"Where is the rest of the bunch?" MacRae asked him evenly. "You seem to have got a part of what is coming to you, but your skirts aren't clear, for all that."

"You have a bone to pick with me, eh?" Goodell murmured. "Well, I don't blame you. But don't adopt the role of inquisitor--because I'm as good as dead, and dead men tell no tales. My mouth will be closed forever in a little while--and I can die as easily with it unopened. But if you'll get me a drink of water, and be decent about it, I'll unfold a tale that's worth while. I a.s.sure you it will be to your interest to give me a hearing."

Piegan turned and strode out of the timber. He unfastened the coffee-pot from my saddle, and made for the coulee channel we had crossed, in which a buffalo-wallow still held water from the recent rain.

Goodell coughed, and a red, frothy stream came from his lips. It isn't in the average man to be utterly callous to the suffering of another, even if that other richly deserves his pain. Notwithstanding the deviltry he and his confederates had perpetrated, I couldn't help feeling sorry for Goodell--what little I'd seen of him had been likable enough. I found it hard to look at him there and believe him guilty of murder, robbery, and kindred depredations. He was beyond reach of earthly justice, anyway; and one can't help forgiving much to a man who faces death with a smile.

"Are you in any pain, Goodell?" I asked.

"None whatever," he answered weakly. "But I'm a goner, for all that. I have a very neat knife-thrust in the back. Also a bullet somewhere in my lungs. You see in me," he drawled, "a victim of chivalry. I've played for big stakes; I've robbed gaily, and killed a man or two in the way of fighting; all of which sits lightly on my conscience. But there are two things I haven't done. I want you to remember distinctly that I have _not_ dragged that girl into this--nor had any hand in torturing a wounded old man."

"You mean Lyn Rowan? Is she safe?" Mac squatted beside him, leaning eagerly forward to catch the reply. Piegan returned with the water as Goodell was about to answer. He swallowed thirstily, took breath, and went on.

"Yes, I mean her," he said huskily. "I'll tell you quick, for I know I won't last long, and when I'm done you'll know where to look for them. I started this thing--this hold-up business--no matter why. Lessard was away in the hole--gambling and other things--I hinted the idea to him; he jumped at it, as I thought he would. And----"

"Lessard!" I interrupted. "He was in on this, then?"

"Was he?" Goodell echoed. "He is the whole thing."

I had suspected as much, but sometimes it is a surprise to have one's suspicions confirmed. I glanced at Mac and Piegan.

"I was sure of it all along," Mac answered my unspoken thought. Piegan merely shrugged his shoulders.

"I wanted to get that government money in the pay-wagon, that was all--at first," Goodell continued. "We planned a long time ahead, and we had to take in those three to make it go. Then Lessard found out about those two old miners, and put Hicks and Gregory on their trail unknown to me--I had no hand in that foul business. You know the result--the finish--that night you lost the ten thousand--it was h.e.l.lish work. I wanted to kill Hicks and Gregory when they told me. Poor old Dutchman!

Lessard put Bevans on your trail, Flood. He followed you from Walsh that day, and you played into his hands that night when you stirred up the fire. Only for running into his partners, he would probably have murdered you for that ten thousand some night while you slept. Give me another drink."

I lifted the pot of water to his lips again, and he thanked me courteously.

"Then Lessard conceived the theory that you fellows had learned more than you told. We were fixed to get the paymaster on that trip. We shook you, and did the job. MacRae was on the way--you know. He sent you to the Stone with those devils to keep cases on you. It seemed a pity to let slip that gold-dust after they had gone so far. You know how that panned out. We had a stake then. Lessard was the brains, the guiding genius; we did the work. The original plan was to make a clean-up, divide with him, and get out of the country--while he used his authority to throw the Force off the track till we were well away. Then the girl appeared, and Lessard lost his head. She turned him down; and at the last moment he upset our plans by deciding to cut loose and go with us.

I believe now that he hatched this latest scheme when she refused him. I tell you he was fairly mad about her. He took advantage of this last trip to loot the post of all the funds he could lay hands on. We have--or, rather, _they_ have," he corrected, "about a hundred and fifty thousand altogether.

