"He wanted to see if my gray was still in the stable," Flett said dryly. "His friends have some business they"d sooner I didn"t b.u.t.t into fixed up somewhere else."
"But you have no idea where?"
"I haven"t; that"s the trouble. There are three or four different trails I"d like to watch, and I quite expect to strike the wrong one.
Then, if the man knows you saw him, he might take his friends warning to change their plans. All the same, I"ll get off."
He rode away shortly afterward, and as the others went back toward the house Edgar laughed.
"I don"t think being a police trooper has many attractions in winter,"
he remarked. "Hiding in a bluff for several hours with the temperature forty degrees below, on the lookout for fellows who have probably gone another way, strikes me as a very unpleasant occupation."
CHAPTER XXII
THE SPREAD OF DISORDER
Flett spent a bitter night, keeping an unavailing watch among the willows where a lonely trail dipped into a ravine. Not a sound broke the stillness of the white prairie, and realizing that the men he wished to surprise had taken another path, he left his hiding-place shortly before daylight. He was almost too cold and stiff to mount; but as his hands and feet tingled painfully, it was evident that they had escaped frostbite, and that was something to be thankful for.
Reaching an outlying farm, he breakfasted and rested a while, after which he rode on to the Indian reservation, where he found signs of recent trouble. A man to whom he was at first refused access lay with a badly battered face in a shack which stood beside a few acres of roughly broken land; another man suffering from what looked like an ax wound sat huddled in dirty blankets in a teepee. It was obvious that a fight, which Flett suspected was the result of a drunken orgy, had been in progress not long before; but he could find no liquor nor any man actually under its influence, though the appearance of several suggested that they were recovering from a debauch. He discovered, however, in a poplar thicket the hide of a steer, from which a recent breeze had swept its covering of snow. This was a serious matter, and though the brand had been removed, Flett identified the skin as having belonged to an animal reported to him as missing.
He had now, when dusk was approaching, two charges of a.s.sault and one of cattle-killing to make, and it would not be prudent to remain upon the reservation during the night with anybody he arrested. The Indians were in a sullen, threatening mood; it was difficult to extract any information, and Flett was alone. He was, however, not to be daunted by angry looks or ominous mutterings, and by persistently questioning the injured men he learned enough to warrant his making two arrests; though he decided that the matter of the hide must be dropped for the present.
It was in a state of nervous tension that he mounted and drove his prisoners on a few paces in front of him. If he could get them into the open, he thought he would be safe, but the reservation was, for the most part, a tract of brush and bluff, pierced by ravines, among which he half expected an attempt would be made to facilitate their escape.
For all that, he was, so far as appearances went, very calm and grim when he set out, and his prisoners, being ahead, did not notice that he searched each taller patch of brush they entered with apprehensive glances. Nor did they see his hand drop to his pistol-b.u.t.t when something moved in the bushes as they went down the side of a dark declivity.
There was, however, no interference, and he felt more confident when he rode out into the moonlight which flooded the glittering prairie. Here he could deal with any unfavorable developments; but it was several leagues to the nearest shelter, and the Indians did not seem inclined to travel fast. The half-frozen constable would gladly have walked, only that he felt more master of the situation upon his horse. Mile after mile, they crossed the vast white waste, without a word being spoken, except when the shivering man sternly bade his prisoners, "Get on!"
Hand-cuffed as they were, he dare not relax his vigilance nor let them fall back too near him; and he had spent the previous night in the bitter frost. At times he felt painfully drowsy, but he had learned to overcome most bodily weaknesses, and his eyes only left the dark, plodding figures in front of him when he swept a searching glance across the plain. Nothing moved on it, and only the soft crunch of snow broke the dreary silence. At last, a cl.u.s.ter of low buildings rose out of the waste, and soon afterward Flett got down with difficulty and demanded shelter. The rudely awakened farmer gave him the use of his kitchen, in which a stove was burning; and while the Indians went to sleep on the floor, Flett, choosing an uncomfortable upright chair, lighted his pipe and sat down to keep another vigil.
When dawn broke, his eyes were still open, though his face was a little haggard and very weary.
He obtained a conviction for a.s.sault; but, as the charges of cattle-killing and being in possession of liquor had to be dropped, this was small consolation. It left the men he considered responsible absolutely untouched.
Afterward, he played a part in other somewhat similar affairs, for offenses were rapidly becoming more numerous among both Indians and mean whites; but in spite of his efforts the gang he suspected managed to evade the grip of the law. Flett, however, was far from despairing; he waited his time and watched.
While he did so, spring came, unusually early. A warm west wind swept the snow away and for a week or two the softened prairie was almost impa.s.sable to vehicles. Then the wind veered to the northwest with bright sunshine, the soil began to dry, and George set out on a visit to Brandon where he had some business to transact.
Reaching Sage b.u.t.te in the afternoon, he found it suffering from the effects of the thaw. A swollen creek had converted the ground on one side of the track into a shallow lake; the front street resembled a muskeg, furrowed deep by sinking wheels. The vehicles outside the hotels were covered with sticky mire; the high, plank sidewalks were slippery with it, and foot pa.s.sengers when forced to leave them sank far up their long boots; one or two of the stores were almost cut off by the pools. It rained between gleams of sunshine, and ma.s.ses of dark cloud rolled by above the dripping town and wet prairie, which had turned a dingy gray.
As he was proceeding along one sidewalk, George met Hardie, and it struck him that the man was looking dejected and worn.
"Will you come back with me and wait for supper?" he asked. "I"d be glad of a talk."
