Sergeant Silk the Prairie Scout Part 22

He led the way into the circle and stood there, quietly rolling a cigarette while he casually glanced round at the men. They were all of the ordinary type of lumber-jack--grim-featured, keen-eyed, weather-beaten.

All wore thick woollen trousers stuffed into the tops of their knee boots, and their boots were furnished with formidable spikes to enable them to get secure foothold on the floating logs upon which they worked.

In their perilous climbing about the jammed tree trunks many of them had got wet through, and as they sat within the warmth of the fire the steam from their drying clothes mingled with the smoke from their tobacco pipes.

"Say, we was just talkin' 'bout you, Sergeant," said one of them as Silk bent over and took up a flaming twig.

"Indeed?" nodded the officer, puffing thoughtfully at his cigarette.

"Yep," went on the spokesman. "Andy O'Reilly thar' was kinder relievin'

hisself of the opinion as you boys of the Mounted P'lice have got a whole lot too much power in your hands."

Sergeant Silk looked across at the man indicated.

"Y'see," said Andy O'Reilly, "you kin do pretty nigh anythin', an' you kin do it without waitin' for orders. n.o.body durst hinder you. You kin enter any house you like, an' search it through an' through. You kin apprehend a man without a warrant. You've even got authority to kill.

You've got all the power of the Russian secret police."

"Exactly," Silk acknowledged, seating himself on one of the logs and making room beside him for Percy Rapson. "I don't deny we have a very considerable amount of power, one way and another. But I guess, after all, it's for the ultimate good of the community. It's all in the interests of public security. What?"

"Just my argyment," declared the first speaker, rescuing a flagon of tea from the edge of the fire. "An' them as complains, they dunno what they're talkin' about. They'd have cause ter grumble supposin' that power was abused--if ever the wrong man was arrested or if the guilty one was ever allowed ter escape."

"As to that," rejoined Silk, "we are all liable to make mistakes. I have known a case or two of wrongful arrest, and I won't say that we have invariably succeeded in bringing criminals to justice. Some of them have escaped."

"Yes," resumed O'Reilly, "thar's no denyin' as some of 'em escape. With all your power and cleverness, you've let a-many of 'em slip through your fingers. Thar's was the business of Lost Horse Meadow was never cleared up. Thar's was the post-office robbery at Coyote Landing, which is still a mystery. And, say, wasn't it yourself that had that same job in hand? I kinder recollect hearin' your name mentioned."

"That is so," Sergeant Silk signified. "It happened two winters ago, and, as you say, it is still a mystery, and likely to remain one."

"Don't know as I ever heard tell of that story," said the man who had spoken first, pouring some hot tea into a gallipot. His name was Bob Wilson. He was foreman of a gang of lumber-jacks.

Percy Rapson noticed that Sergeant Silk again glanced slowly round the circle of fire-lit faces, and that his gaze lingered with curious, furtive scrutiny upon the face of Eben Sharrow.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MAN THAT THE WOLVES SPARED

"Won't you tell us about it, Sergeant?" Percy urged.

Silk puffed for a few moments at his cigarette.

"There isn't a great deal to tell," he responded quietly. He leant forward, resting an elbow on his knees.

"Yes," he began, "I was in charge of the case, and I failed to make an arrest. But, you see, I didn't arrive on the scene until a longish while after the thing had happened, and the culprit had got off, leaving no clue that could be of the slightest value in following him up.

"I was at the depot at Soldier's Knee, alone, as it happened, except for my chum, Dave Stoddart, who was asleep in his bunk. It was a bitterly cold winter's night outside, with a wild wind blowing out of the north and whistling weirdly in the pine trees round about the old timber-built shack that served as a police station. But inside it was warm enough. I had kept a good fire burning in the stove, and I sat in front of it, reading by the light of the hanging lamp.

"There wasn't any great need for me to keep awake, and, as I'd been out on a long patrol during the day and was weary, I began to nod over the book. You see, it wasn't very interesting, and I'd read it before--knew it almost by heart. But, for all that, I didn't want to fall asleep, and there was one thing that kept me awake, even if the book failed.

"On the previous night we'd been disturbed by the yapping of a pack of hungry wolves that were nosing around the end of the shanty, where we kept our store of cariboo hams and other grub, and on this particular night of which I'm telling you I was waiting and listening, expecting those wolves to pay us another visit. But they didn't seem to be in any hurry.

