CHAPTER VI.
STONY CROSSING.
"There's Stony Crossing, Sarge; and over yonder, at the west end of thatblue ridge, is Writing-on-the-Stone."
At the foot of the long slope on which we stood Milk River glinted inthe sunshine, deceptively beautiful--a shining example of the truth ofthat old saw about distance lending enchantment, for, looking down onthe placid stream slipping smoothly along between fringes of scrubbytimber, one would never guess that miles and miles of hungry quick-sandslined the river-edge, an unseen trap for the feet of the unwary.
Stony Crossing I could see, even without Mac's guiding finger. The WhoopUp trail, a brown streak against the vivid upland green, dipped down thehillside to our right, down to the sage-grown flat, and into the riverby the great boulders that gave the ford its name. The blue ridge upthe river I gave scant heed to; the Writing-Stone was only a name to me,for I'd never seen the place. My attention was all for the scene athand. The patch of soft green that I knew for the cottonwoods Rutter hadspoken of drew my roving gaze whether I would or no. I have ridden onpleasanter missions than the one that took us to Stony Crossing thatday.
"It's sure tough," I voiced a thought that had been running in my mindall morning, "to think that a good old fellow like Hank Rowan has beenmurdered and left to rot on the prairie like a skinned buffalo. Hangedif I can make myself really believe we'll find him down there."
"The more I think of it, the more I'm inclined to believe that we will,"MacRae answered evenly. "We'll know beyond a doubt in the next hour. Sowe might as well go on."
If I hadn't known him so well I might have thought he didn't care a damnwhat we found at Stony Crossing, that he was as unmoved as the twocase-hardened troopers who rode with us. But that repression was just asnatural to him as emotional flare-ups are to some. Whatever he felt heusually kept bottled up inside, no matter how it hurt. I never saw himfly to pieces over anything. He was something of an anomaly to me, whenI first knew him. I was always so prone to do and say things accordingto impulse that I thought him cold-blooded, a man without any particularfeeling except a certain pride in holding his own among his fellows.
But I revised my opinion when I came to know him better. Under thesurface he was sensitive as a girl; one could wound him with a word or alook. Paradoxically, he was absolutely cold-blooded toward a declaredenemy. He would fight fair, but without mercy. Side by side with thesensitive soul of him, and hidden always under an impassive mask ofself-control, lay the battling spirit, an indomitable fighting streak;it cropped out in a cool, calculating manner of taking desperate chanceswhen the sleeping devil in him was roused. He would sidesteptrouble--and one met the weeping damsel at many turns of the road inthose raw days--if he could do it without loss of self-respect; but theman who stirred him up needlessly, or crowded him into retaliation,always regretted it--when he had time to indulge in vain regrets. Andyou can bet your last, lone _peso_, and consider it won, that MacRaemeant every word when he said to old Hans Rutter: "We'll make them sweatblood for this."
When we got down into the bottom Mac turned aside to the deep-worn trailand glanced sharply down at the ruts. The dust in them lay smooth, andthe hoof-marks that showed were old and dim.
"I wondered if there had been any freight teams pass lately," heexplained. "But there hasn't--not for a day or two, anyway. Let's lookin the timber."
That was a long time ago, and since then I have seen much of life anddeath in many countries, but I can recall as distinctly as if it wereyesterday the grim sight that met us when we rode in among thewhispering cottonwoods. We found Hank Rowan in a little open place,where rifts of sunlight filtered through the tangled branches; oneyellow bar, full of quivering motes, rested on the wide-open eyes andmouth, tinting the set features the ghastly color of a plaster cast. Thehorse he had ridden lay dead across his legs, and just beyond, acrumpled heap against the base of a tree, was the carcass of a mule,half-hidden under a bulky pack. The thing that sickened me, that stirsme even yet, was a circular, red patch that crowned his head whereshould have been thick, iron-gray hair.
"The damned hounds!" MacRae muttered. "They tried to make it look likean Indian job."
The pack-ropes had been cut and the pack searched. In the same mannerthey had gone through his pockets and scattered a few papers and letterson the ground. These we gathered carefully together, against the time ofmeeting Lyn, and then--for time pressed, and a dead man, though he maybe your friend and his passing a sorrow, is out of the game forever--wedragged him from beneath the dead horse, wrapped him in the canvaspack-cover, and buried him in the soft leaf-mold where he lay, as wehad buried his lifetime partner early in the morning. When we hadfinished, MacRae ordered his two troopers back to Pend d' Oreille, and wemounted our horses and turned their heads toward Fort Walsh.
It is seventy miles in an air-line from Stony Crossing to the fort. Thatnight we laid out, sleeping without hardship in a dry buffalo-wallow,and noon of the next day brought us to Walsh, a huddle of log buildingsclustering around a tall pole from which fluttered the union jack.
