Man Size / Raine, William MacLeod, 1871-1954

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Title: Man Size

Author: William MacLeod Raine

Release Date: December 8, 2003  [eBook #10404]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII


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MAN-SIZE

BY

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

AUTHOR OF

THE BIG-TOWN ROUND UP,

OH, YOU TEX! ETC

1922






TO

CAPTAIN SIR CECIL E. DENNY, BART.

OF THE FIRST THREE HUNDRED RIDERS OF THE PLAINS

WHO CARRIED LAW INTO THE LONE LANDS

AND MADE THE SCARLET AND GOLD

A SYNONYM FOR

JUSTICE, INTEGRITY, AND INDOMITABLE PLUCK




CONTENTS


      I. IN THE DANGER ZONE

     II. THE AMAZON

    III. ANGUS McRAE DOES HIS DUTY

     IV. THE WOLFERS

      V. MORSE JUMPS UP TROUBLE

     VI. "SOMETHING ABOUT THESE GUYS"

    VII. THE MAN IN THE SCARLET JACKET

   VIII. AT SWEET WATER CREEK

     IX. TOM MAKES A COLLECTION

      X. A CAMP-FIRE TALE

     XI. C.N. MORSE TURNS OVER A LEAF

    XII. TOM DUCKS TROUBLE

   XIII. THE CONSTABLE BORES THROUGH DIFFICULTIES

    XIV. SCARLET-COATS IN ACTION

     XV. KISSING DAY

    XVI. A BUSINESS DEAL

   XVII. A BOARD CREAKS

  XVIII. A GUN ROARS

    XIX. "D' YOU WONDER SHE HATES ME?"

     XX. ONISTAH READS SIGN

    XXI. ON THE FRONTIER OF DESPAIR

   XXII. "MY DAMN PRETTY LI'L' HIGH-STEPPIN' SQUAW"

  XXIII. A FORETASTE OF HELL

   XXIV. WEST MAKES A DECISION

    XXV. FOR THE WEE LAMB LOST

   XXVI. A RESCUE

  XXVII. APACHE STUFF

 XXVIII. "IS A' WELL WI' YOU, LASS?"

   XXIX. NOT GOING ALONE

    XXX. "M" FOR MORSE

   XXXI. THE LONG TRAIL

  XXXII. A PICTURE IN A LOCKET

 XXXIII. INTO THE LONE LAND

  XXXIV. THE MAN-HUNTERS READ SIGN

   XXXV. SNOW-BLIND

  XXXVI. THE WILD BEAST LEAPS

 XXXVII. NEAR THE END OF A LONG CROOKED TRAIL

XXXVIII. OVER A ROTTING TRAIL

  XXXIX. A CREE RUNNER BRINGS NEWS

     XL. "MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE"

    XLI. SENSE AND NONSENSE

   XLII. THE IMPERATIVE URGE





CHAPTER I

IN THE DANGER ZONE


She stood on the crown of the hill, silhouetted against a sky-line of
deepest blue. Already the sun was sinking in a crotch of the plains
which rolled to the horizon edge like waves of a great land sea. Its
reflected fires were in her dark, stormy eyes. Its long, slanted rays
were a spotlight for the tall, slim figure, straight as that of a boy.

The girl's gaze was fastened on a wisp of smoke rising lazily from a
hollow of the crumpled hills. That floating film told of a camp-fire
of buffalo chips. There was a little knitted frown of worry on her
forehead, for imagination could fill in details of what the coulee
held: the white canvas tops of prairie schooners, some spans of oxen
grazing near, a group of blatant, profane whiskey-smugglers from
Montana, and in the wagons a cargo of liquor to debauch the Bloods and
Piegans near Fort Whoop-Up.

Sleeping Dawn was a child of impulse. She had all youth's capacity for
passionate indignation and none of the wisdom of age which tempers
the eager desire of the hour. These whiskey-traders were ruining her
people. More than threescore Blackfeet braves had been killed within
the year in drunken brawls among themselves. The plains Indians would
sell their souls for fire-water. When the craze was on them, they
would exchange furs, buffalo robes, ponies, even their wives and
daughters for a bottle of the poison.

In the sunset glow she stood rigid and resentful, one small fist
clenched, the other fast to the barrel of the rifle she carried. The
evils of the trade came close to her. Fergus McRae still carried the
gash from a knife thrust earned in a drunken brawl. It was likely that
to-morrow he would cut the trail of the wagon wheels and again make
a bee-line for liquor and trouble. The swift blaze of revolt found
expression in the stamp of her moccasined foot.

As dusk fell over the plains, Sleeping Dawn moved forward lightly,
swiftly, toward the camp in the hollow of the hills. She had no
definite purpose except to spy the lay-out, to make sure that her
fears were justified. But through the hinterland of her consciousness
rebellious thoughts were racing. These smugglers were wholly outside
the law. It was her right to frustrate them if she could.

Noiselessly she skirted the ridge above the coulee, moving through
the bunch grass with the wary care she had learned as a child in the
lodges of the tribe.

Three men crouched on their heels in the glow of a camp-fire well
up the draw. A fourth sat at a little distance from them riveting a
stirrup leather with two stones. The wagons had been left near the
entrance of the valley pocket some sixty or seventy yards from the
fire. Probably the drivers, after they had unhitched the teams, had
been drawn deeper into the draw to a spot more fully protected from
the wind.

While darkness gathered, Sleeping Dawn lay in the bunch grass with her
eyes focused on the camp below. Her untaught soul struggled with the
problem that began to shape itself. These men were wolfers, desperate
men engaged in a nefarious business. They paid no duty to the British
Government. She had heard her father say so. Contrary to law, they
brought in their vile stuff and sold it both to breeds and tribesmen.
They had no regard whatever for the terrible injury they did the
natives. Their one intent was to get rich as soon as possible, so they
plied their business openly and defiantly. For the Great Lone Land was
still a wilderness where every man was a law to himself.

The blood of the girl beat fast with the racing pulse of excitement.
A resolution was forming in her mind. She realized the risks and
estimated chances coolly. These men would fire to kill on any skulker
near the camp. They would take no needless hazard of being surprised
by a band of stray Indians. But the night would befriend her. She
believed she could do what she had in mind and easily get away to the
shelter of the hill creases before they could kill or capture her.

A shadowy dog on the outskirt of the camp rose and barked. The girl
waited, motionless, tense, but the men paid little heed to the
warning. The man working at the stirrup leather got to his feet,
indeed, carelessly, rifle in hand, and stared into the gloom; but
presently he turned on his heel and sauntered back to his job of
saddlery. Evidently the hound was used to voicing false alarms
whenever a coyote slipped past or a skunk nosed inquisitively near.

Sleeping Dawn followed the crest of the ridge till it fell away to
the mouth of the coulee. She crept up behind the white-topped wagon
nearest the entrance.

An axe lay against the tongue. She picked it up, glancing at the same
time toward the camp-fire. So far she had quite escaped notice. The
hound lay blinking into the flames, its nose resting on crossed paws.

With her hunting-knife the girl ripped the canvas from the side of the
top. She stood poised, one foot on a spoke, the other on the axle. The
axe-head swung in a half-circle. There was a crash of wood, a swift
jet of spouting liquor. Again the axe swung gleaming above her head. A
third and a fourth time it crashed against the staves.

A man by the camp-fire leaped to his feet with a startled oath.
"What's that?" he demanded sharply.

From the shadows of the wagons a light figure darted. The man snatched
up a rifle and fired. A second time, aimlessly, he sent a bullet into
the darkness.

The silent night was suddenly alive with noises. Shots, shouts, the
barking of the dog, the slap of running feet, all came in a confused
medley to Sleeping Dawn.

She gained a moment's respite from pursuit when the traders stopped
at the wagons to get their bearings. The first of the white-topped
schooners was untouched. The one nearest the entrance to the coulee
held four whiskey-casks with staves crushed in and contents seeping
into the dry ground.

Against one of the wheels a rifle rested. The girl flying in a panic
had forgotten it till too late.

The vandalism of the attack amazed the men. They could have understood
readily enough some shots out of the shadows or a swoop down upon the
camp to stampede and run off the saddle horses. Even a serious attempt
to wipe out the party by a stray band of Blackfeet or Crees was an
undertaking that would need no explaining. But why should any one do
such a foolish, wasteful thing as this, one to so little purpose in
its destructiveness?

They lost no time in speculation, but plunged into the darkness in
pursuit.




CHAPTER II

THE AMAZON


The dog darted into the bunch grass and turned sharply to the right.
One of the men followed it, the others took different directions.

Up a gully the hound ran, nosed the ground in a circle of sniffs, and
dipped down into a dry watercourse. Tom Morse was at heel scarcely a
dozen strides behind.

The yelping of the dog told Morse they were close on their quarry.
Once or twice he thought he made out the vague outline of a flying
figure, but in the night shadows it was lost again almost at once.

They breasted the long slope of a low hill and took the decline
beyond. The young plainsman had the legs and the wind of a Marathon
runner. His was the perfect physical fitness of one who lives a clean,
hard life in the dry air of the high lands. The swiftness and the
endurance of the fugitive told him that he was in the wake of youth
trained to a fine edge.

Unexpectedly, in the deeper darkness of a small ravine below the hill
spur, the hunted turned upon the hunter. Morse caught the gleam of a
knife thrust as he plunged. It was too late to check his dive. A flame
of fire scorched through his forearm. The two went down together,
rolling over and over as they struggled.

Startled, Morse loosened his grip. He had discovered by the feel of
the flesh he was handling so roughly that it was a woman with whom he
was fighting.

She took advantage of his hesitation to shake free and roll away.

They faced each other on their feet. The man was amazed at the young
Amazon's fury. Her eyes were like live coals, flashing at him hatred
and defiance. Beneath the skin smock she wore, her breath came
raggedly and deeply. Neither of them spoke, but her gaze did not yield
a thousandth part of an inch to his.

The girl darted for the knife she had dropped. Morse was upon her
instantly. She tried to trip him, but when they struck the ground she
was underneath.

He struggled to pin down her arms, but she fought with a barbaric
fury. Her hard little fist beat upon his face a dozen times before he
pegged it down.

Lithe as a panther, her body twisted beneath his. Too late the flash
of white teeth warned him. She bit into his arm with the abandon of a
savage.

"You little devil!" he cried between set teeth.

He flung away any scruples he might have had and pinned fast her
flying arms. The slim, muscular body still writhed in vain contortions
till he clamped it fast between knees from which not even an untamed
cayuse could free itself.

She gave up struggling. They glared at each other, panting from their
exertions. Her eyes still flamed defiance, but back of it he read
fear, a horrified and paralyzing terror. To the white traders along
the border a half-breed girl was a squaw, and a squaw was property
just as a horse or a dog was.

For the first time she spoke, and in English. Her voice came
bell-clear and not in the guttural of the tribes.

"Let me up!" It was an imperative, urgent, threatening.

He still held her in the vice, his face close to her flaming eyes.
"You little devil," he said again.

"Let me up!" she repeated wildly. "Let me up, I tell you."

"Like blazes I will. You're through biting and knifing me for one
night." He had tasted no liquor all day, but there was the note of
drunkenness in his voice.

The terror in her grew. "If you don't let me up--"

"You'll do what?" he jeered.

Her furious upheaval took him by surprise. She had unseated him and
was scrambling to her feet before he had her by the shoulders.

The girl ducked her head in an effort to wrench free. She could as
easily have escaped from steel cuffs as from the grip of his brown
fingers.

"You'd better let me go!" she cried. "You don't know who I am."

"Nor care," he flung back. "You're a nitchie, and you smashed our
kegs. That's enough for me."

"I'm no such thing a nitchie[1]," she denied indignantly.

[Footnote 1: In the vernacular of the Northwest Indians were
"nitchies." (W.M.R.)]

The instinct of self-preservation was moving in her. She had played
into the hands of this man and his companions. The traders made their
own laws and set their own standards. The value of a squaw of the
Blackfeet was no more than that of the liquor she had destroyed. It
would be in character for them to keep her as a chattel captured in
war.

"The daughter of a squaw-man then," he said, and there was in his
voice the contempt of the white man for the half-breed.

"I'm Jessie McRae," she said proudly.

Among the Indians she went by her tribal name of Sleeping Dawn, but
always with the whites she used the one her adopted father had given
her. It increased their respect for her. Just now she was in desperate
need of every ounce that would weigh in the scales.

"Daughter of Angus McRae?" he asked, astonished.

"Yes."

"His woman's a Cree?"

"His wife is," the girl corrected.

"What you doin' here?"

"Father's camp is near. He's hunting hides."

"Did he send you to smash our whiskey-barrels?"

"Angus McRae never hides behind a woman," she said, her chin up.

That was true. Morse knew it, though he had never met McRae. His
reputation had gone all over the Northland as a fearless fighting man
honest as daylight and stern as the Day of Judgment. If this girl was
a daughter of the old Scot, not even a whiskey-trader could safely lay
hands on her. For back of Angus was a group of buffalo-hunters related
to him by blood over whom he held half-patriarchal sway.

"Why did you do it?" Morse demanded.

The question struck a spark of spirit from her. "Because you're
ruining my people--destroying them with your fire-water."

He was taken wholly by surprise. "Do you mean you destroyed our
property for that reason?"

She nodded, sullenly.

"But we don't trade with the Crees," he persisted.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was of the
Blackfoot tribe and not of the Crees, but again for reasons of policy
she was less than candid. Till she was safely out of the woods, it was
better this man should not know she was only an adopted daughter of
Angus McRae. She offered another reason, and with a flare of passion
which he was to learn as a characteristic of her.

