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By the Same Author

Printed in Great Britain by Ebenezer Baylis and Son, Ltd., Worcester and London

It was the height of the tourist season, and Winnipeg overflowed with visitors. At ten o’clock in the morning of a bright July day the streets were crowded. A double section of the westbound Transcontinental train was passing there an eastbound, and the three loaded trains spilled their passengers for a two-hour wait before resuming their journeys. It left time for a leisurely stroll along Portage Avenue and Main Streets for a last and a first view of “the Westerners”, the Canadians whose individuality is supposed to have altered the moment they reached Winnipeg.

The shops were long since open, prepared for expected patronage. The time locks in the bank vaults had released their levers, and the tellers were arranging piles of bills in drawers within their cages and on counters beside them, preparing for the day’s business. But tourists on such a short visit meant nothing to them, and as yet only three customers had entered the —— Bank, the largest on Portage Avenue. The manager stood outside his office door, discussing with his accountant a suggested re-arrangement of offices.

A humdrum morning. Two of the clerks, stifling yawns, winked at each other, recalling the dance of the night before that had sent them home too late to change more than their outer garments.

The street door opened. No one within the bank was interested enough, or idle enough, to pay attention. Even the three customers standing before the wickets of the three tellers’ cages kept on waiting.

Two men had entered, squeezing through the doorway side by side. Close behind came a third.

Even as the door closed, with swift, practised movements, the trio slipped cloth masks over their faces, and through the masks three pair of eyes swept swiftly about the large room. Three guns were in sight, held in three steady hands.

One, evidently the leader, stepped briskly toward the manager, gun pointing. “This is a hold-up,” he announced. Every movement within the bank stopped, every eye turned and fixed itself on the nearest ready gun. Yet so quiet was the voice that the manager and the accountant just stood and stared—and swallowed, incredulous and voiceless.

The other pair of strangers had taken positions with equal calmness and efficiency, covering all the clerks with their guns.

“Down on the floor, you five out here,” ordered the leader, “face down.” He motioned with his free hand to the two before him, and to the three surprised customers. “Keep in sight,” he ordered of the clerks behind the counters.

The five on the outer floor sank to their knees and lay down, arms outstretched.

“One!” snapped the leader.

Instantly one of his companions ran forward and leaped the counter. There he stood covering the clerks from behind.

“Two!”

The third stranger followed. He stepped up to the locked door of one of the cages, and his waving gun required no spoken order. The teller unlocked the door and stepped outside, raising his hands.

“Three!”

The one who had threatened him stepped into the cage, at the same time drawing a cloth bag from his pocket. In three swift movements he cleaned the cage out, sweeping into the bag the loose bills on the counter, and the piles from one of the drawers. The other was empty. Not a waste movement.

At that moment the leader whirled about, and a shot rang out. The bullet whistled through the bars of the third cage, where the teller, thinking himself unobserved, had reached for his gun. So close to his head passed the bullet that the gun tumbled from his hand, and his arms shot into the air. Trembling, he waited, licking his dry lips, his eyes bulging with terror.

A low chuckle broke through the leader’s mask. “That’s foolish,” he said, “very foolish. These are not toy guns.” As if to prove it, he sent three bullets in a circle about the teller’s head.

The outer door opened once more, and a woman, carrying a baby, entered.

At the sound the leader’s gun swept around, but when he saw who it was, the gun fell away and he bowed. “Madame,” he said, “please take a chair.” He pointed to one standing before a small desk in the corner. “A scene for the movies,” he laughed, “but we don’t pay, and we don’t charge.”

In the meantime the two other cages had been entered and cleared.

The leader turned. “Four!” The tone was different now, crisp and imperative.

As if he had touched springs in them, the two behind the counter leaped back into the open floor and started for the door. The leader did not move, keeping everyone covered with his gun. Then he backed after his companions.

“The door outside will be covered with one of us for two minutes,” he snapped.

Then he vanished to the street.

The dazed manager turned his head slowly and looked toward the door. For fully a minute the terrified tellers remained numb with terror. Suddenly the manager leaped to his feet, raced to his office, and appeared with a gun. Followed by the tellers, all now carrying guns, he reached the door, hesitated to take a long breath, and pulled it open.

