The Land of Frozen Suns Part 5

"I meant _that_," he nodded to the glowing horizon. "But I daresay a man gets little pleasure out of a red sky when he is set afoot in a horseless land. It will pay you, my friend, to keep your horse between your legs hereafter."

"He threw me," I confessed. "Where did you catch him? And how did you find me?"

"I thought he had slipped his pack, by the tied-up reins," said Barreau.

"As for catching him and finding you, that was an easy matter. He ran fairly into me, and I had only to look about for a man walking."

"Well," I returned, taking my sorrel by the rope, "I'm properly grateful for your help. And I have another matter to thank you for, if I am not badly mistaken."

He made a slight gesture of deprecation. "Never mind that," said he. His att.i.tude was no encouragement to profuse thanks, if I had contemplated such.

I turned then to inspect my saddle, and found fresh cause for perplexity. By some means my supply of bread and beef had been shaken from its fastening. The bit of sack hung slack in the strings, but the food was gone. He looked down inquiringly, at my exclamation.

"More of my luck," said I, and explained.

"Might I ask," said he, after a moment of thoughtful scrutiny, "where you are bound for?"

"It's no secret," I replied. "I'm for the MacLeod country; over the line."

"Then you may as well ride with me this evening," he invited. "It is only a few miles to the Sanders ranch; you will be that much farther on your way. I can vouch for their hospitality."

I hesitated, for obvious reasons. He smiled, as if he read my mind. And all in a breath I yielded to some subtle confidence-compelling quality of the man, and blurted out my story; the killing of Tupper, that is, and how the Circle men had aided me.

"I guessed at something of the sort," he remarked. "You are new at the game, and you bear the ear-marks of a man on the dodge. We are a rowdy lot out here sometimes, and we can't always settle our disputes by word of mouth; so that I think you will find most of us inclined to look lightly on what seems to you a serious affair indeed. Tupper had it in store for him; Speer too, for all of that, and many another brute on those river craft. You haven't much to worry about. Very likely Benton has forgotten the thing by now-unless Bax and Matt Dunn's men locked horns over it. Of course there is the chance that the Benton and St.

Louis Company may hound you for killing one of their officers. But there's no fear of their coming to Sanders' after you-not to-night; and to-morrow, and all the other to-morrows, you can take things as they come. That's the best philosophy for the plains."

He swung a half-mile to the east, and picked up a pack-horse he had left when he took after my mount. Thereafter we loped north in the falling dusk, Barreau riding mute after his long speech, and I, perforce, following his example. At length we drew up at the ranch, a vague huddle of low buildings set in the bend of a creek. Barreau appeared to be quite familiar with the place. Even in the gloom he went straight to the bars of a small, round corral. In this we tied our horses, throwing them hay from a new-made stack close by. Then he led the way to a lighted cabin.

Barreau pushed open the door and walked in without ceremony. Two men were in the room; one lying upon a bunk, the other sitting with his spurred heels on the corner of a table. Each of them looked up at my companion, and both in one breath declared:

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if it ain't Slowfoot!"

After that there was more or less desultory talk, mostly impersonal-no questions pertinent to myself troubled the tongues of either man. One built a fire and cooked us a hot supper. The other made down a bed in one corner of the cabin, and upon this, at the close of the meal Barreau and I lay down to rest.

A jolt in the ribs and the flash of a light in my eyes brought me to a sitting posture later in the night. Sleep-heavy, what of the strenuous events that had gone before, it took me a full half-minute to get my bearings. And then I saw that three men in scarlet jackets held the two Sanders under their guns, while Barreau stood backed against the cabin wall with his hands held above his head. Even so it seemed to me that he was regarding the whole proceeding with a distinct curl to his lip.

"Come alive now, old chap, and don't cut up rusty-it won't do a bit o'

good," one of these oddly dressed strangers was admonishing; and it dawned upon me that I, too, was included in the threatening sweep of their firearms. "Get into your clothes, old chap."

It is astonishing-afterward-how much and how quickly one can reflect in a few fleeting seconds. A mult.i.tude of ideas swarmed in my brain. Plans to resist, to escape, half formed and were as instantaneously discarded.

Among the jumble it occurred to me that I could scarcely be wanted for that Benton affair-my capture could scarcely be the cause of such a display. No, thought I, there must be more to it than that. Otherwise, Barreau and the two Sanders would not have been meddled with. Of course, I did not come to this conclusion of deliberate thought; it was more of an impression, perhaps I should say intuition, and yet I seemed to have viewed the odd circ.u.mstance from every angle in the brief time it took me to lay hold of my clothes. The queer sardonic expression lingered about Barreau's lips all the while I dressed.

Presently I was clothed. Then the red-coated men mustered the four of us outside, by the light of a lantern. And two of them stood by the doorway and snapped a pair of handcuffs about the wrists of each of us as we pa.s.sed out.

"Now," said one of them, "you Sanders chaps know what horses you'd care to ride, and what stock Slowfoot George has here. So one of you can come to the stable wi' me and saddle up."

He took the youngest man, and went trailing him up in the uncertain light till both of them were utterly gone. After something of a wait they appeared, leading Barreau's horse and mine and two others. In the interim I had had time to count noses. There was a man apiece for the four of us, and one off behind the cabin holding the raiders'

saddlestock. We stood there like so many pieces of uncouth statuary, no one seeming to have any inclination for talk, until the saddled horses came up. Then both the Sanders found their tongues in behalf of me.

"Look a-here, sergeant," said the one, "yuh ain't got any business over here, and yuh know it. Even if yuh did, this kid don't belong in the crowd. You're after us and yuh got us, but you've no call to meddle with him."