"You make trouble for my brother Fergus. He shot Akokotos (Many
Horses) in the leg when the fire-water burned in him. He was stabbed
by a Piegan brave who did not know what he was doing. Fergus is good.
He minds his own business. But you steal away his brains. Then he runs
wild. It was _you_, not Fergus, that shot Akokotos. The Great Spirit
knows you whiskey-traders, and not my poor people who destroy each
other, are the real murderers."

Her logic was feminine and personal, from his viewpoint wholly unfair.
Moreover, one of her charges did not happen to be literally true.

"We never sold whiskey to your brother--not our outfit. It was
Jackson's, maybe. Anyhow, nobody made him buy it. He was free to take
it or leave it."

"A wolf doesn't have to eat the poisoned meat in a trap, but it eats
and dies," she retorted swiftly and bitterly.

Adroitly she had put him on the defensive. Her words had the sting of
barbed darts.

"We're not talking of wolves."

"No, but of Blackfeet and Bloods and Sarcees," she burst out, again
with that flare of feminine ferocity so out of character in an Indian
woman or the daughter of one. "D'you think I don't know how you
Americans talk? A good Indian is a dead Indian. No wonder we hate you
all. No wonder the tribes fight you to the death."

He had no answer for this. It was true. He had been brought up in a
land of Indian wars and he had accepted without question the common
view that the Sioux, the Crows, and the Cheyennes, with all their
blood brothers, were menaces to civilization. The case for the natives
he had never studied. How great a part broken pledges and callous
injustice had done to drive the tribes to the war-path he did not
know. Few of the actual frontiersmen were aware of the wrongs of the
red men.

The young man's hands fell from her arms. Hard-eyed and grim, he
looked her over from head to foot. The short skirt and smock of
buckskin, the moccasins of buffalo hide, all dusty and travel-stained,
told of life in a primitive country under the simplest and hardest
conditions.

Yet the voice was clear and vibrant, the words well enunciated. She
bloomed like a desert rose, had some quality of vital life that struck
a spark from his imagination.

What manner of girl was she? Not by any possibility would she fit into
the specifications of the cubby-hole his mind had built for Indian
women. The daughters even of the boisbrules had much of the heaviness
and stolidity of their native mothers. Jessie McRae was graceful as a
fawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressed
spirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost wholly
from her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little of
McRae's heavy solidity of mind and body.

"Your brother is of the metis[2]. He's not a tribesman. And he's no
child. He can look out for himself," Morse said at last.

[Footnote 2: The half-breeds were known as "metis." The word means, of
course, mongrel. (W.M.R.)]

His choice of a word was unfortunate. It applied as much to her as to
Fergus. Often it was used contemptuously.

"Yes, and the metis doesn't matter," she cried, with the note of
bitterness that sat so strangely on her hot-blooded, vital youth. "You
can ride over him as though you're lords of the barren lands. You can
ruin him for the money you make, even if he's a subject of the Great
Mother and not of your country. He's only a breed--a mongrel."

He was a man of action. He brushed aside discussion. "We'll be movin'
back to camp."

Instantly her eyes betrayed the fear she would not put into words.
"No--no! I won't go."

His lids narrowed. The outthrust of his lean jaw left no room for
argument. "You'll go where I say."

She knew it would be that way, if he dragged her by the hair of the
head. Because she was in such evil case she tamed her pride to sullen
pleading.

"Don't take me there! Let me go to father. He'll horsewhip me. I'll
have him do it for you. Isn't that enough? Won't that satisfy you?"

Red spots smoldered like fire in his brown eyes. If he took her back
to the traders' camp, he would have to fight Bully West for her. That
was certain. All sorts of complications would rise. There would be
trouble with McRae. The trade with the Indians of his uncle's firm, of
which he was soon to be a partner, would be wrecked by the Scotchman.
No, he couldn't take her back to the camp in the coulee. There was too
much at stake.

"Suits me. I'll take you up on that. He's to horsewhip you for that
fool trick you played on us and to make good our loss. Where's his
camp?"

From the distance of a stone-throw a heavy, raucous voice called,
"'Lo, Morse!"

The young man turned to the girl, his lips set in a thin, hard line.
"Bully West. The dog's gone back and is bringin' him here, I reckon.
Like to meet him?"

She knew the reputation of Bully West, notorious as a brawler and
a libertine. Who in all the North did not know of it? Her heart
fluttered a signal of despair.

"I--I can get away yet--up the valley," she said in a whisper, eyes
quick with fear.

He smiled grimly. "You mean _we_ can."

"Yes."

"Hit the trail."

She turned and led the way into the darkness.




CHAPTER III

ANGUS McRAE DOES HIS DUTY


The harsh shout came to them again, and with it a volley of oaths that
polluted the night.

Sleeping Dawn quickened her pace. The character of Bully West was
sufficiently advertised in that single outburst. She conceived him
bloated, wolfish, malignant, a man whose mind traveled through filthy
green swamps breeding fever and disease. Hard though this young man
was, in spite of her hatred of him, of her doubt as to what lay behind
those inscrutable, reddish-brown eyes of his, she would a hundred
times rather take chances with him than with Bully West. He was at
least a youth. There was always the possibility that he might not yet
have escaped entirely from the tenderness of boyhood.

Morse followed her silently with long, tireless, strides. The girl
continued to puzzle him. Even her manner of walking expressed
personality. There was none of the flat-footed Indian shuffle about
her gait. She moved lightly, springily, as one does who finds in it
the joy of calling upon abundant strength.

She was half Scotch, of course. That helped to explain her. The words
of an old song hummed themselves through his mind.

  "Yestreen I met a winsome lass, a bonny lass was she,
   As ever climbed the mountain-side, or tripped aboon the lea;
   She wore nae gold, nae jewels bright, nor silk nor satin rare,
   But just the plaidie that a queen might well be proud to wear."

Jessie McRae wore nothing half so picturesque as the tartan. Her
clothes were dingy and dust-stained. But they could not eclipse the
divine, dusky youth of her. She was slender, as a panther is, and her
movements had more than a suggestion of the same sinuous grace.

Of the absurdity of such thoughts he was quite aware. She was a
good-looking breed. Let it go at that. In story-books there were
Indian princesses, but in real life there were only squaws.

Not till they were out of the danger zone did he speak. "Where's your
father's camp?"

She pointed toward the northwest. "You don't need to be afraid. He'll
pay you for the damage I did."

He looked at her in the steady, appraising way she was to learn as a
peculiarity of his.

"I'm not afraid," he drawled. "I'll get my pay--and you'll get yours."

Color flamed into her dusky face. When she spoke there was the throb
of contemptuous anger in her voice. "It's a great thing to be a man."

"Like to crawfish, would you?"

She swung on him, eyes blazing. "No. I don't ask any favors of a
wolfer."

She spat the word at him as though it were a missile. The term was one
of scorn, used only in speaking of the worst of the whiskey-traders.
He took it coolly, his strong white teeth flashing in a derisive
smile.

"Then this wolfer won't offer any, Miss McRae."

It was the last word that passed between them till they reached the
buffalo-hunter's camp. If he felt any compunctions, she read nothing
of the kind in his brown face and the steady stride carrying her
straight to punishment. She wondered if he knew how mercilessly
twenty-year-old Fergus had been thrashed after his drunken spree among
the Indians, how sternly Angus dispensed justice in the clan over
which he ruled. Did he think she was an ordinary squaw, one to be
whipped as a matter of discipline by her owner?

They climbed a hill and looked down on a camp of many fires in the
hollow below.

"Is it you, lass?" a voice called.

Out of the shadows thrown by the tents a big bearded man came to meet
them. He stood six feet in his woolen socks. His chest was deep and
his shoulders tremendously broad. Few in the Lone Lands had the
physical strength of Angus McRae.

His big hand caught the girl by the shoulder with a grip that was
half a caress. He had been a little anxious about her and this found
expression in a reproach.

"You shouldna go out by your lane for so lang after dark, Jess. Weel
you ken that."

"I know, Father."

The blue eyes beneath the grizzled brows of the hunter turned upon
Morse. They asked what he was doing with his daughter at that time and
place.

The Montana trader answered the unspoken question, an edge of irony in
his voice. "I found Miss McRae wanderin' around, so I brought her home
where she would be safe and well taken care of."

There was something about this Angus did not understand. At night in
the Lone Lands, among a thousand hill pockets and shoestring draws,
it would be only a millionth chance that would bring a man and woman
together unexpectedly. He pushed home questions, for he was not one to
slough any of the responsibilities that belonged to him as father of
his family.

A fat and waistless Indian woman appeared in the tent flap as the
three approached the light. She gave a grunt of surprise and pointed
first at Morse and then at the girl.

The trader's hands were covered with blood, his shirt-sleeve soaked in
it. Stains of it were spattered over the girl's clothes and face.

The Scotchman looked at them, and his clean-shaven upper lip grew
straight, his whole face stern. "What'll be the meanin' o' this?" he
asked.

Morse turned to the girl, fastened his eyes on her steadily, and
waited.

"Nae lees. I'll hae the truth," Angus added harshly.

"I did it--with my hunting-knife," the daughter said, looking straight
at her father.

"What's that? Are ye talkin' havers, lass?"

"It's the truth, Father."

The Scotchman swung on the trader with a swift question, at the end of
it a threat. "Why would she do that? Why? If you said one word to my
lass--"

"No, Father. You don't understand. I found a camp of whiskey-traders,
and I stole up and smashed four-five kegs. I meant to slip away, but
this man caught me. When he rushed at me I was afraid--so I slashed at
him with my knife. We fought."

"You fought," her father repeated.

"He didn't know I was a girl--not at first."

The buffalo-hunter passed that point. "You went to this trader's camp
and ruined his goods?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

The slim girl faced her judge steadily with eyes full of apprehension.
"Fergus," she said in a low voice, "and my people."

"What aboot them?"

"These traders break the law. They sell liquor to Fergus and to--"

"Gin that's true, is it your business to ram-stam in an' destroy ither
folks' property? Did I bring you up i' the fear o' the Lord to slash
at men wi' your dirk an' fight wi' them like a wild limmer? I've been
ower-easy wi' you. Weel, I'll do my painfu' duty the nicht, lass." The
Scotchman's eyes were as hard and as inexorable as those of a hanging
judge.

"Yes," the girl answered in a small voice. "That's why he brought me
home instead of taking me to his own camp. You're to whip me."

Angus McRae was not used to having the law and the judgment taken out
of his own hands. He frowned at the young man beneath heavy grizzled
eyebrows drawn sternly together. "An' who are you to tell me how to
govern my ain hoose?" he demanded.

"My name's Morse--Tom Morse, Fort Benton, Montana, when my hat's
hangin' up. I took up your girl's proposition, that if I didn't head
in at our camp, but brought her here, you were to whip her and pay me
damages for what she'd done. Me, I didn't propose it. She did."

"You gave him your word on that, Jess?" her father asked.

"Yes." She dragged out, reluctantly, after a moment: "With a
horsewhip."

"Then that's the way it'll be. The McRaes don't cry back on a
bargain," the dour old buffalo-hunter said. "But first we'll look at
this young man's arm. Get water and clean rags, Jess."

Morse flushed beneath the dark tan of his cheeks. "My arm's all right.
It'll keep till I get back to camp."

"No such thing, my lad. We'll tie it up here and now. If my lass cut
your arm, she'll bandage the wound."

"She'll not. I'm runnin' this arm."

McRae slammed a heavy fist down into the palm of his hand. "I'll be
showin' you aboot that, mannie."

"Hell, what's the use o' jawin'? I'm goin' to wait, I tell you."

"Don't curse in my camp, Mr. Morse, or whatever your name is." The
Scotchman's blue eyes flashed. "It's a thing I do not permeet. Nor do
I let beardless lads tell me what they will or won't do here. Your
wound will be washed and tied up if I have to order you hogtied first.
So mak the best o' that."

Morse measured eyes with him a moment, then gave way with a sardonic
laugh. McRae had a full share of the obstinacy of his race.

"All right. I'm to be done good to whether I like it or not. Go to
it." The trader pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and stretched out
a muscular, blood-stained arm. An ugly flesh wound stretched halfway
from elbow to wrist.

Jessie brought a basin, water, a towel, and clean rags. By the light
of a lantern in the hands of her father, she washed and tied up the
wound. Her lips trembled. Strange little rivers of fire ran through
her veins when her finger-tips touched his flesh. Once, when she
lifted her eyes, they met his. He read in them a concentrated passion
of hatred.

Not even when she had tied the last knot in the bandage did any of
them speak. She carried away the towel and the basin while McRae hung
the lantern to a nail in the tent pole and brought from inside a
silver-mounted riding-whip. It was one he had bought as a present for
his daughter last time he had been at Fort Benton.

The girl came back and stood before him. A pulse beat fast in her
brown throat. The eyes betrayed the dread of her soul, but they met
without flinching those of the buffalo-hunter.

The Indian woman at the tent entrance made no motion to interfere. The
lord of her life had spoken. So it would be.

With a strained little laugh Morse took a step forward. "I reckon I'll
not stand out for my pound of flesh, Mr. McRae. Settle the damages for
the lost liquor and I'll call it quits."

The upper lip of the Scotchman was a straight line of resolution. "I'm
not thrashing the lass to please you, but because it's in the bond and
because she's earned it. Stand back, sir."

The whip swung up and down. The girl gasped and shivered. A flame of
fiery pain ran through her body to the toes. She set her teeth to bite
back a scream. Before the agony had passed, the whip was winding round
her slender body again like a red-hot snake. It fell with implacable
rhythmic regularity.

Her pride and courage collapsed. She sank to her knees with a wild
burst of wailing and entreaties. At last McRae stopped.

Except for the irregular sobbing breaths of the girl there was
silence. The Indian woman crouched beside the tortured young thing and
rocked the dark head, held close against her bosom, while she crooned
a lullaby in the native tongue.