It was still a lovely bright day outside, and the crowd was greater than ever—a crowd that had completely swallowed the robbers, so completely that when the police arrived there was nothing to do but curse. No one within the bank had seen a face, and in dress the robbers might have been any of the thousands who sauntered through the streets outside, entirely unaware that anything dramatic had occurred.

The very simplicity of the whole affair, its speedy efficiency, made pursuit hopeless.

Two days later, more than six hundred miles away, Inspector Barker, head of the Medicine Hat Detachment of the Mounted Police, arrived at his office bright and early, even brighter and earlier than usual. On the way down he had collected the morning mail from the Mounted Police box at the Post Office. There was a handful of letters and circulars, but, above all, there was the Winnipeg Free Press. Letters, even official letters, must stand aside for the news of the day. That first hour in the office, with the newspaper spread on the desk before him, was the Inspector’s one dissipation, his solitary relaxation, and nothing that was not of the utmost urgency was permitted to interfere with it.

On the way from the Post Office he had automatically separated the newspaper from the letters, so that when he tossed the latter to the back of the desk and dropped the newspaper directly before his chair, his eye caught the large, black-face heading on the front page: “Bank Robbery on Portage.” And beneath it, in smaller letters but bold enough to read at a glance: “Robbers escape with $4,000.”

His hand went automatically to his cap and removed it, but he did not take his eyes from those staring headlines as he flung it toward the nail on which it usually hung. The blood tingled beneath his scalp and raced up and down his spine. He wouldn’t have admitted it, couldn’t have explained it, for Winnipeg was a long way off, and there had been other bank robberies during the past month, further east, of course. Winnipeg—well, that was the West, after all, and in a vague sort of way he felt inexplicably concerned.

Slowly he dropped into the rickety swivel chair, his eyes never leaving the newspaper. He picked it up, stretched his legs beneath the desk, and commenced to read.

They had good reporters on the Free Press, and they had utilized every slant to make the affair appear more dramatic. It was a real spread, for, of course, Winnipeg had never had anything like it before. The reporters had interviewed everyone who had been in the bank at the time, had even tried to get something worth while from pedestrians who must have passed the bank while the robbery was in progress. The police had talked freely, sensitive to the lack of clues and to their helplessness.

Some of the stories, whether originating with the reporters or those interviewed, were—well, imaginative.

Every word of it sank into the Inspector. Somehow they were all important to him. Now and then he clacked his lips as he read, and his feet shifted nervously over the worn floor.

A shadow crossed the window before him, and the front door of the barracks opened and closed. Firm steps moved along the hall outside his room.

He called out: “That you, Sergeant?”

The office door opened, and a youthful, straight-backed Mounted Policeman stood silently looking in at him.

“Come in, Mahon, and sit down. Look at this.”

He tapped the newspaper before him and turned it for the Sergeant to see.

Mahon bent over it and read but said nothing.

The Inspector clacked his lips. “In Winnipeg, mind you! A bank robbery! Got clear away—with four thousand dollars! That’s getting too near home to be comfortable.”

As if realizing that he had over-dramatized the affair, he laughed shortly. “Some funny features to it, too—at least, if one can believe the reporters. I know the breed, though, thank goodness, we don’t suffer much from them here. The Free Press surely went to town on the affair. Must have put their whole staff on it.

“One could scarcely blame them. In a big city like that . . . and all carried through so speedily and quietly—barring the shooting they make so much of! There were four shots, and they came so close to one of the tellers without hitting him that the reporters seem to think the robber who fired them was just showing how close he could miss; he didn’t intend to kill anyone.

“One reporter calls them the Number Gang, because the whole operation was carried through on orders that were mere numbers. There wasn’t enough talking to be much help, it seems. In fact, two of the robbers didn’t open their lips. It was like a military operation, no fuss, no special hurry, yet not a useless step was taken. They must have rehearsed it well beforehand.”

He frowned. “By the way, that’s something like a couple of recent robberies in the East, if I remember rightly. Numbers—yes, that’s the same gang. Sounds as if they’re doing the whole country. . . . And in such a big city!” He shook his head incredulously. “To think they got clean away! Not a clue.”

“What time of the day was it, sir?” inquired Mahon.

“Just after opening, day before yesterday.”

Mahon shook his head. “They could mingle with the street crowd at that hour, I suppose. Winnipeg must be a busy place these days.”