"We couldn't ford Milk River on account of the storm. You tracked us?

You saw our last camp? Yes. Well, we left there early this morning. And when Hicks turned off opposite Baker's outfit with an extra horse, I thought nothing of it--it was perfectly safe, and we needed more matches, Lessard said. Not until he joined us later with the girl did I suspect that there were wheels within wheels; a kidnapping had never occurred to me; I hadn't thought his infatuation would carry him that far. She realized at once that she had been hoodwinked, and appealed to Lessard. He laughed at her, and told her that he had abandoned the modern method of winning a mate, and gone back to the primitive mode.

"I've put myself beyond the pale; outlaw, thief, what you like--I'm not sensitive to harsh names. But a woman--a good woman! Well, I have my own ideas about such things. And when we camped here, I had made up my mind.

I told Lessard she must go back. That was a foolish move. I should have got the drop and killed him out of hand. While I argued with him, Hicks slipped a knife into my back, and as I turned on him Lessard shot me.

Ah, well--it'll be all the same a hundred years from now. But I'd like to put a spoke in their wheel for the sake of that blue-eyed girl.

"MacRae, you and Smith know the mouth of Sage Creek, and the ford there.

That's where they'll camp to-night. I doubt if they'll cross the river till morning. If you ride you can make it in three hours. From there they plan to follow Milk River to the Missouri and catch a down-stream boat. But you'll get them to-night. You must. Now give me another drink--and drift!"

"We'll get them, Goodell." MacRae rose to his feet as he spoke. "You're white, if you did get off wrong. I'll remember what you did--for her. Is there anything we can do for you?"

Goodell shook his head. "I tell you," he said, and turned his head to look wistfully up at the eastern coulee-rim, all tinted with the blazing sunset. "I'll go out over the hills with the shadows. An hour--maybe two. It's my time. I've no complaint to make. All I want is a drink. You can do no good for a dead man; and the living are sorely in need. It'll be a bit lonesome, that's all."

"No message for anybody?" MacRae persisted.

"No--yes!" The old mocking, reckless tone crept into his voice again.

"If you should have speech with Lessard before you put his light out, tell him I go to prepare a place for him--a superheated grid! Now drift--_vamos_--hit the trail. Remember, the gorge at the mouth of Sage Creek. Good-by."

Soberly we filed out from among the trees, now swaying in the grip of the wind, their leafy boughs rustling sibilantly; as though the weird sisters whispered in the nodding branches that here was another thread full-spun and ready for the keen shears. Soberly we swung to the saddle and rode slowly away, lest the quick beat of hoofs should bring a sudden pang of loneliness to the intrepid soul calmly awaiting death under the shivering trees. I think that one bold effort to right a wrong will more than wipe out the black score against him when the Book of Life is balanced.

A little way beyond the poplar-grove Piegan drew rein, and held up one hand.

"Poor devil," he muttered. "He's a-calling us."

But he wasn't. He was fighting off the chill of loneliness that comes to the strongest of us when we face the unknowable, the empty void that there is no escaping. Dying there in the falling dusk, he was singing to himself as an Indian brave chants his death-song when the red flame of the torture-fire bites into his flesh.

Sing heigh, sing ho, for the Cavalier!

Sing heigh, sing ho, for the Crown.

Gentlemen all, turn out, turn out; We'll keep these Roundheads down!

Down--down--down--down.

We'll ke--ep these Round--heads down!

Once--twice, the chorus of that old English Royalist song rose up out of the grove. Then it died away, and we turned to go. And as we struck home the spurs, remembering the mouth of Sage Creek and the dark that was closing down, a six-shooter barked sharply, back among the trees.

I swung my horse around in his tracks and raced him back to the poplars, knowing what I would find, and yet refusing to believe. I will not say that his big heart had failed him; perhaps it did not seem to him worth while to face the somber shadows to the bitter end, lying alone in that deep hollow in the earth. It may be that the night looked long and comfortless, and it was his wish to go out with the sun. He lay beside the fallen tree, his eyes turned blankly to the darkening sky, the six-shooter in his hand as he had held it for the last time. I straightened his arms, and covered his face with the blood-stained coat and left him to his long sleep. And even old Piegan lifted his hat and murmured "Amen" in all sincerity as we turned away.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BISON.