McRae, white to the lips, turned upon his unwelcome guest. "You're nae
doot wearyin' to tak the road, man. Bring your boss the morn an' I'll
mak a settlement."

Morse knew he was dismissed. He turned and walked into the darkness
beyond the camp-fires. Unnoticed, he waited there in a hollow and
listened. For along time there came to him the soft sound of weeping,
and afterward the murmur of voices. He knew that the fat and shapeless
squaw was pouring mother love from her own heart to the bleeding one
of the girl.

Somehow that brought him comfort. He had a queer feeling that he had
been a party to some horrible outrage. Yet all that had taken place
was the whipping of an Indian girl. He tried to laugh away the weak
sympathy in his heart.

But the truth was that inside he was a wild river of woe for her.




CHAPTER IV

THE WOLFERS


When Tom Morse reached camp he found Bully West stamping about in a
heady rage. The fellow was a giant of a man, almost muscle-bound in
his huge solidity. His shoulders were rounded with the heavy pack of
knotted sinews they carried. His legs were bowed from much riding. It
was his boast that he could bend a silver dollar double in the palm of
his hand. Men had seen him twist the tail rod of a wagon into a knot.
Sober, he was a sulky, domineering brute with the instincts of a
bully. In liquor, the least difference of opinion became for him a
cause of quarrel.

Most men gave him a wide berth, and for the sake of peace accepted
sneers and insults that made the blood boil.

"Where you been all this time?" he growled.

"Ploughin' around over the plains."

"Didn't you hear me callin'?"

"D'you call? I've been quite a ways from camp. Bumped into Angus
McRae's buffalo-hunting outfit. He wants to see us to-morrow."

"What for?"

"Something about to-night's business. Seems he knows who did it.
Offers to settle for what we lost."

Bully West stopped in his stride, feet straddled, head thrust forward.
"What's that?"

"Like I say. We're to call on him to-morrow for a settlement, you 'n'
me."

"Did McRae bust our barrels?"

"He knows something about it. Didn't have time to talk long with him.
I hustled right back to tell you."

"He can come here if he wants to see me," West announced.

This called for no answer and Tom gave it none. He moved across to the
spot where the oxen were picketed and made sure the pins were still
fast. Presently he rolled his blanket round him and looked up into a
sky all stars. Usually he dropped asleep as soon as his head touched
the seat of the saddle he used as a pillow. But to-night he lay awake
for hours. He could not get out of his mind the girl he had met and
taken to punishment. A dozen pictures of her rose before him, all of
them mental snapshots snatched from his experience of the night. Now
he was struggling to hold her down, his knees clamped to her writhing,
muscular torso. Again he held her by the strong, velvet-smooth arms
while her eyes blazed fury and defiance at him. Or her stinging words
pelted him as she breasted the hill slopes with supple ease. Most
vivid of all were the ones at her father's camp, especially those when
she was under the torture of the whip.

No wonder she hated him for what he had done to her.

He shook himself into a more comfortable position and began to count
stars.... Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven.... What was the use
of stressing the affair, anyhow? She was only a half-breed. In
ten years she would be fat, shapeless, dirty, and repellent. Her
conversation would be reduced to grunts. The glance he had had at her
mother was illuminating.

Where was he?... One hundred eleven, twelve, thirteen.... Women had
not obtruded much into his life. He had lived in the wind and the sun
of the outdoors, much of the time in the saddle. Lawless he was,
but there was a clean strain in his blood. He had always felt an
indifferent contempt for a squaw-man. An American declassed himself
when he went in for that sort of thing, even if he legalized the
union by some form of marriage. In spite of her magnificent physical
inheritance of health and vitality, in spite of the quick and
passionate spirit that informed her, she would be the product of her
environment and ancestry, held close to barbarism all her life. The
man who mated with her would be dragged down to her level.

Two hundred three, four, five.... How game she had been! She had
played it out like a thoroughbred, even to telling her father that he
was to use the horsewhip in punishing her. He had never before seen a
creature so splendid or so spirited. Squaw or no squaw, he took off
his hat to her.

The sun had climbed the hilltop when Morse wakened.

"Come an' get it!" Barney the cook was yelling at him.

Bully West had changed his mind about not going to the
buffalo-hunter's camp.

"You 'n' Brad'll stay here, Barney, while me 'n' Tom are gone," he
gave orders. "And you'll keep a sharp lookout for raiders. If any one
shows up that you're dubious of, plug him and ask questions afterward.
Un'erstand?"

"I hear ye," replied Barney, a small cock-eyed man with a malevolent
grin. "An' we'll do just that, boss."

Long before the traders reached it, the camp of the buffalo-hunters
advertised its presence by the stench of decaying animal matter.
Hundreds of hides were pegged to the ground. Men and women, squatting
on their heels, scraped bits of fat from the drying skins. Already a
train of fifty Red River carts[3] stood ready for the homeward start,
loaded with robes tied down by means of rawhide strips to stand the
jolting across the plains. Not far away other women were making
pemmican of fried buffalo meat and fat, pounded together and packed
with hot grease in skin bags. This food was a staple winter diet and
had too a market value for trade to the Hudson's Bay Company, which
shipped thousands of sacks yearly to its northern posts on the Peace
and the Mackenzie Rivers.

[Footnote 3: The Red River cart was a primitive two-wheeled affair,
made entirely of wood, without nails or metal tires. It was usually
drawn by an ox. (W.M.R.)]

The children and the sound of their laughter gave the camp a domestic
touch. Some of the brown, half-naked youngsters, their skins
glistening in the warm sun, were at work doing odd jobs. Others, too
young to fetch and carry, played with a litter of puppies or with a
wolf cub that had been caught and tamed.

The whole bustling scene was characteristic of time and place. A score
of such outfits, each with its Red River carts and its oxen, its dogs,
its women and children, traveled to the plains each spring to hunt
the bison. They killed thousands upon thousands of them, for it took
several animals to make a sack of pemmican weighing one hundred fifty
pounds. The waste was enormous, since only the choicest cuts of meat
were used.

Already the buffalo were diminishing in numbers. Vast hordes still
roamed the plains. They could be killed by scores and hundreds. But
the end was near. It had been several years since Colonel Dodge
reported that he had halted his party of railroad builders two days
to let a herd of over half a million bison pass. Such a sight was no
longer possible. The pressure of the hunters had divided the game into
the northern and the southern herds. Within four or five years the
slaughter was to be so great that only a few groups of buffalo would
be left.

The significance of this extermination lay largely in its application
to the Indians. The plains tribes were fed and clothed and armed and
housed by means of the buffalo. Even the canoes of the lake Indians
were made from buffalo skins. The failure of the supply reduced the
natives from warriors to beggars.

McRae came forward to meet the traders, the sleeves of his shirt
rolled to the elbows of his muscular brown arms. He stroked a great
red beard and nodded gruffly. It was not in his dour honest nature to
pretend that he was glad to see them when he was not.

"Well, I'm here," growled West, interlarding a few oaths as a
necessary corollary of his speech. "What's it all about, McRae? What
do you know about the smashing of our barrels?"

"I'll settle any reasonable damage," the hunter said.

Bully West frowned. He spread his legs deliberately, folded his arms,
and spat tobacco juice upon a clean hide drying in the sun. "Hold yore
hawsses a minute. The damage'll be enough. Don't you worry about that.
But first off, I aim to know who raided our camp. Then I reckon I'll
whop him till he's wore to a frazzle."

Under heavy, grizzled brows McRae looked long at him. Both were
outstanding figures by reason of personality and physique. One was a
constructive force, the other destructive. There was a suggestion of
the gorilla in West's long arms matted with hair, in the muscles of
back and shoulders so gnarled and knotted that they gave him almost
a deformed appearance. Big and broad though he was, the Scot was the
smaller. But power harnessed and controlled expressed itself in every
motion of the body. Moreover, the blue eyes that looked straight and
hard out of the ruddy face told of coordination between mind and
matter.

Angus McRae was that rare product, an honest, outspoken man. He sought
to do justice to all with whom he had dealings. Part of West's demand
was fair, he reflected. The trader had a right to know all the facts
in the case. But the old Hudson's Bay trapper had a great reluctance
to tell them. His instinct to protect Jessie was strong.

"I've saved ye the trouble, Mr. West. The guilty yin was o' my ain
family. Your young man will tell ye I've done a' the horsewhippin'
that's necessary."

The big trail boss looked blackly at his helper. He would settle with
Morse at the proper time. Now he had other business on hand.

"Come clean, McRae. Who was it? There'll be nothin' doin' till I know
that," he growled.

"My daughter."

West glared at him, for once astonished out of profanity.

"What?"

"My daughter Jessie."

"Goddlemighty, d'ja mean to tell me a girl did it?" He threw back his
head in a roar of Homeric laughter. "Ever hear the beat of that? A
damn li'l' Injun squaw playin' her tricks on Bully West! If she was
mine I'd tickle her back for it."

The eyes in the Scotchman's granite face flashed. "Man, can you never
say twa-three words withoot profanity? This is a God-fearin' camp.
There's nae place here for those who tak His name in vain."

"Smashed 'em with her own hands--is that what you mean? I'll give it
to her that she's a plucky li'l' devil, even if she is a nitchie."

McRae reproved him stiffly. "You'll please to remember that you're
talking of my daughter, Mr. West. I'll allow no such language aboot
her. You're here to settle a business matter. What do ye put the
damage at?"

They agreed on a price, to be paid in hides delivered at Whoop-Up.
West turned and went straddling to the place where he and Morse had
left their horses. On the way he came face to face with a girl, a
lithe, dusky young creature, Indian brown, the tan of a hundred
summer suns and winds painted on the oval of her lifted chin. She was
carrying a package of sacks to the place where the pemmican was being
made.

West's eyes narrowed. They traveled up and down her slender body. They
gloated on her.

After one scornful glance which swept over and ignored Morse, the girl
looked angrily at the man barring her way. Slowly the blood burned
into her cheeks. For there was that in the trader's smoldering eyes
that would have insulted any modest maiden.

"You Jessie McRae?" he demanded, struck of a sudden with an idea.

"Yes."

"You smashed my whiskey-barrels?"

"My father has told you. If he says so, isn't that enough?"

He slapped an immense hand on his thigh, hugely diverted. "You damn
li'l' high-steppin' filly! Why? What in hell 'd I ever do to you?"

Angus McRae strode forward, eyes blazing. He had married a Cree woman,
had paid for her to her father seven ponies, a yard of tobacco, and a
bottle of whiskey. His own two-fisted sons were metis. The Indian in
them showed more plainly than the Celt. Their father accepted the fact
without resentment. But there was in his heart a queer feeling about
the little lass he had adopted. Her light, springing step, the lift of
the throat and the fearlessness of the eye, the instinct in her for
cleanliness of mind and body, carried him back forty years to the land
of heather, to a memory of the laird's daughter whom he had worshiped
with the hopeless adoration of a red-headed gillie. It had been the
one romance of his life, and somehow it had reincarnated itself in
his love for the half-breed girl. To him it seemed a contradiction of
nature that Jessie should be related to the flat-footed squaws who
were slaves to their lords. He could not reconcile his heart to the
knowledge that she was of mixed blood. She was too fine, too dainty,
of too free and imperious a spirit.

"Your horses are up the hill, Mr. West," he said pointedly.

It is doubtful whether the trader heard. He could not keep his
desirous eyes from the girl.

"Is she a half or a quarter-breed?" he asked McRae.

"That'll be her business and mine, sir. Will you please tak the road?"
The hunter spoke quietly, restraining himself from an outbreak. But
his voice carried an edge.

"By Gad, she's some clipper," West said, aloud to himself, just as
though the girl had not been present.

"Will you leave my daughter oot o' your talk, man?" warned the
Scotchman.

"What's ailin' you?" West's sulky, insolent eyes turned on the
buffalo-hunter. "A nitchie's a nitchie. Me, I talk straight. But I aim
to be reasonable too. I don't like a woman less because she's got the
devil in her. Bully West knows how to tame 'em so they'll eat outa his
hand. I've took a fancy to yore girl. Tha's right, McRae."

"You may go to the tent, Jessie," the girl's father told her. He was
holding his temper in leash with difficulty.

"Wait a mo." The big trader held out his arm to bar the way. "Don't
push on yore reins, McRae. I'm makin' you a proposition. Me, I'm
lookin' for a wife, an' this here breed girl of yours suits me. Give
her to me an' I'll call the whole thing square. Couldn't say fairer
than that, could I?"

The rugged hunter looked at the big malformed border ruffian with
repulsion. "Man, you gi'e me a scunner," he said. "Have done wi' this
foolishness an' be gone. The lass is no' for you or the like o' you."

"Hell's hinges, you ain't standin' there tellin' me that a Cree breed
is too good for Bully West, are you?" roared the big whiskey-runner.

"A hundred times too good for you. I'd rather see the lass dead in
her coffin than have her life ruined by you," McRae answered in dead
earnest.

"You don't get me right, Mac," answered the smuggler, swallowing his
rage. "I know yore religious notions. We'll stand up before a sky
pilot and have this done right. I aim to treat this girl handsome."

Jessie had turned away at her father's command. Now she turned swiftly
upon the trader, eyes flashing. "I'd rather Father would drive a
knife in my heart than let me be married to a wolfer!" she cried
passionately.

His eyes, untrammeled by decency, narrowed to feast on the brown
immature beauty of her youth.

"Tha' so?" he jeered. "Well, the time's comin' when you'll go down on
yore pretty knees an' beg me not to leave you. It'll be me 'n' you one
o' these days. Make up yore mind to that."

"Never! Never! I'd die first!" she exploded.

Bully West showed his broken, tobacco-stained teeth in a mirthless
grin. "We'll see about that, dearie."

"March, lass. Your mother'll be needin' you," McRae said sharply.