"That's right," his brother put in. "I don't know him from Adam. He just drifted in and camped overnight at the ranch."

"I say y'know, that's a bit strong," the sergeant returned. "'Birds of a feather,' y'know. I shan't take any chances. You're too hard a lot, Sanders; you and your friend Slowfoot George."

Thus he left no room for argument; and in a few minutes the four of us were in the saddle and on the move, a Mounted Policeman jogging at the elbow of each man.

At the end of half an hour's progress, as we crossed a fairly level stretch of plain, we came to a little cairn of rocks; and when we had pa.s.sed it the sergeant pulled up his horse and faced about. The moon was up, and the earth and the cairn and even our features stood out clear in the silvery glow.

"John Sanders, Walter Sanders, George Brown alias Slowfoot George, and one John Doe, in the Queen's name I arrest you," he addressed us perfunctorily.

A trooper snickered, and Barreau laughed out loud.

"Routine-routine and red tape, even in this rotten deal," I heard Slowfoot murmur, when his laugh hushed. And on the other side of me Walt Sanders raised in his stirrups and cried hotly:

"You dirty dogs! Some day I'll make yuh d.a.m.ned sorry yuh didn't keep your own side of the line to-night."

Of this the sergeant took no notice. He shook his horse into a trot, and prisoners and guard elbow to elbow, we moved on.

CHAPTER VII-THE SEAT OF THE SCORNFUL

"Destiny lurks in obscure places and emerges therefrom to seize upon us unawares."

Barreau launched this epigrammatic sentence in the profound quiet of a cell in the MacLeod guardhouse. For that is the pa.s.s we came to: a six by eight housing of stout planks for the pair of us, food of indifferent quality in none too generous rations, and the keen eye of an armed guard in the background. For two days we had brooded in this cage, like any common felons.

Of the intervening time there is nothing worthy of chronicling. During the time it took Sergeant Hubbel and his troopers to bring us in we rode, ate, slept, and rode again, and little else befell. If Barreau and the two Sanders worried over the outcome, if they indulged any thought of escape, or laid plans to that end, they kept these things to themselves. I perforce, did likewise. Altogether, we were a company of few words. And one evening, when dusk was closing in, the journey ended, and we lay down to sleep with barred doors and windows between us and other men.

Little as we spoke I gathered stray odds and ends of the affair, and pieced them as best I could. Most of it came from the troopers. After all, the thing was simple enough. At that time the sale of liquor was strictly prohibited in the Canadian Territories, and naturally whisky was at a premium. Thus the Sanders ranch, lying just across the American line, furnished an ideal base of operations for men inclined to gather in the shekels of the thirsty. Proof of the traffic in contraband whisky lay ready for use, at least so the Policemen had it-but they could never catch the wily Sanders brothers on the right side of the boundary. So with a fine disregard for all but the object to be gained, they violated an international technicality. The result justified the raid; that is, from the Mounted Police point of view. My arrest followed logically, from the company I was in. Barreau's connection, however, was a little beyond me. "Slowfoot George," as they called him, came in for cautious handling. Not once were his wrists free of the steel bands till the guardhouse door closed upon him. From this, and certain pointed remarks that I failed to catch in their entirety, I conceived the idea that he was wanted for worse than whisky-running. But like the other two, Barreau neither denied nor affirmed. Once the sergeant tried to draw him out and the curl of his lip and a caustic word or two cut short the Policeman's effort.

Our "apartment" was singularly free from furniture. A wide plank ranged on either side, and a few not overclean quilts served for a bed. There was no room for more in that vile box. I had managed to get paper and a pen from the guard, and was curled up on my plank setting forth in a letter to Bolton all the unbelievable things that had occurred, when Barreau uttered his observation anent the workings of Destiny. Something in the way he spoke caused me to look up, and I saw that he was looking fixedly out into the guard-room through the grated opening in our cell door. There was none too much light, but with what there was I made out a paleness of face and a compression of his lips that were strangely at odds with his general bearing.

"What now?" I asked, wondering at the sudden change in him.

"Something I had hoped to be spared," he said under his breath; more to himself than to me. Then he turned his eyes from the little window, drew up his knees till his fingers locked before them, and so sat hunched against the wall. Wholly absorbed in my letter-writing I had heard nothing out of the common. Now I distinguished voices, the deep tones of a man and following that the clear treble of a woman. During a brief interval of quiet she laughed, and after that I heard footsteps coming toward the row, out of which our cell faced.

Presently the shadow of them darkened the little window in our door. The red coat of the guard pa.s.sed. Barreau shifted uneasily. I, too, leaned forward listening to the light footfall drawing near, for I had a vivid recollection of that voice-or one that was its twin. It did not seem strange that she should be there; Benton is not so far from MacLeod in that land of great distances. And my recollection was not at fault. An instant later her small, elfish face bent to the opening and she peered in on us-as one who views caged beasts of the jungle.

But there was none of the human fear of wild things in her att.i.tude.

"So," she said coolly, tucking a lock of hair under the same ridiculous little cap she had worn on the _Moon_, "this is how the Northwest would have you, is it, Mr. Bar-Mr. Brown. Alas! 'To what base uses we do return.' I cannot say you have my sympathy."

"If that is the least cruel thing you can say," Barreau flung back at her, putting his feet on the floor and resting his hands on the edge of his seat, "I thank you. But my trail is my own, and I have never yet asked you to follow in my stumbling footsteps."

She colored at that, and from where I sat I could see the Police guard lift his eyebrows inquiringly. But she had other shafts at hand.