“Yes, that’s what lets the police off a bit—the big crowd. . . . But, after all, it wouldn’t be difficult. The manager and the customers were made to lie down. There’d be a minute or two before they’d get their nerve back to give chase, and by that time the robbers would be well away. Why, right out here—there on Toronto Street—with a crowd on the street, and the robbers wearing masks inside the bank, they might get away. There are always lots of strangers on the streets at this time of the year. . . . And they wore masks, so no one could see a feature. As to descriptions—what the clerks could remember, so frightened and all that—well, you know how little we’re able to rely on the descriptions onlookers give us. With those bullets, too, those chaps would be so frightened they’d hardly be able to talk.”

His eyes hardened as they turned more directly on the Sergeant. “You know, that’s the first bank robbery we’ve had in the West since that one at Red Deer, the one Blue Pete broke up.” A slow smile passed over his weathered face. “Too bad they didn’t have someone like Blue Pete in Winnipeg that day.”

“He could scarcely have done much, sir, I’m afraid,” said Mahon, with a smile.

Inspector Barker shrugged. “Oh, he’d find some way to run them down. . . . You know, it disturbs me, this robbery. I know it’s a long way off, but it’s out here in the West, and it appears to be one of a series by the same gang.”

“They’d scarcely dare to try it here, sir, don’t you think—not if they depended on a crowd to make their escape?”

“They tried it in Red Deer, and Red Deer’s a smaller place than this.”

Mahon considered it. “Of course at night they might escape—for a time. But where could they go? . . . Unless they could get on to Calgary before we caught up with them. I think we could make it unhealthy for them.”

The Inspector grunted. “You talk almost as if you’d dare them to try it. Don’t be foolish, Mahon.”

“But you don’t think, sir, not seriously, that they’d try it?”

“All I’m thinking is that we must be prepared. A million preparations are better than one robbery. By the way,”—he turned to Mahon—“where’s that half-breed friend of yours anyway? I haven’t heard of him for weeks.”

“You mean Blue Pete, sir?”

“Who else? I wasn’t aware that any of us had other half-breed friends. Usually we don’t like them. In fact, he seems to be your special friend, not ours. There are times when I wish I’d never heard of him. Oh, yes, I know,” as Mahon started to protest. “There are other times when I’d hate to be without him. Well, where is he? Have you seen him lately?”

“Not for several weeks, sir. The last time I was out at the 3-Bar-Y he wasn’t there.”

“Where was he?”

“Mira said something about him being out with Texas, sir, hunting new range. It sounded a trifle vague, I admit, but she seldom does know where he is. He’s got into the habit of not telling her, because he doesn’t want her to fret.”

“What is there to fret about in searching for a new range?”

“It isn’t that, but we use him so often that he finds it best not to tell her anything. If she knew when he’s working for us, she’d fret, because she knows how dangerous it is; so he doesn’t tell her anything.”

The Inspector frowned down on the blotter on his desk for several seconds. “Well, I do the fretting myself when I’m out of touch with him for any length of time. I’d like to know about him now.”

Mahon smiled. “He’d scarcely be useful, sir, in the Winnipeg robbery. Or do you want him on hand in case the robbers attempt it here?”

“Don’t for Heaven’s sake suggest such a thing,” growled the Inspector. “I don’t want even to think of it. . . . Just the same—these fellows don’t seem at all reluctant to use their guns. Those bullets that went so close to the teller, all around his head, may have been misses, not show-offs. The next one might be straighter . . . and we don’t want it in this district. Indeed, I don’t want to be forced myself to shoot to hit, and we’d certainly have to do it if——” He stopped and cleared his throat in some confusion. “Confound you, Mahon, you brought it up.

“Just the same I want to know where Blue Pete is, and what he is doing. I’m always anxious about him when I’ve nothing for him to do. Idle hands with him are dangerous. He has too colourful a past to forget it, and we want him to, want it badly. He must be getting fidgety without work to do for us, so we must try to keep him busy . . . or at least keep an eye on him. I can’t manufacture crimes for him to clear up, but I always feel safer when he’s busy doing it. At least I know then where he is.”

“I don’t think, sir,” Mahon told him, “that you need worry about him.”