The girl looked at West, then at Morse. From the scorn of that glance
she might have been a queen and they the riffraff of the land. She
walked to the tent. Not once did she look back.

"You've had your answer both from her and me. Let that be an end o'
it," McRae said with finality.

The trader's anger ripped out in a crackle of obscene oaths. They
garnished the questions that he snarled. "Wha's the matter with me?
Why ain't I good enough for yore half-breed litter?"

It was a spark to gunpowder. The oaths, the insult, the whole
degrading episode, combined to drive McRae out of the self-restraint
he had imposed on himself. He took one step forward. With a wide sweep
of the clenched fist he buffeted the smuggler on the ear. Taken by
surprise, West went spinning against the wheel of a cart.

The man's head sank between his shoulders and thrust forward. A sound
that might have come from an infuriated grizzly rumbled from the hairy
throat. His hand reached for a revolver.

Morse leaped like a crouched cat. Both hands caught at West's arm. The
old hunter was scarcely an instant behind him. His fingers closed on
the wrist just above the weapon.

"Hands off," he ordered Morse. "This is no' your quarrel."

The youngster's eyes met the blazing blue ones of the Scot. His
fingers loosened their hold. He stepped back.

The two big men strained. One fought with every ounce of power in him
to twist the arm from him till the cords and sinews strained; the
other to prevent this and to free the wrist. It was a test of sheer
strength.

Each labored, breathing deep, his whole energy centered on cooerdinated
effort of every muscle. They struggled in silence except for the
snarling grunts of the whiskey-runner.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the wrist began to turn from
McRae. Sweat beads gathered on West's face. He fought furiously to
hold his own. But the arm turned inexorably.

The trader groaned. As the cords tightened and shoots of torturing
pain ran up the arm, the huge body of the man writhed. The revolver
fell from his paralyzed fingers. His wobbling knees sagged and
collapsed.

McRae's fingers loosened as the man slid down and caught the bull-like
throat. His grip tightened. West fought savagely to break it. He could
as soon have freed himself from the clamp of a vice.

The Scotchman shook him till he was black in the face, then flung him
reeling away.

"Get oot, ye yellow wolf!" he roared. "Or fegs! I'll break every bone
in your hulkin' body. Oot o' my camp, the pair o' you!"

West, strangling, gasped for air, as does a catfish on the bank. He
leaned on the cart wheel until he was able to stand. The help of Morse
he brushed aside with a sputtered oath. His eyes never left the man
who had beaten him. He snarled hike a whipped wolf. The hunter's
metaphor had been an apt one. The horrible lust to kill was stamped on
his distorted, grinning face, but for the present the will alone was
not enough.

McRae's foot was on the revolver. His son Fergus, a swarthy,
good-looking youngster, had come up and was standing quietly behind
his father. Other hunters were converging toward their chief.

The Indian trader swore a furious oath of vengeance. Morse tried to
lead him away.

"Some day I'll get yore squaw girl right, McRae, an' then God help
her," he threatened.

The bully lurched straddling away.

Morse, a sardonic grin on his lean face, followed him over the hill.




CHAPTER V

MORSE JUMPS UP TROUBLE


"Threw me down, didn't you?" snarled West out of the corner of his
mouth. "Knew all the time she did it an' never let on to me. A hell of
a way to treat a friend."

Tom Morse said nothing. He made mental reservations about the word
friend, but did not care to express them. His somber eyes watched the
big man jerk the spade bit cruelly and rowel the bronco when it went
into the air. It was a pleasure to West to torture an animal when no
human was handy, though he preferred women and even men as victims.

"Whad he mean when he said you could tell me how he'd settled with
her?" he growled.

"He whipped her last night when I took her back to camp."

"Took her back to camp, did you? Why didn't you bring her to me? Who's
in charge of this outfit, anyhow, young fellow, me lad?"

"McRae's too big a man for us to buck. Too influential with the
half-breeds. I figured it was safer to get her right home to him." The
voice of the younger man was mild and conciliatory.

"_You_ figured!" West's profanity polluted the clear, crisp morning
air. "I got to have a run in with you right soon. I can see that.
Think because you're C.N. Morse's nephew, you can slip yore funny
business over on me. I'll show you."

The reddish light glinted for a moment in the eyes of Morse, but he
said nothing. Young though he was, he had a capacity for silence. West
was not sensitive to atmospheres, but he felt the force of this young
man. It was not really in his mind to quarrel with him. For one thing
he would soon be a partner in the firm of C.N. Morse & Company, of
Fort Benton, one of the biggest trading outfits in the country. West
could not afford to break with the Morse interests.

With their diminished cargo the traders pushed north. Their
destination was Whoop-Up, at the junction of the Belly and the St.
Mary's Rivers. This fort had become a rendezvous for all the traders
within hundreds of miles, a point of supply for many small posts
scattered along the rivers of the North.

Twelve oxen were hitched to each three-wagon load. Four teams had left
Fort Benton together, but two of them had turned east toward Wood
Mountain before the party was out of the Assiniboine country. West had
pushed across Lonesome Prairie to the Sweet Grass Hills and from there
over the line into Canada.

Under the best of conditions West was no pleasant traveling companion.
Now he was in a state of continual sullen ill-temper. For the first
time in his life he had been publicly worsted. Practically he had
been kicked out of the buffalo camp, just as though he were a drunken
half-breed and not one whose barroom brawls were sagas of the
frontier.

His vanity was notorious, and it had been flagrantly outraged. He
would never be satisfied until he had found a way to get his revenge.
More than once his simmering anger leaped out at the young fellow who
had been a witness of his defeat. In the main he kept his rage sulkily
repressed. If Tom Morse wanted to tell of the affair with McRae, he
could lessen the big man's prestige. West did not want that.

The outfit crossed the Milk River, skirted Pakoghkee Lake, and swung
westward in the direction of the Porcupine Hills. Barney had been a
trapper in the country and knew where the best grass was to be found.
In many places the feed was scant. It had been cropped close by the
great herds of buffalo roaming the plains. Most of the lakes were
polluted by the bison, so that whenever possible their guide found
camps by running water. The teams moved along the Belly River through
the sand hills.

Tom Morse was a crack shot and did the hunting for the party. The
evening before the train reached Whoop-Up, he walked out from camp to
try for an antelope, since they were short of fresh meat. He climbed a
small butte overlooking the stream. His keen eyes swept the panorama
and came to rest on a sight he had never before seen and would never
forget.

A large herd of buffalo had come down to the river crossing. They were
swimming the stream against a strong current, their bodies low in the
water and so closely packed that he could almost have stepped from one
shaggy head to another. Not fifty yards from him they scrambled ashore
and went lumbering into the hazy dusk. Something had frightened them
and they were on a stampede. Even the river had not stopped their
flight. The earth shook with their tread as they found their stride.

That wild flight into the gathering darkness was symbolic, Morse
fancied. The vast herds were vanishing never to return. Were they
galloping into the Happy Hunting Ground the Indians prayed for? What
would come of their flight? When the plains knew them no more, how
would the Sioux and the Blackfeet and the Piegans live? Would the
Lonesome Lands become even more desolate than they were now?

"I wonder," he murmured aloud.

It is certain that he could have had no vision of the empire soon to
be built out of the desert by himself and men of his stamp. Not even
dimly could he have conceived a picture of the endless wheat-fields
that would stretch across the plains, of the farmers who would pour
into the North by hundreds of thousands, of the cities which would
rise in the sand hills as a monument to man's restless push of
progress and his indomitable hope. No living man's imagination had yet
dreamed of the transformation of this _terra incognita_ into one of
the world's great granaries.

The smoke of the traders' camp-fire was curling up and drifting away
into thin veils of film before the sun showed over the horizon hills.
The bull-teams had taken up their steady forward push while the quails
were still flying to and from their morning water-holes.

"Whoop-Up by noon," Barney predicted.

"Yes, by noon," Tom Morse agreed. "In time for a real sure-enough
dinner with potatoes and beans and green stuff."

"Y' bet yore boots, an' honest to gosh gravy," added Brad Stearns,
a thin and wrinkled little man whose leathery face and bright eyes
defied the encroachment of time. He was bald, except for a fringe of
grayish hair above the temples and a few long locks carefully disposed
over his shiny crown. But nobody could have looked at him and called
him old.

They were to be disappointed.

The teams struck the dusty road that terminated at the fort and
were plodding along it to the crackling accompaniment of the long
bull-whips.

"Soon now," Morse shouted to Stearns.

The little man nodded. "Mebbe they'll have green corn on the cob.
Betcha the price of the dinner they do."

"You've made a bet, dad."

Stearns halted the leaders. "What's that? Listen."

The sound of shots drifted to them punctuated by faint, far yells. The
shots did not come in a fusillade. They were intermittent, died down,
popped out again, yielded to whoops in distant crescendo.

"Injuns," said Stearns. "On the peck, looks like. Crees and Blackfeet,
maybe, but you never can tell. Better throw off the trail and dig in."

West had ridden up. He nodded. "Till we know where we're at. Get busy,
boys."

They drew up the wagons in a semicircle, end to end, the oxen bunched
inside, partially protected by a small cottonwood grove in the rear.

This done, West gave further orders. "We gotta find out what's doin'.
Chances are it's nothin' but a coupla bunches of braves with a cargo
of redeye aboard, Tom, you an' Brad scout out an' take a look-see.
Don't be too venturesome. Soon's you find out what the rumpus is,
hot-foot it back and report, y' understand." The big wolfer snapped
out directions curtly. There was no more competent wagon boss in the
border-land than he.

Stearns and Morse rode toward the fort. They deflected from the road
and followed the river-bank to take advantage of such shrubbery as
grew there. They moved slowly and cautiously, for in the Indian
country one took no unnecessary chances. From the top of a small rise,
shielded by a clump of willows, the two looked down on a field of
battle already decided. Bullets and arrows were still flying, but the
defiant, triumphant war-whoops of a band of painted warriors slowly
moving toward them showed that the day was won and lost. A smaller
group of Indians was retreating toward the swamp on the left-hand side
of the road. Two or three dead braves lay in the grassy swale between
the foes.

"I done guessed it, first crack," Brad said. "Crees and Blackfeet.
They sure enough do mix it whenever they get together. The Crees
ce'tainly got the jump on 'em this time."

It was an old story. From the northern woods the Crees had come
down to trade at the fort. They had met a band of Blackfeet who had
traveled up from the plains for the same purpose. Filled with bad
liquor, the hereditary enemies had as usual adjourned to the ground
outside for a settlement while the traders at the fort had locked the
gates and watched the battle from the loopholes of the stockade.

"Reckon we better blow back to camp," suggested the old plainsman.
"Mr. Cree may be feelin' his oats heap much. White man look all same
Blackfeet to him like as not."

"Look." Morse pointed to a dip in the swale.

An Indian was limping through the brush, taking advantage of such
cover as he could find. He was wounded. His leg dragged and he moved
with difficulty.

"He'll be a good Injun mighty soon," Stearns said, rubbing his bald
head as it shone in the sun. "Not a chance in the world for him.
They'll git him soon as they reach the coulee. See. They're stoppin'
to collect that other fellow's scalp."

At a glance Morse had seen the situation. This was none of his affair.
It was tacitly understood that the traders should not interfere in
the intertribal quarrels of the natives. But old Brad's words, "good
Injun," had carried him back to a picture of a brown, slim girl
flashing indignation because Americans treated her race as though only
dead Indians were good ones. He could never tell afterward what was
the rational spring of his impulse.

At the touch of the rein laid flat against its neck, the cow-pony he
rode laid back its ears, turned like a streak of light, and leaped to
a hand gallop. It swept down the slope and along the draw, gathering
speed with every jump.

The rider let out a "Hi-yi-yi" to attract the attention of the wounded
brave. Simultaneously the limping fugitive and the Crees caught sight
of the flying horseman who had obtruded himself into the fire zone.

An arrow whistled past Morse. He saw a bullet throw up a spurt of dirt
beneath the belly of his horse. The Crees were close to their quarry.
They closed in with a run. Tom knew it would be a near thing. He
slackened speed slightly and freed a foot from the stirrup, stiffening
it to carry weight.

The wounded Indian crouched, began to run parallel with the horse, and
leaped at exactly the right instant. His hand caught the sleeve of his
rescuer at the same time that the flat of his foot dropped upon the
white man's boot. A moment, and his leg had swung across the rump of
the pony and he had settled to the animal's back.

So close was it that a running Cree snatched at the bronco's tail and
was jerked from his feet before he could release his hold.

As the cow-pony went plunging up the slope, Morse saw Brad Stearns
silhouetted against the sky-line at the summit. His hat was gone and
his bald head was shining in the sun. He was pumping bullets from his
rifle at the Crees surging up the hill after his companion.

Stearns swung his horse and jumped it to a lope. Side by side with
Morse he went over the brow in a shower of arrows and slugs.

"Holy mackerel, boy! What's eatin' you?" he yelled. "Ain't you got any
sense a-tall? Don't you know better 'n to jump up trouble thataway?"

"We're all right now," the younger man said. "They can't catch us."

The Crees were on foot and would be out of range by the time they
reached the hilltop.

"Hmp! They'll come to our camp an' raise Cain. Why not? What business
we got monkeyin' with their scalping sociables? It ain't neighborly."

"West won't like it," admitted Morse.

"He'll throw a cat fit. What do you aim to do with yore friend
Mighty-Nigh-Lose-His-Scalp? If I know Bully--and you can bet a silver
fox fur ag'in' a yard o' tobacco that I do--he won't give no glad hand
to him. Not none."

Morse did not know what he meant to do with him. He had let an impulse
carry him to quixotic action. Already he was half-sorry for it, but he
was obstinate enough to go through now he had started.

When he realized the situation, Bully West exploded in language
sulphurous. He announced his determination to turn the wounded man
over to the Crees as soon as they arrived.

