As MacRae had surmised, our canyon forked below. We turned the point after making sure that Bevans couldn't see us unless he moved. But the uncertain beggar had moved, and moved to some purpose we quickly learned; for when we next laid eyes on him he was out on the extreme point of the little bench, opposite the mouth of the coulee we had ascended, whirling his horse about in cramped circles. And in answer to his signaling a full score of red-jacketed riders were galloping down the ridges, a human comb that bade fair to rake us from our concealment in a scant number of minutes.

"Looks bad for you and me, old boy," MacRae grinned. "I see now what brother Hicks has been up to. But they haven't got us yet. Whatever happens, Sarge, don't get excited and go to shooting. We can't win out that way, against this combination. If we can't dodge and outrun them we'll have to take our medicine. Down the coulee is our only chance.

There's only Bevans to stop us; and it won't really matter if we do put his light out--be one thief less at the finish."

Bevans, however, made no demonstration. We just got a mere glimpse of him, and I imagine he was nowise anxious to try heading us off, which he could not do without coming into the open. Whipping around the crooked bends at top speed, he had little chance to pot us, and I think he had an idea that we would cheerfully pot him if he got in the way.

We mystified them somewhat, and gained considerable ground, by that sudden dash, but it wasn't long before they were in full cry like a pack of hounds, and the carbines began to pop in a futile sort of way. Mac had not been far astray when he hazarded the guess that the troop would have orders to shoot on sight, for they began to peck at us the moment we came in view. We had just enough of a start, though, and our mounts were just good enough and fresh enough to gradually draw away from them.

And as we were then out of the network of protecting coulees and pattering over the comparative level of Lost River bottoms, I was very glad that we were beyond carbine-range and that it was near sundown.

"Barring accidents, they can't get up on us now," Mac declared. "So I think it'll be wise to keep south along the open bottoms. If they see us splitting the breeze down Lost River, they won't look for us to bob up from the opposite quarter to-morrow. When it gets dark and we're far enough ahead, we can swing into the hills. That'll fool them plenty for to-night. They'll probably try tracking us to-morrow, but I reckon they'll find that a tough job."

They kept persistently after us, and we were more or less on the anxious seat, till it did get dark. Then we turned sharp to the left and gained high ground once more, congratulating ourselves on so easily getting out of a ticklish place. If we hadn't moved up on Bevans they might have surrounded us before we got wind of them. But we'd beaten them fairly, and so we looked back through the dark and laughed; though I'm sure we had no particular cause for merriment.

CHAPTER XV.

PIEGAN TAKES A HAND.

I don't believe a detailed account of how we spent that night would be cla.s.sed as wildly interesting; if memory serves me right, it was a bleak, hungry, comfortless pa.s.sage of time, and I am willing to let it go at that. We managed to secure a buffalo steak for breakfast. No man needed to starve in that country during those days of plentiful game; but we were handicapped by the necessity of doing our hunting in a very surrept.i.tious manner. However, we didn't starve; the worst we experienced was an occasional period of acute hunger, when we didn't dare fire a shot for fear of revealing our whereabouts.

Nor can I see, now, where we accomplished anything beyond killing time the following day. To be sure, we scouted faithfully, and once or twice came perilously near being caught by squads of Mounted Police appearing from unexpected quarters. Our scouting was so much wasted energy. We got nowhere near the Police camp; we failed to get a glimpse of any of our men; and so, for all we knew to the contrary, they might have loaded the plunder and decamped for other regions. When night again spread its concealing folds about us, we had only one tangible fact as a reward for our exertions--Lessard had returned to Fort Walsh--presumably. Early that morning, escorted by four troopers, he had crossed Lost River and disappeared in the direction of the post. Of his ident.i.ty the field-gla.s.ses a.s.sured us. But that was the sum total of our acquired knowledge, and it brought us no nearer the breaking up of the Goodell-Gregory combination or the recovery of the loot.

So for a third night we were compelled to seek sanctuary in the silent canyons. And the third day brought us no better luck. At evening we were constrained to admit that we were simply b.u.t.ting our heads against a wall--with an ever-present possibility of the wall toppling over and crushing us flat.