“Huh! I know you feel that way, but I don’t share the feeling. I’m responsible for what he does, either for us or not. I’m even responsible for the way he does things for us, and the only thing that saves me and him is that no one outside my men here knows he does anything for us. If even the Superintendent at Lethbridge knew! It’s shocking to think I daren’t tell him—unless he asks for him himself. . . . It’s shocking”—he winced—“that I don’t even dare to delve too deeply into the details when he works for us. That’s what gives me sleepless nights.”

“There’d be sleepless nights for all of us, sir, if we had to try ourselves to do what Blue Pete does for us, don’t you think?”

The Inspector did not reply. He sat forward in the chair, thoughtfully jabbing at the blotter with a paperknife made from an antelope horn. “I may as well confess that just at this time I’d like very much to have him where I can lay my hands on him, if he’s needed. . . . If these bank robbers come to the conclusion that the West is a safer and more profitable field for them than anywhere else, I’ll need all the help I can get. If anything like that happened around here, there’d be more trail to follow, and that’s where Blue Pete would fit into the picture.”

He shrugged and smiled wanly. “I’d hate to think what would happen when he caught up with them. There’d be embarrassing questions from the Superintendent or the Commissioner. The Mounted Police aren’t concerned with Winnipeg—as yet it’s out of their authority—but if the robbers attempted anything this side of Manitoba there’d be details asked to the last dot.”

He cleared his throat, annoyed with himself for being so frank. He tapped the newspaper. “Great newspaper, this. For the West, at any rate. Gives me more world news than all the rest put together.” He bent over the paper and read for a few moments. “Take this, for instance. Here’s something about a man who’s disappeared, not just an ordinary man, but a mining man who’s made millions and disappeared. Strange chap, it seems. In spite of the fortune he’s made no one seems to have known him well. A quiet, retiring chap who made no friends, never appeared in public life. Discovered a couple of big mines back in Northern Ontario and managed to stay out of the limelight. . . . I know some of his mines, have, indeed, a bit of stock in one; and it’s paid well.”

“Disappeared, sir, you said?”

“Yes. The police are searching for him in a half-hearted way, though no one has called them in. He had no relatives or friends to do that. The police aren’t convinced of foul play, or anything like that, but no one appears to have seen him for weeks. The place where he stayed knows nothing. He just pulled out. Left his things, too, yet seems to have known he would be gone for a long time. Terry Lawrence is his name. Bits of news like that are always interesting. It comes within the realms of the police. Not of me, of course, but it does interest me.”

He frowned and shook his shoulders. “But that’s not part of our business just now. What I want is to get in touch with Blue Pete, and you’re the one to arrange it. I want you to go out to the 3-Bar-Y. Don’t rush about it, don’t frighten Mira. I don’t want Blue Pete to suspect how uneasy I am.”

He looked up at Mahon and smiled apologetically. “You won’t understand, I know, because you feel so sure of him.” He shrugged himself back in the chair. “I can’t explain it, but this Winnipeg affair seems to strike something in me. It makes me nervous. I hope it doesn’t mean——”

A week later he was more nervous, and justifiably. A bank in Regina was robbed by the Number Gang.

The Winnipeg Free Press carried a full report from a hard-working representative in that city. So impressive was it, so vivid, that Inspector Barker called in Sergeant Mahon once more to discuss it.

“Damn it, Mahon, now you won’t think I’m so crazy.” He saw the startled look on the Sergeant’s face and explained. “Look at that.” He struck his fist on the newspaper lying before him on the desk. “They’re moving on to the West.”

Mahon coughed. “Yes, sir. Who’s moving West?”

“Why, that Number Gang, of course, the bank robbers. They’ve come this way to Regina. The same gang, the same methods . . . the same success.” He glowered down on the newspaper. “But again,” he growled, “there are strange features about it. They don’t seem like ordinary bank robbers, and it’s confusing. It makes it difficult for the police. They’re as cool as ever—the robbers, I mean—as confident and unhurried. And right there at our own headquarters! Of course we didn’t get into it immediately, and I can imagine how the local police are boiling. . . . I wonder when the Commissioner will intervene.”

“Did they get much this time, sir?” Mahon inquired.