"No," said Morse quietly.

"No what?"

"I won't stand for that. They'd murder him."

"That any o' my business--or yours?"

"I'm makin' it mine."

The eyes of the two men crossed, as rapiers do, feeling out the
strength back of them. The wounded Indian, tall and slender, stood
straight as an arrow, his gaze now on one, now on the other. His face
was immobile and expressionless. It betrayed no sign of the emotions
within.

"Show yore cards, Morse," said West. "What's yore play? I'm goin' to
tell the Crees to take him if they want him. You'll go it alone if you
go to foggin' with a six-shooter."

The young man turned to the Indian he had rescued. He waved a hand
toward the horse from which they had just dismounted. "Up!" he
ordered.

The Indian youth caught the point instantly. Without using the
stirrups he vaulted to the saddle, light as a mountain lion. His bare
heels dug into the sides of the animal, which was off as though shot
out of a gun.

Horse and rider skirted the cottonwoods and disappeared in a
depression beyond.




CHAPTER VI

"SOMETHING ABOUT THESE GUYS"


West glared at Morse, his heavy chin outthrust, his bowed legs wide
apart. "You've done run on the rope long enough with me, young feller.
Here's where you take a fall hard."

The younger man said nothing. He watched, warily. Was it to be a
gun-play? Or did the big bully mean to manhandle him? Probably the
latter. West was vain of his reputation as a two-fisted fighter.

"I'm gonna beat you up, then turn you over to the Crees," the
infuriated man announced.

"You can't do that, West. He's a white man same as you," protested
Stearns.

"This yore put-in, Brad?" West, beside himself with rage, swung on the
little man and straddled forward a step or two threateningly.

"You done said it," answered the old-timer, falling back. "An' don't
you come closter. I'm liable to get scared, an' you'd ought not to
forget I'm as big as you behind a six-shooter."

"Here they come--like a swarm o' bees!" yelled Barney.

The traders forgot, for the moment, their quarrel in the need of
common action. West snatched up a rifle and dropped a bullet in front
of the nearest Indian. The warning brought the Crees up short. They
held a long consultation and one of them came forward making the peace
sign.

In pigeon English he expressed their demands.

"He's gone--lit right out--stole one of our broncs. You can search the
camp if you've a mind to," West replied.

The envoy reported. There was another long pow-wow.

Brad, chewing tobacco complacently behind a wagon wheel, commented
aloud. "Can't make up their minds whether to come on an' massacree us
or not. They got a right healthy fear of our guns. Don't blame 'em a
bit."

Some of the Crees were armed with bows and arrows, others with rifles.
But the trade guns sold the Indians of the Northern tribes were of the
poorest quality.[4]

[Footnote 4: These flintlock muskets were inaccurate. They would not
carry far. Their owners were in constant danger of having fingers or a
hand blown off in explosions. The price paid for these cheap firearms
was based on the length of them. The butt was put on the floor and
the gun held upright. Skins laid flat were piled beside it till they
reached the muzzle. The trader exchanged the rifle for the furs.
(W.M.R.)]

The whites, to the contrary, were armed with the latest repeating
Winchesters. In a fight with them the natives were at a terrible
disadvantage.

The Crees realized this. A delegation of two came forward to search
the camp. West pointed out the tracks of the horse upon which their
tribal enemy had ridden away.

They grunted, "Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!"

Overbearing though he was, West was an embryonic diplomat. He filled
a water-bucket with whiskey and handed it, with a tin cup, to the
wrinkled old brave nearest him.

"For our friends the Crees," he said. "Tell your chief my young
man didn't understand. He thought he was rescuing a Cree from the
Blackfeet."

"Ugh! Ugh!" The Indians shuffled away with their booty.

There was more talk, but the guttural protests died away before the
temptation of the liquor. The braves drank, flung a few shots in
bravado toward the wagons, and presently took themselves off.

The traders did not renew their quarrel. West's reasons for not
antagonizing the Morse family were still powerful as ever. He subdued
his desire to punish the young man and sullenly gave orders to hitch
up the teams.

It was mid-afternoon when the oxen jogged into Whoop-Up. The post was
a stockade fort, built in a square about two hundred yards long, of
cottonwood logs dovetailed together. The buildings on each side of
the plaza faced inward. Loopholes had been cut in the bastions as a
protection against Indians.

In the big stores was a large supply of blankets, beads, provisions,
rifles, and clothing. The adjacent rooms were half-empty now, but in
the spring they would be packed to the eaves with thousands of buffalo
robes and furs brought in from outlying settlements by hunters. Later
these would be hauled to Fort Benton and from there sent down the
Missouri to St. Louis and other points.

Morse, looking round, missed a familiar feature.

"Where's the liquor?" he asked.

"S-sh!" warned the clerk with whom he was talking. "Haven't you heard?
There's a bunch of police come into the country from Winnipeg. The
lid's on tight." His far eye drooped to the cheek in a wise wink. "If
you've brought in whiskey, you'd better get it out of the fort and
bury it."

"That's up to West. I wouldn't advise any police to monkey with a
cargo of his."

"You don't say." The clerk's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Well, I'll
just make a li'l' bet with you. If the North-West Mounted start to
arrest Bully West or to empty his liquor-kegs, they'll go right
through with the job. They're go-getters, these red-coats are."

"Red-coats? Not soldiers, are they?"

"Well, they are and they ain't. They're drilled an' in companies. But
they can arrest any one they've a mind to, and their officers can try
and sentence folks. They don't play no favorites either. Soon as they
hear of this mix-up between the Crees and the Blackfeet they'll be
right over askin' whyfors, and if they find who gave 'em the booze
some one will be up to the neck in trouble and squawkin' for help."

West had been talking in whispers with Reddy Madden, the owner of the
place. He stepped to the door.

"Don't onhook, Brad. We're travelin' some more first," he called to
Stearns.

The oxen plodded out of the stockade and swung to the left. A guide
rode beside West and Morse. He was Harvey Gosse, a whiskey-runner
known to both of them. The man was a long, loose-limbed fellow with a
shrewd eye and the full, drooping lower lip of irresolution. It had
been a year since either of the Fort Benton men had been in the
country. Gosse told them of the change that was taking place in it.

"Business ain't what it was, an' that ain't but half of it," the lank
rider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. These
here red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed,
whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle o' yore
neck right away."

"How many of these--what is it you call 'em, Mounted Police?--well,
how many of 'em are there in the country?" asked West.

"Not so many. I reckon a hundred or so, far as I've heard tell."

West snorted scornfully. "And you're lettin' this handful of
tenderfeet buffalo you! Hell's hinges! Ain't none of you got any
guts?"

Gosse dragged slowly a brown hand across an unshaven chin. "I reckon
you wouldn't call 'em tenderfeet if you met up with 'em, Bully.
There's something about these guys--I dunno what it is exactly--but
there's sure something that tells a fellow not to prod 'em overly
much."

"Quick on the shoot?" the big trader wanted to know.

"No, it ain't that. They don't hardly ever draw a gun. They jest walk
in kinda quiet an' easy, an' tell you it'll be thisaway. And tha's the
way it is every crack outa the box."

"Hmp!" West exuded boastful incredulity. "I reckon they haven't bumped
into any one man-size yet."

The lank whiskey-runner guided the train, by winding draws, into the
hills back of the post. Above a small gulch, at the head of it, the
teams were stopped and unloaded. The barrels were rolled downhill into
the underbrush where they lay cached out of sight. From here they
would be distributed as needed.

"You boys'll take turn an' turn about watching till I've sold the
cargo," West announced. "Arrange that among yoreselves. Tom, I'll let
you fix up how you'll spell each other. Only thing is, one of you has
to be here all the time, y' understand."

Morse took the first watch and was followed by Stearns, who in turn
gave place to Barney. The days grew to a week. Sometimes West appeared
with a buyer in a cart or leading a pack-horse. Then the cached
fire-water would be diminished by a keg or two.

It was a lazy, sleepy life. There was no need for a close guard.
Nobody knew where the whiskey was except themselves and a few
tight-mouthed traders. Morse discovered in himself an inordinate
capacity for sleep. He would throw himself down on the warm, sundried
grass and fall into a doze almost instantly. When the rays of the sun
grew too hot, it was easy to roll over into the shade of the draw.
He could lie for hours on his back after he wakened and watch
cloud-skeins elongate and float away, thinking of nothing or letting
thoughts happen in sheer idle content.

He had never had a girl, to use the word current among his fellows.
His scheme of life would, he supposed, include women by and by, but
hitherto he had dwelt in a man's world, in a universe of space and
sunshine and blowing wind, under primitive conditions that made for
tough muscles and a clean mind trained to meet frontier emergencies.
But now, to his disgust, he found slipping into his reveries pictures
of a slim, dark girl, arrow-straight, with eyes that held for him only
scorn and loathing. The odd thing about it was that when his brain was
busy with her a strange exultant excitement tingled through his veins.

One day a queer thing happened. He had never heard of psychic
phenomena or telepathy, but he opened his eyes from a day-dream of her
to see Jessie McRae looking down at him.

She was on an Indian cayuse, round-bellied and rough. Very erect she
sat, and on her face was the exact expression of scornful hatred he
had seen in his vision of her.

He jumped to his feet. "You--here!"

A hot color flooded her face with anger to the roots of the hair.
Without a word, without another glance at him, she laid the bridle
rein to the pony's neck and swung away.

Unprotesting, he let her go. The situation had jumped at him too
unexpectedly for him to know how to meet it. He stood, motionless, the
red light in his eyes burning like distant camp-fires in the night.
For the first time in his life he had been given the cut direct by a
woman.

Yet she wasn't a woman after all. She was a maid, with that passionate
sense of tragedy which comes only to the very young.

It was in his mind to slap a saddle on his bronco and ride after her.
But why? Could he by sheer dominance of will change her opinion of
him? She had grounded it on good and sufficient reasons. He was
associated in her mind with the greatest humiliation of her life, with
the stinging lash that had cut into her young pride and her buoyant
courage as cruelly as it had into her smooth, satiny flesh. Was it
likely she would listen to any regrets, any explanations? Her hatred
of him was not a matter for argument. It was burnt into her soul as
with a red-hot brand. He could not talk away what he had done or the
thing that he was.

She had come upon him by chance while he was asleep. He guessed that
Angus McRae's party had reached Whoop-Up and had stopped to buy
supplies and perhaps to sell hides and pemmican. The girl had probably
ridden out from the stockade to the open prairie because she loved to
ride. The rest needed no conjecture. In that lone land of vast spaces
travelers always exchanged greetings. She had discovered him lying
in the grass. He might be sick or wounded or dead. The custom of the
country would bring her straight across the swales toward him to find
out whether he needed help.

Then she had seen who he was--and had ridden away.

A sardonic smile of self-mockery stamped for a moment on his brown
boyish face the weariness of the years.




CHAPTER VII

THE MAN IN THE SCARLET JACKET


Morse ambled out at a road gait to take his turn at guard duty. He was
following the principle that the longest way round is the shortest
road to a given place. The reason for this was to ward off any
suspicion that might have arisen if the watchers had always come and
gone by the same trail. Therefore they started for any point of the
compass, swung round in a wide detour, and in course of time arrived
at the cache.

There wasn't any hurry anyhow. Each day had twenty-four hours, and a
fellow lived just as long if he didn't break his neck galloping along
with his tail up like a hill steer on a stampede.

To-day Morse dropped in toward the cache from due west. His eyes
were open, even if the warmth of the midday sun did make him sleepy.
Something he saw made him slip from the saddle, lead his horse into a
draw, and move forward very carefully through the bunch grass.

What he had seen was a man crouched behind some brush, looking down
into the little gorge where the whiskey cache was--a man in leather
boots, tight riding-breeches, scarlet jacket, and jaunty forage cap.
It needed no second glance to tell Tom Morse that the police had run
down the place where they had hidden their cargo.

From out of the little canon a man appeared. He was carrying a keg of
whiskey. The man was Barney. West had no doubt sent word to him that
he would shortly bring a buyer with him to the rendezvous.

The man in the scarlet jacket rose and stepped out into the open. He
was a few feet from Barney. In his belt there was a revolver, but he
did not draw it.

Barney stopped and stared at him, his mouth open, eyes bulging. "Where
in Heligoland you come from?" he asked.

"From Sarnia, Ontario," the red-coat answered. "Glad to meet you,
friend. I've been looking for you several days."

"For me!" said Barney blankly.

"For you--and for that keg of forty-rod you're carrying. No, don't
drop it. We can talk more comfortably while both your hands are busy."
The constable stepped forward and picked from the ground a rifle.
"I've been lying in the brush two hours waiting for you to get
separated from this. Didn't want you making any mistakes in your
excitement."

"Mistakes!" repeated Barney.

"Yes. You're under arrest, you know, for whiskey-smuggling."

"You're one of these here border police." Barney used the rising
inflection in making his statement.

"Constable Winthrop Beresford, North-West Mounted, at your service,"
replied the officer jauntily. He was a trim, well-set-up youth, quick
of step and crisp of speech.

"What you gonna do with me?"

"Take you to Fort Macleod."

It was perhaps because his eyes were set at not quite the right angles
and because they were so small and wolfish that Barney usually aroused
distrust. He suggested now, with an ingratiating whine in his voice,
that he would like to see a man at Whoop-Up first.

"Jes' a li'l' matter of business," he added by way of explanation.

The constable guessed at his business. The man wanted to let his boss
know what had taken place and to give him a chance to rescue him if he
would. Beresford's duty was to find out who was back of this liquor
running. It would be worth while knowing what man Barney wanted to
talk with. He could afford to take a chance on the rescue.

"Righto," he agreed. "You may put that barrel down now."