When we reached high ground again the twilight was fading to a semicircle of bloodshot gray in the northwest. The wind still blew squarely in our faces. Down in the coulee we had not noticed it so much, but now every breath was rank with the smell of gra.s.s-smoke, and each mile we traversed the stink of it grew stronger.

"We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire before mornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll come a-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uh dry gra.s.s an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard down in this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?"

Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more. It grew dark--dark in the full sense of the word. The smoke-burdened atmosphere was impervious to the radiance of the stars. Only by Smith's instinctive sense of direction did we make any headway toward the mouth of Sage Creek. Even MacRae owned himself somewhat at fault, once we came among the buffalo.

They barred our path in dimly-seen ma.s.ses that neither halted, scattered, nor turned aside when we galloped upon them in the gloom. We were the ones who gave the road, riding now before, now behind the indistinct bulk of a herd, according as we judged the shorter way.

More dense became the brute ma.s.s. Whirled this way and that, as Piegan led, I knew neither east, west, north or south from one moment to another. Betimes we found a stretch of open country, and gave our horses the steel, but always to bring up suddenly against the bison plodding in groups, in ranks, in endless files. They were ubiquitous; stolid obstructions that we could neither avoid nor ride down. Our progress became monotonous, a succession of fruitless attempts to advance; hopeless, like wandering in a subtle maze. Bison to the right of us, bison to the left of us, an uncounted swarm behind us, and as many before--but they neither bellowed nor thundered; they pa.s.sed like phantoms in the night, soundlessly save for the m.u.f.fled trampling of cloven hoofs, and here and there upon occasion hoa.r.s.e coughings that were strangled by the wind.

And we rode as silently as the bison marched. For each one of us had seen that one-minded pilgrimage of the brown cattle take place in moons gone by. I recalled a time when a trail-herd lay on the Platte and the buffalo barred their pa.s.sing for two days--even made fourteen riders and three thousand Texas steers give ground. Is it not history that the St.

Louis-Benton river-boats backed water when the bison crossed the Missouri in the spring and fall? Remembering these, and other times that the herds had gathered and swept over the plains, a plague of monstrous locusts, pushing aside men and freight-trains, I knew what would happen should the buffalo close their ranks, marshal the scattered groups into closer formation, quicken the pace of the mult.i.tude that poured down from the north. And presently it happened.

Insensibly the number of moving bodies increased. The consolidation was imperceptible in the murk, but nevertheless it took place. We ceased to find clear s.p.a.ces where we could gallop; a trot became impossible. We were hemmed in. A rank animal odor mingled with the taint of smoke.

Gradually the m.u.f.fled beat of hoofs grew more p.r.o.nounced, a shuffling monotone that filled the night. We were mere atoms in a vast wave of horn and bone and flesh that bore us onward as the tide floats driftwood.

The belated moon stole up from its lair, hovered above the sky-line, a gaudy orange sphere in the haze of smoke. It shed a tenuous glimmer on the sea of bison that had engulfed us; and at the half-revealed sight MacRae lifted his clenched hands above his head and cursed the circ.u.mstance that had brought us to such extremity. That was the first and only time I knew him to lose his poise, his natural repression.

Still water runs deep, they say; and a glacial cap may conceal subterranean fires. Trite similes, I grant you--but, ah, how true. The good Lord help those phlegmatics who can stand by unmoved when a self-contained man reveals the anguish of his soul in one pa.s.sionate outburst. Could the fury that quivered in his voice have wreaked itself on the bison and the men we followed, the stench of their blasted carca.s.ses would have reached high heaven. But the bison surrounded us impa.s.sively, bore us on as before; somewhere, miles beyond, Lessard pursued the evil tenor of his way; and MacRae's futile pa.s.sion, like a wave that has battered itself to foam against a sullen cliff, subsided and died. Later, while we three cast-aways drifted with the bovine tide, he spoke to Piegan Smith.

"How are we going to get through?"

"Dunno. But we _will_ get through, yuh c'n gamble on that." Optimism rampant was the dominating element in Piegan's philosophy of life.