Altogether, we spent five consecutive days hovering around that collection of law-enforcers, in imminent risk of capture. Each night in the open was more cheerless than the preceding one, and each day brought the same sense of futile effort at its close. Twice during that time the Police camp moved, and we had to be wary, for they scoured the surrounding territory with painstaking thoroughness. But we felt that there was yet a chance for us to turn the tables, for Goodell was still with the troop, and also Gregory; we saw them both the morning of the fifth day.

"It beats me why they're pecking around over the same ground so much,"

Mac observed. "I suppose they're looking for us, but I'm pretty sure they haven't had a glimpse of us for three days, and so I don't see why they should think we're still hanging around. Logically, if we'd got that bunch of money, we'd be getting out of the country. Lord, I do wish those four would show their hand--make a move of some kind."

"So do I," I seconded. "We're not doing much good that I can see. And I think I could play the game with a heap more enthusiasm if I had some coffee and white bread under my belt once or twice a day. We'll go hungry, and likewise get a devilish good soaking to-night, or I'm badly mistaken."

We had checked our horses on the summit of the divide that ran down to Lost River on one side and on the other sloped away to the southeast.

The wind that was merely a breath at sundown had gathered strength to itself and now swept across the hill-tops with a resonant roar, piling layer on layer of murky low-flying clouds into a dense ma.s.s overhead.

Night, black as the bottomless pit, walled us in. A fifty-mile breeze lashed us spitefully, tugging at our shirt-sleeves and drowning our voices, while we halted on that pinnacle. By the dank breath of the wind, the ominous overcasting of the sky, all the little signs that a prairie-wise man learns to read, we knew that a storm was close at hand.

Shelter there was none, nor food, and we stood in need of both.

"You're right," MacRae admitted. "But how are we going to help it?

We'll just have to grin and tough it out."

"I'll tell you how we'll help it," I proposed recklessly, shouting to make myself heard above the noisy wind. "We can go down and tackle that bull-train we saw pulling along the foot of the ridge. They'll know we're on the dodge, but that won't make any difference to them. I know nearly every bull-whacker that freights out of Benton, and they're a pretty white bunch. If it's Baker's outfit, especially, we'll be welcome as flowers in May. You said they'd likely camp at that spring--Ten Mile, isn't it? What d'ye think? Shall we go down and take a chance? I sure don't like the look of things up here. It's going to be a rip-snorter of a night, once it cuts loose."

"I'm ready to go against nearly anything, right now," MacRae frankly owned. "If you think it's worth trying, why, it's a go with me."

"Let's drift, then," I declared; and straightway we turned our horses broadside to the wind and tore away for Ten Mile Spring and the creature comforts I knew were to be had at the white-sheeted wagons we saw crawling slowly along the Stony Crossing trail late that afternoon.

As Mac had calculated, the freight-train was camped at the Spring; and it was a mighty good thing for us that MacRae knew that country so well or we would never have found them, short of riding our horses to a standstill. Long before we got there the deep-throated thunder was growling over us, and the clouds spat occasional flurries of rain.

We made the freight camp, however, just as the storm cut loose in deadly earnest. Luckily for me, it was Baker's outfit. I took a long chance, and stalked boldly in. And here I was treated to a surprise, one that afforded both MacRae and me considerable food for thought; Horner, the wagon-boss, a man I knew well, frankly declared that no one at Fort Walsh had heard that we were accused of robbery and murder. For that matter, he said, he didn't care a tinker's dam if we were; he had grub and bedding and we were welcome to both.

So with this a.s.surance of good-will we picketed our horses close by the circle of wagons--where we could get to them quickly should any of Lessard's troop happen into the camp--and prepared to devour the supper Horner's good-natured cook bestirred himself to make ready. As we filled our plates and squatted under the canvas that sheltered the cook's Dutch-oven layout, a man under the hind end of the chuck-wagon propped himself on elbow and shouted greeting to us. In the semi-dark I couldn't see his face, but I recognized the voice. It was our friend of the whisky-keg episode, Piegan Smith.

"h.e.l.lo, thar, fellers!" he bellowed (Piegan always spoke to a man as if he were a hundred yards away). "Say, Flood, yuh ain't been t' Benton an'

back already, have yuh?"

"Faith, no," I owned, between mouthfuls, "and it's hard telling when I will get there. How come you to be pacing along this trail, Piegan? Gone to freighting in your old age?"