Barney laid it down, end up. With one sharp drive of the rifle butt
the officer broke in the top of the keg, He kicked the barrel over
with his foot.

This was the moment Morse chose for putting in an appearance.

"Hello! What's doin'?" he asked casually.

Beresford, cool and quiet, looked straight at him. "I'll ask _you_
that."

"Kinda expensive to irrigate the prairie that way, ain't it?"

"Doesn't cost me anything. How about you?"

Morse laughed at the question fired back at him so promptly. This
young man was very much on the job. "Not a bean," the Montanan said.

"Good. Then you'll enjoy the little show I'm putting on--five thousand
dollars' worth of liquor spilt all at one time."

"Holy Moses! Where is this blind tiger you're raidin'?"

"Down in the gully. Lucky you happened along just by chance. You'll be
able to carry the good news to Whoop-Up and adjacent points."

"You're not really aimin' to spill all that whiskey."

"That's my intention. Any objections?" The scarlet-coated officer
spoke softly, without any edge to his voice. But Tom began to
understand why the clerk at the trading-post had called the Mounted
Police go-getters. This smooth-shaven lad, so easy and carefree
of manner, had a gleam in his eye that meant business. His very
gentleness was ominous.

Tom Morse reflected swiftly. His uncle's firm had taken a chance of
this very finale when it had sent a convoy of liquor into forbidden
territory. Better to lose the stock than to be barred by the Canadian
Government from trading with the Indians at all. This officer was not
one to be bribed or bullied. He would go through with the thing he had
started.

"Why, no! How could I have any objections?" Morse said.

He shot a swift, slant look at Barney, a look that told the Irishman
to say nothing and know nothing, and that he would be protected
against the law.

"Glad you haven't," Constable Beresford replied cheerfully--so very
cheerfully in fact that Morse suspected he would not have been much
daunted if objections had been mentioned. "Perhaps you'll help me with
my little job, then."

The trader grinned. He might as well go the limit with the bluff he
was playing. "Sure. I'll help you make a fourth o' July outa the kegs.
Lead me to 'em."

"You don't know where they are, of course?"

"In the gully, you said," Morse replied innocently

"So I did. Righto. Down you go, then." The constable turned to Barney.
"You next, friend."

A well-defined trail led down the steep side of the gulch. It ended in
a thick growth of willow saplings. Underneath the roof of this foliage
were more than a score of whiskey-casks.

After ten minutes with the rifle butt there was nothing to show for
the cache but broken barrels and a trough of wet sand where the liquor
had run down the bed of the dry gully.

It was time, Morse thought, to play his own small part in the
entertainment.

"After you, gentlemen," Beresford said, stepping aside to let them
take the trail up.

Morse too moved back to let Barney pass. The eyes of the two men met
for a fraction of a second. Tom's lips framed silently one word. In
that time a message was given and received.

The young man followed Barney, the constable at his heels. Morse
stumbled, slipped to all fours, and slid back. He flung out his arms
to steady himself and careened back against the constable. His flying
hands caught at the scarlet coat. His bent head and shoulders thrust
Beresford back and down.

Barney started to run.

The officer struggled to hold his footing against the awkward incubus,
to throw the man off so that he could pursue Barney. His efforts were
vain. Morse, evidently trying to regain his equilibrium, plunged
wildly at him and sent him ploughing into the willows. The Montanan
landed heavily on top, pinned him down, and smothered him.

The scarlet coat was a center of barrel hoops, bushes, staves, and
wildly jerking arms and legs.

Morse made heroic efforts to untangle himself from the clutter. Once
or twice he extricated himself almost, only to lose his balance on the
slippery bushes and come skating down again on the officer just as he
was trying to rise.

It was a scene for a moving-picture comedy, if the screen had been a
feature of that day.

When at last the two men emerged from the gulch, Barney was nowhere to
be seen. With him had vanished the mount of Beresford.

The constable laughed nonchalantly. He had just lost a prisoner, which
was against the unwritten law of the Force, but he had gained another
in his place. It would not be long till he had Barney too.

"Pretty work," he said appreciatively. "You couldn't have done it
better if you'd done it on purpose, could you?"

"Done what?" asked Morse, with bland naivete.

"Made a pillow and a bed of me, skated on me, bowled me over like a
tenpin."

"I ce'tainly was awkward. Couldn't get my footin' at all, seemed like.
Why, where's Barney?" Apparently the trader had just made a discovery.

"Ask of the winds, 'Oh, where?'" Beresford dusted off his coat, his
trousers, and his cap. When he had removed the evidence of the battle
of the gulch, he set his cap at the proper angle and cocked an
inquiring eye at the other. "I suppose you know you're under arrest."

"Why, no! Am I? What for? Which of the statues, laws, and ordinances
of Queen Vic have I been bustin' without knowin' of them?"

"For aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner."

"Did I do all that? And when did I do it?"

"While you were doing that war-dance on what was left of my manhandled
geography."

"Can you arrest a fellow for slippin'?"

"Depends on how badly he slips. I'm going to take a chance on
arresting you, anyhow."

"Gonna take away my six-shooter and handcuff me?"

"I'll take your revolver. If necessary, I'll put on the cuffs."

Morse looked at him, not without admiration. The man in the scarlet
jacket wasted nothing. There was about him no superfluity of build,
of gesture, of voice. Beneath the close-fitting uniform the muscles
rippled and played when he moved. His shoulders and arms were those
of a college oarsman. Lean-flanked and clean-limbed, he was in the
hey-day of a splendid youth. It showed in the steady eyes set wide in
the tanned face, in the carriage of the close-cropped, curly head, in
the spring of the step. The Montanan recognized in him a kinship of
dynamic force.

"Just what would I be doing?" the whiskey-runner asked, smiling.

Beresford met his smile. "I fancy I'll find that out pretty soon. Your
revolver, please." He held out his hand, palm up.

"Let's get this straight. We're man to man. What'll you do if I find
I've got no time to go to Fort Macleod with you?"

"Take you with me."

"Dead or alive?"

"No, alive."

"And if I won't go?" asked Morse.

"Oh, you'll go." The officer's bearing radiated a quiet, imperturbable
confidence. His hand was still extended, "_If_ you please."

"No hurry. Do you know what you're up against? When I draw this gun I
can put a bullet through your head and ride away?"

"Yes."

"Unless, of course, you plug me first."

"Can't do that. Against the regulations."

"Much obliged for that information. You've got only a dead man's
chance then--if I show fight."

"Better not. Game hardly worth the candle. My pals would run you
down," the constable advised coolly.

"You still intend to arrest me?"

"Oh, yes."

As Morse looked at him, patient as an animal of prey, steady,
fearless, an undramatic Anglo-Saxon who meant to go through with the
day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the
North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he
could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable;
and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to
kill or be killed. It came to him that he was up against a new order
which would wipe Bully West and his kind from the land.

He handed his revolver to Beresford. "I'll ride with you."

"Good. Have to borrow your horse till we reach Whoop-Up. You won't
mind walking?"

"Not at all. Some folks think that's what legs were made for,"
answered Morse, grinning.

As he strode across the prairie beside the horse, Morse was still
puzzling over the situation. He perceived that the strength of the
officer's position was wholly a moral one. A lawbreaker was confronted
with an ugly alternative. The only way to escape arrest was to commit
murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the
great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was
sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of
fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because
he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a
silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier.

Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were
unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. Some of them had been put out of
business. Their property had been destroyed and confiscated. Fines
had been imposed on them. The current whisper was that the
whiskey-smugglers would retaliate against the constables in person
whenever there was a chance to do so with impunity. Some day a
debonair wearer of the scarlet coat would ride out gayly from one
of the forts and a riderless horse would return at dusk. There were
outlaws who would ask nothing better than a chance to dry-gulch one of
these inquisitive riders of the plains.

But Beresford rode into the stockade and swung from the saddle with
smiling confidence. He nodded here and there casually to dark, sullen
men who watched his movements with implacably hostile eyes.

His words were addressed to Reddy Madden. "Can you let me have a horse
for a few days and charge it to the Force? I've lost mine."

Some one sniggered offensively. Barney had evidently reached Whoop-Up
and was in hiding.

"Your horse came in a while ago, constable," Madden said civilly.
"It's in the corral back of the store."

"Did it come in without a rider?" Beresford asked.

The question was unnecessary. The horse would have gone to Fort
Macleod and not have come to Whoop-Up unless a rider had guided it
here. But sometimes one found out things from unwilling witnesses if
one asked questions.

"Didn't notice. I was in the store myself."

"Thought perhaps you hadn't noticed," the officer said. "None of you
other gentlemen noticed either, did you?"

The "other gentlemen" held a dogged, sulky silence. A girl cantered
through the gate of the stockade and up to the store. At sight of
Morse her eyes passed swiftly to Beresford. His answered smilingly
what she had asked. It was all over in a flash, but it told the man
from Montana who the informer was that had betrayed to the police the
place of the whiskey cache.

To the best of her limited chance, Jessie McRae was paying an
installment on the debt she owed Bully West and Tom Morse.




CHAPTER VIII

AT SWEET WATER CREEK


Before a fire of buffalo chips Constable Beresford and his prisoner
smoked the pipe of peace. Morse sat on his heels, legs crossed, after
the manner of the camper. The officer lounged at full length, an elbow
dug into the sand as a support for his head. The Montanan was
on parole, so that for the moment at least their relations were
forgotten.

"After the buffalo--what?" asked the American. "The end of the
Indian--is that what it means? And desolation on the plains. Nobody
left but the Hudson's Bay Company trappers, d'you reckon?"

The Canadian answered in one word. "Cattle."

"Some, maybe," Morse assented. "But, holy Moses, think of the millions
it would take to stock this country."

"Bet you the country's stocked inside of five years of the time the
buffalo are cleared out. Look at what the big Texas drives are doing
in Colorado and Wyoming and Montana. Get over the idea that this land
up here is a desert. That's a fool notion our school geographies are
responsible for. Great American Desert? Great American fiddlesticks!
It's a man's country, if you like; but I've yet to see the beat of
it."

Morse had ceased to pay attention. His head was tilted, and he was
listening.

"Some one ridin' this way," he said presently. "Hear the hoofs click
on the shale. Who is it? I wonder. An' what do they want? When folks'
intentions hasn't been declared it's a good notion to hold a hand you
can raise on."

Without haste and without delay Beresford got to his feet. "We'll step
back into the shadow," he announced.

"Looks reasonable to me," agreed the smuggler.

They waited in the semi-darkness back of the camp-fire.

Some one shouted. "Hello, the camp!" At the sound of that clear,
bell-like voice Morse lifted his head to listen better.

The constable answered the call.

Two riders came into the light. One was a girl, the other a slim,
straight young Indian in deerskin shirt and trousers. The girl swung
from the saddle and came forward to the camp-fire. The companion of
her ride shadowed her.

Beresford and his prisoner advanced from the darkness.

"Bully West's after you. He's sworn to kill you," the girl called to
the constable.

"How do you know?"

"Onistah heard him." She indicated with a wave of her hand the
lithe-limbed youth beside her. "Onistah was passing the stable--behind
it, back of the corral. This West was gathering a mob to follow
you--said he was going to hang you for destroying his whiskey."

"He is, eh?" Beresford's salient jaw set. His light blue eyes gleamed
hard and chill. He would see about that.

"They'll be here soon. This West was sure you'd camp here at Sweet
Water Creek, close to the ford." A note of excitement pulsed in the
girl's voice. "We heard 'em once behind us on the road. You'd better
hurry."

The constable swung toward the Montanan. His eyes bored into those of
the prisoner. Would this man keep his parole or not? He would find out
pretty soon.

"Saddle up, Morse. I'll pack my kit. We'll hit the trail."

"Listen." Jessie stood a moment, head lifted. "What's that?"

Onistah moved a step forward, so that for a moment the firelight
flickered over the copper-colored face. Tom Morse made a discovery.
This man was the Blackfoot he had rescued from the Crees.

"Horses," the Indian said, and held up the fingers of both hands to
indicate the numbers. "Coming up creek. Here soon."

"We'll move back to the big rocks and I'll make a stand there,"
the officer told the whiskey-runner. "Slap the saddles on without
cinching. We've got no time to lose." His voice lost its curtness as
he turned to the girl. "Miss McRae, I'll not forget this. Very likely
you've saved my life. Now you and Onistah had better slip away
quietly. You mustn't be seen here."

"Why mustn't I?" she asked quickly. "I don't care who sees me."

She looked at Morse as she spoke, head up, with that little touch of
scornful defiance in the quivering nostrils that seemed to express a
spirit free and unafraid. The sense of superiority is generally not a
lovely manifestation in any human being, but there are moments when it
tells of something fine, a disdain of actions low and mean.

Morse strode away to the place where the horses were picketed. He
could hear voices farther down the creek, caught once a snatch of
words.

"... must be somewheres near, I tell you."

Noiselessly he slipped on the saddles, pulled the picket-pins, and
moved toward the big rocks.

The place was a landmark. The erosion of the ages had played strange
tricks with the sandstone. The rocks rose like huge red toadstools or
like prehistoric animals of vast size. One of them was known as the
Three Bears, another as the Elephant.

Among these boulders Morse found the party he had just left. The
officer was still trying to persuade Jessie McRae to attempt escape.
She refused, stubbornly.

"There are three of us here. Onistah is a good shot. So am I. For that
matter, if anybody is going to escape, it had better be you," she
said.

"Too late now," Morse said. "See, they've found the camp-fire."

Nine or ten riders had come out of the darkness and were approaching
the camping-ground. West was in the lead. Morse recognized Barney
and Brad Stearns. Two of the others were half-breeds, one an Indian
trailer of the Piegan tribe.

"He must 'a' heard us comin' and pulled out," Barney said.

"Then he's back in the red rocks," boomed West triumphantly.