"I think not," said George. "You"re on the far side of the town and there are two streets to cross; you see, I"m going to Brandon, and I"ll take enough gumbo into the cars with me, as it is. Then my train leaves in half an hour. I suppose I mustn"t ask you to come into the Queen"s?"
"No," said the clergyman. "Our old guard won"t tolerate the smallest compromise with the enemy, and there"s a good deal to be said for their point of view. After all, half-measures have seldom much result; a man must be one thing or another. But we might try the new waiting-room at the station."
The little room proved to be dry and comparatively clean, besides being furnished with nicely made and comfortable seats. Leaning back in one near the stove, George turned to his companion.
"How are things going round here?" he asked.
"Very much as I expected; we tried and failed to apply a check in time, and of late we have had a regular outbreak of lawlessness. At first sight, it"s curious, considering that three-fourths of the inhabitants of the district are steady, industrious folk, and a proportion of the rest are capable of being useful citizens."
"Then how do you account for the disorder?"
Hardie looked thoughtful.
"I suppose we all have a tendency to follow a lead, which is often useful in an organized state of society; though it depends on the lead.
By way of counter-balance, we have a certain impatience of restraint.
Granting this, you can see that when the general tone of a place is one of sobriety and order, people who have not much love for either find it more or less easy to conform. But, if you set them a different example, one that slackens restrictions instead of imposing them, they"ll follow it, and it somehow seems to be the rule that the turbulent element exerts the stronger influence. Anyway, it becomes the more prominent. You hear of the fellow who steals a horse in a daring manner; the man who quietly goes on with his plowing excites no notice."
"One must agree with that," George replied. "Popular feeling"s fickle; a constant standard is needed to adjust it by."
Hardie smiled.
"It was given us long ago. But I can"t believe that there"s much general sympathy with these troublesome fellows. What I complain of is popular apathy; n.o.body feels it his business to interfere; though this state of things can"t continue. The patience of respectable people will wear out; and then one can look for drastic developments."
"In the meanwhile, the other crowd are having their fling."
Hardie nodded.
"That"s unfortunately true, though the lawbreakers have now and then come off second-best. A few days ago, Wilkie, the station-agent, was sitting in his office when a man who had some grievance against the railroad walked up to the window. Wilkie told him he must send his claim to Winnipeg, and the fellow retorted that he would have satisfaction right away out of the agent"s hide. With that, he climbed in through the window; and I must confess to a feeling of satisfaction when I heard that he left the station in need of medical a.s.sistance. A week earlier, Taunton, of the store, was walking home along the track in the dark after collecting some of his accounts, when a man jumped out from behind a stock of ties with a pistol and demanded his wallet.
Taunton, taken by surprise, produced a wad of bills, but the thief was a little too eager or careless in seizing them, for Taunton grabbed the pistol and got his money back. After that, he marched the man three miles along the track and into his store. I don"t know what happened then, but I heard that there were traces of a pretty lively scuffle."
George laughed, but his companion continued more gravely:
"Then we have had a number of small disturbances when the men from the new link line came into town--they"ve graded the track to within a few miles now--and I hold Beamish responsible; they haven"t encouraged these fellows at the Queen"s. In fact, I mean to walk over and try to get a few words with them as soon as I leave you."
"One would hardly think Sat.u.r.day evening a very good time," George commented.
His train came in shortly afterward, and when it had gone Hardie went home for a rubber coat, and then took the trail leading out of the settlement. He was forced to trudge through the tangled gra.s.s beside it because the soft gumbo soil stuck to his boots in great black lumps, and the patches of dwarf brush through which he must smash made progress laborious. After a while, however, he saw a long trail of black smoke ahead, and sounds of distant activity grew steadily louder.
There was an angry red glare on the western horizon, though the light was beginning to fade, when he reached the end of the new line and found a crowd of men distributing piles of gravel and spiking down the rails which ran back, gleaming in the sunset, lurid, straight and level, across the expanse of gra.s.s, until they were lost in the shadowy ma.s.s of a bluff. Near the men stood a few jaded teams and miry wagons; farther on a row of freight-cars occupied a side-track, a little smoke rising from the stacks on the roofs of one or two. Their doors were open, and on pa.s.sing, Hardie noticed the dirty blue blankets and the litter of wet clothing in the rude bunks. As he approached the last car, which served as store and office, a man sprang down upon the line.
He wore wet long boots and an old rubber coat stained with soil, but there was a stamp of authority upon his bronzed face.
"How are you getting on, Mr. Farren?" Hardie inquired.
"Slowly," said the other; "can"t catch up on schedule contract time.
We"ve had rain and heavy soil ever since we began. The boys have been giving me some trouble, too."
"You won"t mind my having a few words with them?"
"Why, no," said Farren. "Guess they need it; but I"m most afraid you"ll be wasting time. The Scandinavians, who"re quiet enough and might agree with you, can"t understand, and it"s quite likely that the crowd you want to get at won"t listen. Anyway, you can try it after they"ve dubbed the load off the gravel train; she"s coming now."
He pointed toward a smear of smoke that trailed away across the prairie. It grew rapidly blacker and nearer, and presently a grimy locomotive with a long string of clattering cars behind it came down the uneven track. It had hardly stopped when the sides of the low cars dropped, and a plow moved forward from one to another, hurling off ma.s.ses of gravel that fell with a roar. Then the train, backing out, came to a standstill again, and a swarm of men became busy about the line. Dusk was falling, but the blaze of the great electric light on the locomotive streamed along the track. While Hardie stood watching, half a dozen men dropped their tools and walked up to his companion.
"We"re through with our lot," announced one. "We"re going to the b.u.t.te and we"ll trouble you for a sub of two dollars a man."