"It was just about midnight when they came sniffing around. Through the little window I could see their dark shapes moving to and fro in the moonlight. One of them was bold enough to come up and look in at me with its staring, glistening green eyes, and I was about to open the loophole and fire a shot at him when from behind me there sounded the tinkling of the telephone bell.

"There was something of a command about the summons. It was unusual for us to be rung up at that time of night. I wondered what was up. I went to the instrument and took hold of the receiver.

"'Yes,' I called. 'Who's there? I'm Sergeant Silk, at Soldier's Knee.

Who are you?'

"The answer came in a strained, broken voice of agitation, beginning in an eager whisper that I could barely hear amid the soughing of the wind and the howling of the wolves, and ending on the last word in a positive scream of bodily distress and pain--

"'Coyote Landing--post office--quick! Send help! There's a chap in here robbing the mail bags. Listen! Do you hear? Quick! Help! Oh, help!'"

Sergeant Silk paused to light a new cigarette. His listeners drew nearer to him--all of them but Eben Sharrow, who seemed to be having some trouble in cleaning out his pipe.

"That was all that he said," Silk resumed--"all the words that I could hear. But I knew his voice. It was the voice of Will Bonner, the postal agent at Coyote Landing, and he had said enough to let me know that it wasn't only the mails that were in danger. There was an awful, choking sound, followed by a piercing cry of agony. And then all was suddenly silent. Try how I would, I couldn't get another word from that telephone."

"Perhaps the instrument was broken," interrupted Percy Rapson.

"Exactly," Silk nodded. "The wires had been cut, as I found when I got there."

"Then you went?" inquired Percy. "You went, although you knew it must be too late?"

"Why, cert'nly. I went right at once, leaving Dave Stoddart in charge, with his gun handy to keep off the wolves. But the wolves gave him no trouble, as it happened. They didn't hang around trying to get at pickled cariboo hams when there was a chance of their downing a live horse and an equally live human."

"Say, I guess those wolves follered on your trail," interposed Bob Wilson, blowing audibly into his pot of hot tea.

"Guess they just did," smiled Sergeant Silk. "Some of them followed me all the way, right over the mountain trail, a matter of twelve rough, lonesome miles. Others of them kind of broke off. They got lamed or maimed. There was a good many pistol bullets flying around, see? My bandolier was pretty well empty by the time I came in sight of the station at Coyote Landing."

Percy Rapson touched him on the knee and invited him to give fuller details of that exciting chase over the moonlit mountains. Percy was always curiously interested in stories of wolves. But Sergeant Silk shook his head and kept to the main thread of his story.

"The shack was in darkness when I rode up to it," he went on. "But the door was wide open, and there was still a smoulder of fire in the stove.

There was a smell of burnt paper. In the middle of the floor a bag of mails had been emptied, and some of the letters and news-sheets were charred, showing that the robber, whoever he was, had tried to set fire to the place, and so destroy the signs of what he had done.

"But he hadn't waited to complete his work. I guess he was anxious to quit with the registered letters that he had taken from the safe. And then there was the other thing that he must sure have wanted to shut out from his sight. It wasn't pretty. There were red stains everywhere, and beyond the pile of scattered papers lay poor little Will Bonner, with the broken telephone receiver still gripped in his lifeless fist, while his gla.s.sy, half-closed eyes seemed to be staring out at the moon."

Sergeant Silk paused once more to puff at his cigarette.

"Do you mean he was dead?" questioned Percy Rapson, looking aside into the sergeant's handsome face.

"Exactly," resumed Silk. "You see, he was a weak little man, and he hadn't been able to defend himself against a desperate thief, who didn't care what he did so long as he got the particular registered letter that he was after. And Will was a peaceable, timid little chap at all times.

He might have defended himself all right if he'd only remembered the loaded revolver that he kept for such occasions in his desk; but I guess he clean forgot it when the emergency came, and I question if he'd ever pulled a trigger in all his innocent life."

"Ah!" broke in Bob Wilson. "And what about the chap as done it, Sergeant? He couldn't have got so very far away by the time you came on the scene, and yet you never got on his trail, never found out who he was?"

Sergeant Silk shook his head.