"Soon find out." Brad Stearns turned the head of his horse toward the
rocks and shouted. "Hello, Tom! You there?"

No answer came from the rocks.

"Don't prove a thing," West broke out impatiently. "This fellow's got
Tom buffaloed. Didn't he make him smash the barrels? Didn't he take
away his six-gun from him and bring him along like he hadn't any mind
of his own? Tom's yellow. Got a streak a foot wide."

"Nothin' of the kind," denied Stearns, indignation in his voice. "I
done brought up that boy by hand--learned him all he knows about
ridin' and ropin'. He'll do to take along."

"Hmp! He always fooled you, Brad. Different here. I'm aimin' to give
him the wallopin' of his life when I meet up with him. And that'll be
soon, if he's up there in the rocks. I'm goin' a-shootin'." Bully West
drew his revolver and rode forward.

The constable had disposed of his forces so that behind the cover of
the sandstone boulders they commanded the approach. He had tried to
persuade Jessie that this was not her fight, but a question from her
had silenced him.

"If that Bully West finds me here, after he's killed you, d' you think
I can get him to let me go because it wasn't my fight?"

She had asked it with flashing eyes, in which for an instant he had
seen the savagery of fear leap out. Beresford was troubled. The girl
was right enough. If West went the length of murder, he would be an
outlaw. Sleeping Dawn would not be safe with him after she had ridden
out to warn his enemy that he was coming. The fellow was a primeval
brute. His reputation had run over the whole border country of
Rupert's Land.

Now he appealed to Morse. "If they get me, will you try to save Miss
McRae? This fellow West is a devil, I hear."

The officer caught a gleam of hot red eyes. "I'll 'tend to that. We'll
mix first, him 'n' me. Question now is, do I get a gun?"

"What for?"

"Didn't you hear him make his brags about what he was gonna do to me?
If there's shootin' I'm in on it, ain't I?"

"No. You're a prisoner. I can't arm you unless your life is in
danger."

West pulled up his horse about sixty yards from the rocks. He shouted
a profane order. The purport of it was that Beresford had better come
out with his hands up if he didn't want to be dragged out by a rope
around his neck. The man's speech crackled with oaths and obscenity.

The constable stepped into the open a few yards. "What do you want?"
he asked.

"You." The whiskey-runner screamed it in a sudden gust of passion.
"Think you can make a fool of Bully West? Think you can bust up our
cargo an' get away with it? I'll show you where you head in at."

"Don't make any mistake, West," advised the officer, his voice cold as
the splash of ice-water. "Three of us are here, all with rifles, all
dead shots. If you attack us, some of you are going to get killed."

"Tha's a lie. You're alone--except for Tom Morse, an' he ain't fool
enough to fight to go to jail. I've got you where I want you." West
swung from the saddle and came straddling forward. In the uncertain
light he looked more like some misbegotten ogre than a human being.

"That's far enough," warned Beresford, not a trace of excitement in
manner or speech. His hands hung by his sides. He gave no sign of
knowing that he had a revolver strapped to his hip ready for action.

The liquor smuggler stopped to pour out abuse. He was working himself
up to a passion that would justify murder. The weapon in his hand
swept wildly back and forth. Presently it would focus down to a deadly
concentration in which all motion would cease.

The torrent of vilification died on the man's lips. He stared past the
constable with bulging eyes. From the rocks three figures had come.
Two of them carried rifles. All three of them he recognized. His
astonishment paralyzed the scurrilous tongue. What was McRae's girl
doing at the camp of the officer?

It was characteristic of him that he suspected the worst of her.
Either Tom Morse or this red-coat had beaten him to his prey. Jealousy
and outraged vanity flared up in him so that discretion vanished.

The barrel of his revolver came down and began to spit flame.

Beresford gave orders. "Back to the rocks." He retreated, backward,
firing as he moved.

The companions of West surged forward. Shots, shouts, the shifting
blur of moving figures, filled the night. Under cover of the darkness
the defenders reached again the big rocks.

The constable counted noses. "Everybody all right?" he asked. Then,
abruptly, he snapped out: "Who was responsible for that crazy business
of you coming out into the open?"

"Me," said the girl. "I wanted that West to know you weren't alone."

"Didn't you know better than to let her do it?" the officer demanded
of Morse.

"He couldn't help it. He tried to keep me back. What right has he to
interfere with me?" she wanted to know, stiffening.

"You'll do as I say now," the constable said crisply. "Get back of
that rock there, Miss McRae, and stay there. Don't move from cover
unless I tell you to."

Her dark, stormy eyes challenged his, but she moved sullenly to obey.
Rebel though she was, the code of the frontier claimed and held her
respect. She had learned of life that there were times when her will
must be subordinated for the general good.




CHAPTER IX

TOM MAKES A COLLECTION


The attackers drew back and gathered together for consultation. West's
anger had stirred their own smoldering resentment at the police, had
dominated them, and had brought them on a journey of vengeance. But
they had not come out with any intention of storming a defended
fortress. The enthusiasm of the small mob ebbed.

"I reckon we done bit off more'n we can chaw," Harvey Gosse murmured,
rubbing his bristly chin. "I ain't what you might call noways anxious
to have them fellows spill lead into me."

"Ten of us here. One man, an Injun, an' a breed girl over there. You
lookin' for better odds, Harv?" jeered the leader of the party.

"I never heard that a feller was any less dead because an Injun or a
girl shot him," the lank smuggler retorted.

"Be reasonable, Bully," urged Barney with his ingratiating whine. "We
come out to fix the red-coat. We figured he was alone except for Tom,
an' o' course Tom's with us. But this here's a different proposition.
Too many witnesses ag'in' us. I reckon you ain't tellin' us it's safe
to shoot up Angus McRae's daughter even if she is a metis."

"Forget her," the big whiskey-runner snarled. "She won't be a witness
against us."

"Why won't she?"

"Hell's hinges! Do I have to tell you all my plans? I'm sayin' she
won't. That goes." He flung out a gesture of scarcely restrained rage.
He was not one who could reason away opposition with any patience. It
was his temperament to override it.

Brad Stearns rubbed his bald head. He always did when he was working
out a mental problem. West's declaration could mean only one of two
things. Either the girl would not be alive to give witness or she
would be silent because she had thrown in her lot with the big trader.

The old-timer knew West's vanity and his weakness for women. From Tom
Morse he had heard of his offer to McRae for the girl. Now he had no
doubt what the man intended.

But what of her? What of the girl he had seen at her father's camp,
the heart's desire of the rugged old Scotchman? In the lightness
of her step, in the lift of her head, in speech and gesture and
expression of face, she was of the white race, an inheritor of its
civilization and of its traditions. Only her dusky color and a certain
wild shyness seemed born of the native blood in her. She was proud,
passionate, high-spirited. Would she tamely accept Bully West for her
master and go to his tent as his squaw? Brad didn't believe it. She
would fight--fight desperately, with barbaric savagery.

Her fight would avail her nothing. If driven to it, West would take
her with him into the fastnesses of the Lone Lands. They would
disappear from the sight of men for months. He would travel swiftly
with her to the great river. Every sweep of his canoe paddle would
carry them deeper into that virgin North where they could live on what
his rifle and rod won for the pot. A little salt, pemmican, and flour
would be all the supplies he needed to take with them.

Brad had no intention of being a cat's-paw for him. The older man had
come along to save Tom Morse from prison and for no other reason. He
did not intend to be swept into indiscriminate crime.

"Don't go with me, Bully," Stearns said. "Count me out. Right here's
where I head for Whoop-Up."

He turned his horse's head and rode into the darkness.

West looked after him, cursing. "We're better off without the
white-livered coyote," he said at last.

"Brad ain't so fur off at that. I'd like blame well to be moseyin' to
Whoop-Up my own self," Gosse said uneasily.

"You'll stay right here an' go through with this job, Harv," West
told him flatly. "All you boys'll do just that. If any of you's got
a different notion we'll settle that here an' now. How about it?" He
straddled up and down in front of his men, menacing them with knotted
fists and sulky eyes.

Nobody cared to argue the matter with him. He showed his broken teeth
in a sour grin.

"Tha's settled, then," he went on. "It's my say-so. My orders go--if
there's no objections."

His outthrust head, set low on the hunched shoulders, moved from right
to left threateningly as his gaze passed from one to another. If there
were any objections they were not mentioned aloud.

"Now we know where we're at," he continued. "It'll be thisaway. Most
of us will scatter out an' fire at the rocks from the front here; the
others'll sneak round an' come up from behind--get right into the
rocks before this bully-puss fellow knows it. If you get a chance,
plug him in the back, but don't hurt the Injun girl. Y' understand? I
want her alive an' not wounded. If she gets shot up, some one's liable
to get his head knocked off."

But it did not, after all, turn out quite the way West had planned it.
He left out of account one factor--a man among the rocks who had been
denied a weapon and any part in the fighting.

The feint from the front was animated enough. The attackers scattered
and from behind clumps of brush grass and bushes poured in a fire that
kept the defenders busy. Barney, with the half-breeds and the Indian
at heel, made a wide circle and crept up to the red sandstone
outcroppings. He did not relish the job any more than those behind
him did, but he was a creature of West and usually did as he was told
after a bit of grumbling. It was not safe for him to refuse.

To Tom Morse, used to Bully West and his ways, the frontal attack did
not seem quite genuine. It was desultory and ineffective. Why? What
trick did Bully have up his sleeve? Tom put himself in his place to
see what he would do.

And instantly he knew. The real attack would come from the rear. With
the firing of the first shot back there, Bully West would charge.
Taken on both sides the garrison would fall easy victims.

The constable and Onistah were busy answering the fire of the
smugglers. Sleeping Dawn was crouched down behind two rocks, the
barrel of her rifle gleaming through a slit of open space between
them. She was compromising between the orders given her and the
anxiety in her to fight back Bully West. As much as she could she kept
under cover, while at the same time firing into the darkness whenever
she thought she saw a movement.

Morse slipped rearward on a tour of investigation. The ground here
fell away rather sharply, so that one coming from behind would have to
climb over a boulder field rising to the big rocks. It took Tom only a
casual examination to see that a surprise would have to be launched by
way of a sort of rough natural stairway.

A flat shoulder of sandstone dominated the stairway from above. Upon
this Morse crouched, every sense alert to detect the presence of any
one stealing up the pass. He waited, eager and yet patient. What he
was going to attempt had its risk, but the danger whipped the blood in
his veins to a still excitement.

Occasionally, at intervals, the rifles cracked. Except for that no
other sound came to him. He could keep no count of time. It seemed to
him that hours slipped away. In reality it could have been only a few
minutes.

Below, from the foot of the winding stairway, there was a sound, such
a one as might come from the grinding of loose rubble beneath the sole
of a boot. Presently the man on the ledge heard it again, this time
more distinctly. Some one was crawling up the rocks.

Tom peered into the darkness intently. He could see nothing except the
flat rocks disappearing vaguely in the gloom. Nor could he hear again
the crunch of a footstep on disintegrated sandstone. His nerves grew
taut. Could he have made a mistake? Was there another way up from
behind?

Then, at the turn of the stairway, a few feet below him, a figure rose
in silhouette. It appeared with extraordinary caution, first a head,
then the barrel of a rifle, finally a crouched body followed by bowed
legs. On hands and knees it crept forward, hitching the weapon along
beside it. Exactly opposite Morse, under the very shadow of the
sloping ledge on which he lay, the figure rose and straightened.

The man stood there for a second, making up his mind to move on. He
was one of the half-breeds West had brought with him. Almost into his
ear came a stern whisper.

"Hands up! I've got you covered. Don't move. Don't say a word."

Two arms shot skyward. In the fingers of one hand a rifle was
clenched.

Morse leaned forward and caught hold of it. "I'll take this," he said.
The brown fingers relaxed. "Skirt round the edge of the rock there.
Lie face down in that hollow. Got a six-shooter."

He had. Morse took it from him.

"If you move or speak one word, I'll pump lead into you," the Montanan
cautioned.

The half-breed looked into his chill eyes and decided to take no
chances. He lay down on his face with hands stretched out exactly as
ordered.

His captor returned to the shoulder of rock above the trail. Presently
another head projected itself out of the darkness. A man crept up, and
like the first stopped to take stock of his surroundings.

Against the back of his neck something cold pressed.

"Stick up your hands, Barney," a voice ordered.

The little man let out a yelp. "Mother o' Moses, don't shoot."

"How many more of you?" asked Morse sharply.

"One more."

The man behind the rifle collected his weapons and put Barney
alongside his companion. Within five minutes he had added a third man
to the collection.

With a sardonic grin he drove them before him to Beresford.

"I'm a prisoner an' not in this show, you was careful to explain to
me, Mr. Constable, but I busted the rules an' regulations to collect a
few specimens of my own," he drawled by way of explanation.

Beresford's eyes gleamed. The debonair impudence of the procedure
appealed mightily to him. He did not know how this young fellow had
done it, but he must have acted with cool nerve and superb daring.

"Where were they? And how did you get 'em without a six-shooter?"

"They was driftin' up the pass to say 'How-d'you-do?' from the back
stairway. I borrowed a gun from one o' them. I asked 'em to come along
with me and they reckoned they would."

The booming of a rifle echoed in the rocks to the left. From out of
them Jessie McRae came flying, something akin to terror in her face.

"I've shot that West. He tried to run in on me and--and--I shot him."
Her voice broke into an hysterical sob.

"Thought I told you to keep out of this," the constable said. "I seem
to have a lot of valuable volunteer help. What with you and friend
Morse here--" He broke off, touched at her distress. "Never mind about
that, Miss McRae. He had it coming to him. I'll go out and size up the
damage to him, if his friends have had enough--and chances are they
have."

They had. Gosse advanced waving a red bandanna handkerchief as a flag
of truce.