“At first reports it doesn’t appear to be more than a couple of thousand dollars. That’s one of the confusing features of it. There was much more lying around, but the robbers ignored it.” He thought for a moment. “I wonder if these robberies are just rehearsals for something bigger.” He cleared his throat lustily. “But that’s just plain silly. The way they go about the affairs encourages all sorts of silly conjectures, and they handicap the police.

“As usual the leader did all the talking, and that wasn’t much. The other two went about the business of collecting the money without a word, and they jumped to the numbers the leader called. They really had all the time in the world. It was the closing hour, and the bank was almost empty. Since it’s a much smaller city than Winnipeg, they took no chances of escaping in the crowd. They locked the staff and the four customers in the vault. Humph!”

Mahon was startled. “But, sir, they’d soon smother there—any size of a crowd.”

The Inspector nodded. “That’s another bewildering thing—what they did to forestall that. They saw the danger, and after they left the bank they called up the local police and told them to hurry and get the vault open. Risky business, but they got away with it. The police got the staff out all right . . . and I suppose the robbers stood outside with the crowd and grinned up their sleeves. Regina is a pretty big city and full of visitors these days. I can imagine how they felt—the police, I mean.”

He sat staring at the blotter before him, deep lines across his forehead. Mahon waited, saying nothing.

Suddenly the Inspector looked up. “You see, don’t you, where that places us? I warned you about this: they’re heading West. A gang like that, with such easy success, isn’t going to give up with a couple of robberies—not with the small amounts they got. You know, it almost looks like a game they’re playing. This side of Regina there are a lot of good-sized towns and cities to tempt them, with banks that can be robbed as easily as these last two.”

“But, sir,” Mahon interjected, “they’d have to stick to the larger towns. It wouldn’t be easy to escape from a small town where every stranger would be noticed.”

“Even at that,” the Inspector replied, “there are Moose Jaw, and Calgary, and Lethbridge, and Edmonton, and a half-dozen more, to say nothing of the Hat right here.”

He had jerked forward in his chair toward the Sergeant as he ended, and the latter looked startled.

“You mean, sir, that you still think they might try it here?”

“Why not? We’re a pretty big town, with lots of visitors . . . and there are lots of temporary hiding-places right out on the prairie. You’ve hidden yourself often enough in those coulees to know that. Anyway,” briskly, “I’m taking no chances, either here or in the villages that have banks within my district. I’ll talk it over with the banks in Irvine and Brooks, and our own two banks here. We’ll have to take special steps to protect them, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir. What special steps do you suggest?”

“I haven’t had time yet to think that out. I’m getting at it right away. One thing sure, I’m not going to give Chief Dolan a free hand. This is going to be one occasion when we assert our rights of policing the town as well as the country, no matter how large and competent the local force is.”

Several days later, in the course of routine discussions, Inspector Barker laid before the Sergeant his plans for the Mounted Police huts out toward and around the Cypress Hills.

“I think I’ll keep Murchison at the hut at Turner’s Crossing most of the time. It’s an important enough spot for us, but I may need Jenkinson in here where he’s available. He’s a good tracker.”

Mahon smiled. “Part of the special steps, is it, sir?”

“Well, if a bank robber should get out of town and away, I’d need someone who can do a bit of tracking. I don’t want to use you for that unless I have to. There are a hundred other things for you. Murchison can keep an eye on the south traffic from Turner’s Crossing . . . and it’s close enough to the Hills.”

He turned abruptly to the Sergeant. “By the way, have the wolves been bothering anyone out south?”

“Not that I’ve heard, sir.”

“Well, they’ve heard quite a lot in and around Swift Current . . . and it’s a long way from the Hills, where the wolves come from. For two or three nights they’ve been heard by citizens there, and it’s the first time for years, they say. What in the world brings them up there, and so far from the Hills, I can’t imagine. We should hear more of them right here.

“By the way, I’d like to talk that over with Blue Pete. He’d know something about it, if anyone would. If the wolves are unusually thick this year, he’d know that, too, because he spends so much time in the Hills. The only one who ever does.”

He scowled across the desk. “Hang it, Mahon, you haven’t looked him up for me yet. Yes, I know you’ve been riding further east, but I’m getting more and more curious, more anxious, about him. Now I want him without delay. Just as soon as you can get away I want you to go——”

The telephone on his desk rang, and he reached for it impatiently. “Yes, yes, this is Inspector Barker.”

