my ears read the reports, he fired just after the
rifle spoke--probably a spasmodic pull on the trigger with no aim or
hit. You know, Mounties are not supposed to fire first. The rule
has killed a number of them."
"He was so brave--absolutely fearless," she murmured.
Seymour might have gone further in reconstructing the crime, but he
checked observation on the subject lest she suspect his training.
"You knew him well, Miss----Miss----" he asked, partially to divert
her mind from his professional deductions.
"I'm Ruth Duperow," she told him. "My uncle is a missionary here."
At once he remembered Moira's description of the colorful cousin who
was keeping her father company. The contrast in type was remarkable.
"Yes," she went on, "I knew the sergeant quite well and admired--both
my uncle and I admired his courage and uprightness."
"You said his name was----"
The girl's frankness did not desert her. "His real name was Russell
Seymour but we knew him first as Bart Caswell. You see, he has been
here for a month, studying the camp without anyone suspecting that he
was not the mining expert he pretended he was. Not until the stage
robbery did he disclose who he was and put on his uniform."
Seymour turned to hide a smile; the plan which the girl outlined as
Bart Caswell's sounded so exactly like his own. When he turned back
to her, his hand was stroking meditatively a clean shaven chin.
"Is there a coroner in Gold?" he asked.
"When a man was killed in a shaft cave-in on Sweet Marie Creek last
week, a deputy acted before uncle read the service," was the girl's
information, delivered with a frown. The reason for the contraction
of brow appeared when she added "That deputy sheriff and coroner is a
chump named Sam Hardley, and he didn't like Bart--I mean Mr. Seymour."
The real Seymour made mental note of this fragment without seeming to
be impressed or more than casually interested.
"At that, Hardley will have to be notified, I suppose," Miss Duperow
went on. "It's the law, isn't it?"
The sergeant nodded. "Something of the sort. But first I'm going to
have a little look into the brush to see--what I can see. Mind
waiting for a few minutes?"
"Don't risk it," cried the girl, taking a step toward him and laying
an impulsive hand upon his sleeve. "Whoever murdered Bart may be
lurking in the brush and wouldn't hesitate to take a shot at you.
You don't know how desperate the----" She broke off in sudden
caution and finished inconsequentially: "One killing is enough for
to-day."
"A killing too many," he assured her, but swung into the saddle.
"I'll take no unnecessary chances, and I'll not be gone long."
With the girl's disapproving look following him, he rode into the
underbrush to the left of the trail. From that direction, he
figured, had come the bullet. He had small hope of any encounter.
With the cowardly attack neatly turned, he could conceive no reason
why the perpetrator should hide around the scene of the crime. There
was a chance, however, that he might pick up the trail of departure
and learn its trend before the camp's amateur sleuths got busy and
blotted out all signs.
On superficial survey, it seemed to the sergeant that the bogus
officer had been riding out from town on some mission not entirely
unsuspected by those against whom he meant to act. Near the trail
forks, someone had lain in wait and killed him.
One shot had sufficed. Caswell's effort to answer undoubtedly had
been futile. Then the slayer had slunk away in the brush. It seemed
unlikely that he would go into town; entirely reasonable that he
would return whence he had come. Seymour imagined that that would be
the place for which the pretended Mountie was bound, were that ever
determined. That the escape had been through the brush seemed
likely, since nobody had passed them on the trail after the shooting.
Twenty yards into the brush, he set Kaw parallel with the trail that
followed the River Cheena. The undergrowth was not too thick for
riding if one watched for fallen trees and devil-club thickets. The
ground, soft from recent spring rains, took tracks like putty. An
Indian in moccasins might have passed without leaving a trail, but
any booted white must have shed footprints like Crusoe's man Friday.
Soon, the officer picked up horse tracks so fresh as to be still
sucking moisture from the muskeg. These angled toward the trail over
which he had followed Miss Duperow. He traced them back to a clump
of poplars. There he found evidence that a horse had been tied,
evidently having been ridden from the main trail.
Footprints coming and going testified to a round trip in that
direction. He examined these with care. In measuring these with a
lead pencil, for lack of a tape, he noted the impress of a peculiar
plate on the side of the right sole. Either the wearer was slightly
lame or possessed a gait that made it advisable to reinforce the
outer edge of his boot.
The foot trail ended in a patch of salmonberry bushes, already in
thick leaf and furnishing an ideal curtain. Groping about where the
earth was beaten down, he soon discovered a copper cartridge case.