"We got a plenty," he said frankly. "West's down, an' another of the
boys got winged. No use us goin' on with this darned foolishness.
We're ready to call it off if you'll turn Morse loose."

Beresford had walked out to meet him. He answered, curtly. "No."

The long, lank whiskey-runner rubbed his chin bristles awkwardly. "We
'lowed maybe--"

"I keep my prisoners, both Morse and Barney."

"Barney!" repeated Gosse, surprised.

"Yes, we've got him and two others. I don't want them. I'll turn 'em
over to you. But not Morse and Barney. They're going to the post with
me for whiskey-running."

Gosse went back to the camp-fire, where the Whoop-Up men had carried
their wounded leader. Except West, they were all glad to drop the
battle. The big smuggler, lying on the ground with a bullet in his
thigh, cursed them for a group of chicken-hearted quitters. His anger
could not shake their decision. They knew when they had had enough.

The armistice concluded, Beresford and Morse walked over to the
camp-fire to find out how badly West was hurt.

"Sorry I had to hit you, but you would have it, you know," the
constable told him grimly.

The man snapped his teeth at him like a wolf in a trap. "You didn't
hit me, you liar. It was that li'l' hell-cat of McRae. You tell her
for me I'll get her right for this, sure as my name's Bully West."

There was something horribly menacing in his rage. In the jumping
light of the flames the face was that of a demon, a countenance
twisted and tortured by the impotent lust to destroy.

Morse spoke, looking steadily at him in his quiet way. "I'm servin'
notice, West, that you're to let that girl alone."

There was a sound in the big whiskey-runner's throat like that of
an infuriated wild animal. He glared at Morse, a torrent of abuse
struggling for utterance. All that he could say was, "You damned
traitor."

The eyes of the younger man did not waver. "It goes. I'll see you're
shot like a wolf if you harm her."

The wounded smuggler's fury outleaped prudence. In a surge of
momentary insanity he saw red. The barrel of his revolver rose
swiftly. A bullet sang past Morse's ear. Before he could fire again,
Harvey Gosse had flung himself on the man and wrested the weapon from
his hand.

Hard-eyed and motionless, Morse looked down at the madman without
saying a word. It was Beresford who said ironically, "Talking about
those who keep faith."

"You hadn't oughta of done that, Bully," Gosse expostulated. "We'd
done agreed this feud was off for to-night."

"Get your horses and clear out of here," the constable ordered. "If
this man's able to fight he's able to travel. You can make camp
farther down the creek."

A few minutes later the clatter of horse-hoofs died away. Beresford
was alone with his prisoners and his guests.

Those who were still among the big rocks came forward to the
camp-fire. Jessie arrived before the others. She had crept to the camp
on the heels of Beresford and Morse, driven by her great anxiety to
find out how badly West was hurt.

From the shadows of a buffalo wallow she had seen and heard what had
taken place.

One glance of troubled curiosity she flashed at Morse. What sort of
man was this quiet, brown-faced American who smuggled whiskey in to
ruin the tribes, who could ruthlessly hold a girl to a bargain that
included horsewhipping for her, who for some reason of his own fought
beside the man taking him to imprisonment, and who had flung defiance
at the terrible Bully West on her behalf? She hated him. She always
would. But with her dislike of him ran another feeling now, born of
the knowledge of new angles in him.

He was hard as nails, but he would do to ride the river with.




CHAPTER X

A CAMP-FIRE TALE


Another surprise was waiting for Jessie. As soon as Onistah came into
the circle of light, he walked straight to the whiskey-smuggler.

"You save my life from Crees. Thanks," he said in English.

Onistah offered his hand.

The white man took it. He was embarrassed. "Oh, well, I kinda took a
hand."

The Indian was not through. "Onistah never forget. He pay some day."

Tom waved this aside. "How's the leg? Seems to be all right now."

Swiftly Jessie turned to the Indian and asked him a question in the
native tongue. He answered. They exchanged another sentence or two.

The girl spoke to Morse. "Onistah is my brother. I too thank you," she
said stiffly.

"Your brother! He's not Angus McRae's son, is he?"

"No. And I'm not his daughter--really. I'll tell you about that," she
said with a touch of the defensive defiance that always came into her
manner when the subject of her birth was referred to.

She did, later, over the camp-fire.

It is fortunate that desire and opportunity do not always march
together. The constable and Morse had both been dead men if Bully West
could have killed with a wish. Sleeping Dawn would have been on the
road to an existence worse than death. Instead, they sat in front of
the coals of buffalo chips while the big smuggler and his companions
rode away from an ignominious field of battle.

When the constable and his prisoner had first struck camp, there had
been two of them. Now there were six. For in addition to Jessie McRae,
the Blackfoot, and Barney, another had come out of the night and
hailed them with a "Hello, the camp!" This last self-invited guest was
Brad Stearns, who had not ridden to Whoop-Up as he had announced, but
had watched events from a distance on the chance that he might be of
help to Tom Morse.

Jessie agreed with Beresford that she must stay in camp till morning.
There was nothing else for her to do. She could not very well ride the
night out with Onistah on the road back to the fort. But she stayed
with great reluctance.

Her modesty was in arms. Never before had she, a girl alone, been
forced to make camp with five men as companions, all but one of them
almost strangers to her. The experience was one that shocked her sense
of fitness.

She was troubled and distressed, and she showed it. Her impulsiveness
had swept her into an adventure that might have been tragic, that
still held potentialities of disaster. For she could not forget the
look on West's face when he had sworn to get even with her. This man
was a terrible enemy, because of his boldness, his evil mind, and his
lack of restraining conscience.

Yet even now she could not blame herself for what she had done. The
constable's life was at stake. It had been necessary to move swiftly
and decisively.

Sitting before the fire, Sleeping Dawn began to tell her story. She
told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with
Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an
explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly a thing.

"Onistah's mother is my mother," she said. "When I was a baby my own
mother died. Stokimatis is her sister. I do not know who my father
was, but I have heard he was an American. Stokimatis took me to her
tepee and I lived there with her and Onistah till I was five or six.
Then Angus McRae saw me one day. He liked me, so he bought me for
three yards of tobacco, a looking-glass, and five wolf pelts."

It may perhaps have been by chance that the girl's eyes met those of
Morse. The blood burned beneath the tan of her dusky cheeks, but her
proud eyes did not flinch while she told the damning facts about her
parentage and life. She was of the metis, the child of an unknown
father. So far as she knew her mother had never been married. She had
been bought and sold like a negro slave in the South. Let any one that
wanted to despise her make the most of all this.

So far as any expression went Tom Morse looked hard as pig iron. He
did not want to blunder, so he said nothing. But the girl would have
been amazed if she could have read his thoughts. She seemed to him a
rare flower that has blossomed in a foul swamp.

"If Angus McRae took you for his daughter, it was because he loved
you," Beresford said gently.

"Yes." The mobile face was suddenly tender with emotion. "What can any
father do more than he has done for me? I learned to read and write at
his knee. He taught me the old songs of Scotland that he's so fond of.
He tried to make me good and true. Afterward he sent me to Winnipeg to
school for two years."

"Good for Angus McRae," the young soldier said.

She smiled, a little wistfully. "He wants me to be Scotch, but of
course I can't be that even though I sing 'Should auld acquaintance'
to him. I'm what I am."

Ever since she had learned to think for herself, she had struggled
against the sense of racial inferiority. Even in the Lone Lands men
of education had crossed her path. There was Father Giguere, tall and
austere and filled with the wisdom of years, a scholar who had left
his dear France to serve on the outposts of civilization. And there
was the old priest's devoted friend Philip Muir, of whom the story ran
that he was heir to a vast estate across the seas. Others she had seen
at Winnipeg. And now this scarlet-coated soldier Beresford.

Instinctively she recognized the difference between them and the
trappers and traders who frequented the North woods. In her bed at
night she had more than once wept herself to sleep because life had
built an impassable barrier between what she was and what she wanted
to be.

"To the Scot nobody is quite like a Scot," Beresford admitted with
a smile. "When he wants to make you one, Mr. McRae pays you a great
compliment"

The girl flashed a look of gratitude at him and went on with her
story. "Whenever we are near Stokimatis, I go to see her. She has
always been very fond of me. It wasn't really for money she sold me,
but because she knew Angus McRae could bring me up better than she
could. I was with her to-day when Onistah came in and told us what
this West was going to do. There wasn't time for me to reach Father. I
couldn't trust anybody at Whoop-Up, and I was afraid if Onistah came
alone, you wouldn't believe him. You know how people are about--about
Indians. So I saddled a horse and rode with him."

"That was fine of you. I'll never forget it, Miss McRae," the young
soldier said quietly, his eyes for an instant full on hers. "I don't
think I've ever met another girl who would have had the good sense and
the courage to do it."

Her eyes fell from his. She felt a queer delightful thrill run through
her blood. He still respected her, was even grateful to her for what
she had done. No experience in the ways of men and maids warned her
that there was another cause for the quickened pulse. Youth had looked
into the eyes of youth and made the world-old call of sex to sex.

In a little pocket opening from the draw Morse arranged blankets for
the girl's bed. He left Beresford to explain to her that she could
sleep there alone without fear, since a guard would keep watch against
any possible surprise attack.

When the soldier did tell her this, Jessie smiled back her
reassurance. "I'm not afraid--not the least littlest bit," she said
buoyantly. "I'll sleep right away."

But she did not. Jessie was awake to the finger-tips, her veins apulse
with the flow of rushing rivers of life. Her chaotic thoughts centered
about two men. One had followed crooked trails for his own profit.
There was something in him hard and unyielding as flint. He would
go to his chosen end, whatever that might be, over and through any
obstacles that might rise. But to-night, on her behalf, he had thrown
down the gauntlet to Bully West, the most dreaded desperado on the
border. Why had he done it? Was he sorry because he had forced her
father to horsewhip her? Or was his warning merely the snarl of one
wolf at another?

The other man was of a different stamp. He had brought with him from
the world whence he had come a debonair friendliness, an ease of
manner, a smile very boyish and charming. In his jaunty forage cap and
scarlet jacket he was one to catch and hold the eye by reason of his
engaging personality. He too had fought her battle. She had heard him,
in that casually careless way of his, try to take the blame of having
wounded West. Her happy thoughts went running out to him gratefully.

Not the least cause of her gratitude was that there had not been the
remotest hint in his manner that there was any difference between her
and any white girl he might meet.




CHAPTER XI

C.N. MORSE TURNS OVER A LEAF


The North-West Mounted Police had authority not only to arrest, but
to try and to sentence prisoners. The soldierly inspector who sat in
judgment on Morse at Fort Macleod heard the evidence and stroked an
iron-gray mustache reflectively. As he understood it, his business was
to stop whiskey-running rather than to send men to jail. Beresford's
report on this young man was in his favor. The inspector adventured
into psychology.

"Studied the Indians any--the effect of alcohol on them?" he asked
Morse.

"Some," the prisoner answered.

"Don't you think it bad for them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Perhaps you've been here longer than I. Isn't this whiskey-smuggling
bad business all round?"

"Not for the smuggler. Speakin' as an outsider, I reckon he does it
because he makes money," Morse answered impersonally.

"For the country, I mean. For the trapper, for the breeds, for the
Indians."

"No doubt about that."

"You're a nephew of C.N. Morse, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Wish you'd take him a message from me. Tell him that it's bad
business for a big trading firm like his to be smuggling whiskey." The
officer raised a hand to stop the young man's protest. "Yes, I know
you're going to tell me that we haven't proved he's been smuggling.
We'll pass that point. Carry him my message. Just say it's bad
business. You can tell him if you want to that we're here to put an
end to it and we're going to do it. But stress the fact that it isn't
good business. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Very well, sir." A glint of a smile showed in the inspector's eyes.
"I'll give you a Scotch verdict, young man. Not guilty, but don't do
it again. You're discharged."

"Barney, too?"

"Hmp! He's a horse of another color. Think we'll send him over the
plains."

"Why make two bites of a cherry, sir? He can't be guilty if I'm not,"
the released prisoner said.

"Did I say you weren't?" Inspector MacLean countered.

"Not worth the powder, is he, sir?" Tom insinuated nonchalantly.
"Rather a fathead, Barney is. If he's guilty, it's not as a principal.
You'd much better send me up."

The officer laughed behind the hand that stroked the mustache. "Do you
want to be judge and jury as well as prisoner, my lad?"

"Thought perhaps my uncle would understand the spirit of your message
better if Barney went along with me, Inspector." The brown eyes were
open and guileless.

MacLean studied the Montanan deliberately. He began to recognize
unusual qualities in this youth.

"Can't say I care for your friend Barney. He's a bad egg, or I miss my
guess."

"Not much taken with him myself. Thought if I'd get him to travel
south with me it might save you some trouble."

"It might," the Inspector agreed. "It's his first offense so far as
I know." Under bristling eyebrows he shot a swift look at this
self-assured youngster. He had noticed that men matured at an early
age on the frontier. The school of emergency developed them fast.
But Morse struck him as more competent even than the other boyish
plainsmen he had met. "Will you be responsible for him?"

The Montanan came to scratch reluctantly. He had no desire to be bear
leader for such a doubtful specimen as Barney.

"Yes," he said, after a pause.

"Keep him in the States, will you?"

"Yes."

"Take him along, then. Wish you luck of him."

As soon as he reached Fort Benton, Tom reported to his uncle. He told
the story of the whiskey cargo and its fate, together with his own
adventures subsequent to that time.

The head of the trading firm was a long, loose-jointed Yankee who had
drifted West in his youth. Since then he had acquired gray hairs and
large business interests. At Inspector MacLean's message he grinned.

"Thinks it's bad business, does he?"

"Told me to tell you so," Tom answered.

"Didn't say why, I guess."

"No."

T