Off to one side of the fort a bunch of work-bulls fed peacefully. Downin the creek bottom a tent or two flapped in the mid-day breeze, and intheir neighborhood uprose the smoke of half a dozen dinner fires. By thepost storeroom, waiting their turn to unload, was ranged a line of thetarpaulin-covered wagons, wheeled galleons of the plains, that broughtfood and raiment to the Northwest before the coming of steam and steel.
"That looks to me like Baker's outfit, from Benton," I said to MacRae,as we swung off our horses before the building in which the officer ofthe day held forth. "They must have come by way of Assiniboine."
"Probably," Mac answered. "And over yonder's the paymaster's train. Atleast, he's due, and I can't account for a bunch of horses in charge ofa buck trooper any other way."
We clanked into the ante-room--that's what I call it, anyway. Ithappened that I didn't stay around those police posts long enough to getfamiliar with the technical terms for everything. Not that they wouldn'thave welcomed my presence; faith, their desire for my company was onlyequaled by my reluctance to accept their hospitality. There was a whilewhen I developed a marvelous capacity for dodging invitations to FortWalsh. And if the men in scarlet had been a bit swifter, or I a littleslower, I'd have had ample leisure to observe life in the Force from theinside--of the guardhouse. As I said, we went into the ante-room, andthere I got my first peep at the divinity that doth hedge--not a king,but a commissioned officer in Her Majesty's N. W. M. P. An orderly heldus up, and when MacRae had convinced him that our business was urgent,and not for his ears, he graciously allowed us to enter thePresence--who proved to be a heavy-set person with sandy, mutton-chopwhiskers set bias on a vacuous, round, florid countenance. Hisbraid-trimmed uniform was cut to fit him like the skin of an exceedinglywell-stuffed sausage, and from his comfortable seat behind a flat-toppeddesk he gazed upon us with the wisdom of a tree-full of owls and thedignity of a stage emperor.
MacRae's heels clicked together and his right hand went up in the stiffmilitary salute. The red-faced one acknowledged it by a barelyperceptible flip of a fat paw, then put a little extra stiffening intohis spinal column and growled, in a voice that seemed to come booming upfrom the region of his diaphragm, "Pro-ceed."
MacRae proceeded. But he didn't get very far. In fact, he'd barelyarticulated, 'I have to report, sir, that----' when the human sausagebethought himself of something more important, and held up one hand forsilence. He produced a watch and studied it frowningly, then dismissedus and the recital of our troubles with a ponderous gesture.
"Repawt again," he rumbled, away down in his chest cavity, "athawf--pawst--one."
"Yes, sir," MacRae saluted again, and we withdrew.
"A beautiful specimen; a man of great force," I unburdened myself whenwe got outside. "Have you many like him? I'd admire to see him cavortingaround on the pinnacles after horse-thieves or whisky-runners or a bunchof bad Indians. A peaceable citizen would sure do well on th
e other sideof the line if sheriffs and marshals took a lay-off to feed themselveswhen a man was in the middle of his complaint. How long do you supposeit will take that fat slob to get a squad of these soldier-policemen onthe trail of that ten thousand?"
MacRae laughed dryly. "Old Dobson is harmless, all right, so far ashunting outlaws is concerned. But he doesn't cut much figure aroundhere, one way or the other; no more than two or three other 'haw-haw'Englishmen who got commissions in the Force on the strength of theirfamily connections. Lessard--the major in charge--is the brains of thepost. He gets out and does things while these fatheads stay in quartersand untangle red tape. Personally, I don't like Lessard--he's a damnedautocrat. But he's the man to whip this unorganized country into shape.I imagine he'll paw up the earth when he hears our story."
We mounted and rode to the stables. When we'd unsaddled and put up ourhorses, Mac led the way toward a row of small, whitewashed cabins setoff by themselves, equidistant from barrack and officers' row.
"Sometimes I eat with the sergeants' mess," Mac said. "But generally Icamp with 'Bat' Perkins when I drop in here. Bat's an ex-stock-hand likeourselves, and we'll be as welcome as payday. And he'll know if LynRowan has come to Walsh."
I wasn't in shape, financially, to have any choice in the matter of astopping-place. Forty or fifty dollars of expense money covered theloose cash in my pockets when I left Walsh for Benton; and, while I mayhave neglected to mention the fact, those two coin-collectors didn'toverlook the small change when they held me up for La Pere's roll. Therewas a sort of sheebang--you couldn't call it a hotel if you had anyregard for the truth--on the outskirts of Walsh, for the accommodationof wayfarers without a camp-outfit, but most of the time you couldn'tget anything fit to eat there. So I was mighty glad to hear about BatPerkins.