His eyes sized this as having been thrown from a 30-30 Winchester,
the same sort as that his saddle carried, one likely to be common in
that region. Undoubtedly the dented case had held the steel nosed
bullet that had ended the career of the crook who had dared
impersonate a Mountie.
When Seymour stood erect, he saw he was head and shoulders above the
bramble screen, in plain view and easy range of the tragedy scene.
Doubtless in the very spot which he occupied, the murderer had stood
erect to fling a taunt or shout a false warning at the approaching
horseman; then he had shot before the other could act.
The circumstances of the crime reproduced to his own satisfaction,
Seymour squandered a moment in studying his partner of the trail, his
scrutiny unsuspected by the fair object thereof.
Ruth Duperow stood uncovered, her hat hanging from the horn of her
saddle. The sun played upon the unmeshed waves of her silver-gold
hair, bringing out unnumbered glints. She was taller than he had
thought, almost as tall as her cousin, Moira. Her face was buried in
hands that rested on the saddle seat, her poise slumped and heavy
with grief.
"Poor youngling," mused the sergeant in deep sympathy. "She's taking
it hard. These gentlemen crooks sure raise Ned with the ladies.
Knowing that her uncle was a missionary, this Bart would not be at
loss what trumps to lead. Reckon his blossoming out in my scarlet
just topped the bill. Must have cut quite a figure in life, this
Bart Caswell--or whatever his real name was. Handsome dog, too. No
resemblance to me." He turned away with the hope that someone else
would have the job of telling her the murdered man himself was a
criminal.
Regaining his horse, Seymour mounted, minded to follow the hoof-print
trail for a way. This was child's play; Kaw attended to it, leaving
the sergeant free to peer ahead. Meantime, his mind was busy
revolving the surprising facts with which chance had equipped him.
He saw no need for mental doubt over the stage robbery. The uniform
in which Bart was clad unquestionably was the dressier of the two he
had enclosed in the bag and shipped to Gold. The "E" Division had a
new tailor, a mistake had been made in stitching on the insignia and
trace of the change remained on the sleeve. Even had there been
other members of the Force in the district, he would have sworn to
that uniform. He had not a doubt that the handsome deceiver of
Cousin Ruth either had held up the stage single handed or had
participated in the crime.
He could not agree with Ruth Duperow that the road agent, or agents,
had mistaken the express vehicle for one of the passenger coaches in
use on this difficult line. That did not stand the test of reason,
any more than did a supposition that the robbery had been for the
sake of obtaining the uniform of a mounted police officer. No one
possibly could have known that such a rig was in transit. At best,
the authority which any spurious wearer might command, must be of
brief duration for the owner could be counted on to follow his
clothes. The risk was not worth the fleeting advantage.
The sergeant did not have to argue himself into a conviction that he
must seek elsewhere for the purpose of the holdup. Some other
shipment--just what, he meant to find out--that was coveted and worth
taking chances to secure must have been expected. He believed that,
in examining his loot, the robber-murderer had come upon the uniform
and had decided to use it in some other bold stroke without the law.
The sergeant could not withhold admiration for the daring which the
man who called himself Caswell had shown in his last hours of life.
To put on the trusted and feared uniform, to declare himself the
representative of Dominion authority and to undertake the solution of
his own crime was a coup as clever and novel as it was impudent. Had
the culprit stopped there, he might have made a clean get-away with
whatever else of loot the stage carried. Seymour concluded that the
prize which had made him resort to murder must be of great value. He
did not overlook the possibility that Bart might have been slain by a
pal dissatisfied with the division of the spoils. But, in view of
hints dropped by Ruth, he was inclined to believe that this morning's
slaying had no connection with the B.C.X. crime. The girl, after
all, was his best source of information.
Just as he was about to turn back and question her further, the horse
tracks he was following broke from the bush into the switchback trail
and were lost. At once he swung Kaw around for the return canter.
Shortly he overtook his own pack cayuse faithfully plodding in
pursuit, and took the animal under halter, that it might not become
confused at the crossroads.
At the turn, he saw that a group of men had gathered about the
lifeless figure of Bart. A freight wagon drawn by three yoke of oxen
had been stopped near by and reins dropped on four or five saddle
horses. But he looked in vain for his companion of chance. Ruth
Duperow and her mount were gone.