"Not what yuh could notice, I ain't," he snorted. "Catch _me_ whackin'

bulls for a livin'! Naw, I sold my outfit to a goggle-eyed pilgrim that has an idea buffalo hides is prime all summer. So I'm headed for Benton to see if I kain't stir up a little excitement now an' then, to pa.s.s away the time till the fall buffalo-run begins."

"If you're looking for excitement, Piegan," MacRae put in dryly, "you'd better come along with us. We'll introduce you to more different brands of it in the next few days than Benton could furnish in six months."

"Maybe," Piegan laughed. "But not the brand I'm a-thirstin' for."

Mac was on the point of replying when there came a most unexpected interruption. I looked up at sound of a startled exclamation, and beheld the round African physog of Lyn Rowan's colored mammy. But she had no eyes for me; she stood like a black statue just within the firelight, a tin bucket in one hand, staring over my head at MacRae.

"Lawd a-me!" she gulped out. "Ef Ah ain't sho'ly laid mah ol' eyes on Ma.r.s.e Go'don. Is dat sho' 'nuf yo', wid yo' red coat an' all?"

"It sure is, Mammy," Mac answered. "How does it happen you're traveling this way? I thought you were at Fort Walsh. Is Miss Lyn along?"

"She suttinly am," Mammy Thomas emphatically a.s.serted. "Yo' doan catch dis chile a-mosyin' obeh dese yeah plains by huh lonesome. Since dey done brought Miss Lyn's paw in an' planted him, she say dey ain't no use foh huh to stay in dis yeah redcoat country no longer; so we all packed up an' sta'ted back foh de lan' ob de free."

MacRae, I am sure, was no more than half through his meal. But he swallowed the coffee in his cup, and tossed his eating-implements into the cook's wash-pan.

"I'll go with you, Mammy," he told her. "I want to see Miss Lyn myself."

"Jes' a minute, Ma.r.s.e Go'don," she said. "Ah's got to git some wa'm watah f'om dis yeah Mr. Cook."

The cook signaled her to help herself from the kettle that bubbled over the fire, and she filled her bucket and disappeared, chattering volubly, MacRae at her heels.

I finished my supper more deliberately. There was no occasion for me to gobble my food and rush off to talk with Lyn Rowan. MacRae, I suspected, would be inclined to monopolize her for the rest of the evening. So I ate leisurely, and when done crawled under the wagon beside Piegan Smith and gave myself up to cigarettes and meditation, while over his pipe Piegan expressed a most unflattering opinion of the weather.

It was a dirty night, beyond question; one that gave color to Piegan's prophesy that Milk River would be out of its banks if the storm held till morning, and that Baker's freight-train would be stalled by mud and high water for three or four days. I was duly thankful for the shelter we had found. A tarpaulin stretched from wheel to wheel of the wagon shut out the driving rain that fled in sheets before the whooping wind.

The lightning-play was hidden behind the drifting cloud-bank, for no glint of it penetrated the gloom; but the cavernous thunder-bellow roared intermittently, and a fury of rain drove slantwise against sodden earth and creaking wagon-tops.

If the next two hours were as slow in pa.s.sing, to MacRae and Lyn, as they seemed to me, the two of them had time to dissect and discuss the hopes and fears and errors of their whole existence, and formulate a new philosophy of life. Piegan broke a long silence to remark sagely that if Mac was putting in all this time talking to that "yaller-headed fairy,"

he was a plumb good stayer.

"They're old friends," I told him. "Mac knew her long ago; and all her people."

"Well, he's in darned agreeable company," Piegan observed. "She's a mighty fine little woman, far's I've seen. I dunno's I'd know when t'

jar loose m'self, if I knowed her an' she didn't object t' me hangin'

around. But seein' we ain't in on the reception, we might as well get under the covers, eh? I reckon most everybody in camp's turned in."

Piegan had a bulky roll of bedding under the wagon. Spread to its full width, it was ample for three ordinary men. We had just got out of our outside garments and were snuggling down between the blankets when Mac came slopping through the puddles that were now gathering in every depression. He crawled under the wagon, shed some of his clothing, and got into bed with us. But he didn't lie down until he had rolled a cigarette, and then instead of going to sleep he began talking to Piegan, asking what seemed to me a lot of rather trifling questions. I was nearly worn out, and their conversation was nowise interesting to me, so listening to the monotonous drone of their voices and the steady beat of falling rain, I went to sleep.