Suddenly he jerked forward in his chair, and a new gleam came into his eyes.

“The same gang, you think? . . . Yes, yes, but how do you know? If the robbery took place at night—— Did anyone see them? . . . But of course you’re right: it would be the same gang. When they blew the vault open, did no one hear a sound? . . . I see. That’s the worst of having a bank away from the heart of things.”

He listened for a few minutes longer. “Well, thanks for calling me up. It’s well to be prepared. We’ll look out for them.”

Slowly he returned the telephone to its rest. He leaned his elbows on the desk and sat staring vacantly through the window before him. He sighed.

“Well,” suddenly remembering the Sergeant, “there it is, just as I said. They’re working this way.”

“It’s the Number Gang again, sir, is it? Where was it this time?”

“Right there in Swift Current, just where we were talking about. Swift Current, mind you! And that’s a much smaller town than this. . . . It means they’re ready to rob a bank anywhere.”

“I gather, sir, from what you said on the phone, that it took place at night—blew open the vault.”

“Yes, it was disgustingly simple and safe. In the first place the bank is at the edge of the town, and they first broke into the railway station freight shed and stole a number of large tarpaulins. That’s what smothered the sound.”

“Did they get much this time, sir?”

“I forgot to ask, but I’m betting they took only a small amount—another bit of mystery that gets everyone mixed up. . . . Hm-m! Funny thing, too. Some of the citizens must have been awake, because they heard those wolves again—or they said they did.”

He flung his hands out irritably. “Well, there it is. We know now they’re working their way in this direction, and we know no town is too small. If, after all this warning, they get away with anything here in the Hat, I—why, I’ll have to resign. At least I’ll feel like it. Why,” indignantly, “right here, almost within sight of my own barracks! I just couldn’t face the Superintendent—or the public either—after that. I don’t think I could face even my own wife.”

Mahon laughed. “I hope, sir, it never comes to that.”

The Inspector’s expression lightened a little. “That’s all right, Mahon. You like this work as much as I do, but if we don’t make a success of it——” He shuffled about in the shaky chair. “We must make a success of it. We must take measures—those special steps I mentioned. I’ve been thinking of them ever since, and I think I’ve an idea that might work. At least we’re going to try.”

Mahon hesitated. “Aren’t you taking this a little too seriously, sir? You seem to have convinced yourself that they’re sure to try the thing here in the Hat.”

“I’m going to act as if it’s certain, that’s all. Better unused precautions than a robbery with none tried.”

“But couldn’t we arrange something . . . something obvious, something that would convince them of the hopelessness of trying?”

The Inspector shot a scornful glance at his subordinate. “Mahon, I’d rather have them try—and be captured. That’s what I want most of all, to get them into my hands, to show Winnipeg and Regina and Swift Current that the crime that succeeded there won’t succeed here. I want to be the one to catch them and end their careers.”

Mahon felt tingles of hope and eagerness course through him. “I still don’t see, sir, how they’d have half a chance to get away with it. With the country unsettled, except for isolated ranchers, for scores of miles, it would be difficult to clear out. There isn’t a tree to hide behind, not a fence, this side of the Hills, and they wouldn’t dare show their faces at a ranch house.”

The Inspector listened, a slight smile on his lips. “You spoke of the Hills.”

“But—but they’re thirty-five miles away, and there’s the hut at Turner’s Crossing on the way.”

“If you were hard-pressed, Mahon, you’d do those thirty-five miles on Jupiter in half a dozen hours or less. And anyone who knows the location of the hut can skirt around it out of hearing distance.”

“But, sir, they wouldn’t be likely to know anything about the Hills——”

“They can see them, can’t they—anywhere within fifty miles of them? Don’t delude yourself, Mahon. They’ve studied the geography of the West before they came. That’s part of their business. By their coolness and success they prove they’ve left nothing unstudied. Now leave me alone. I must think this thing out. Hm-m! First I’m going to warn all the conductors of the trains to keep an eye on travellers.”

Mahon had reached the door when he was called back.

“But don’t forget what I said about Blue Pete. I want him. I’ve told you that, and now I won’t wait. At least find out what he’s doing and where he is.” He paused and considered. “No, I want him here. I’ve a feeling I may need him at any moment. I can’t think of anyone I need more.”

“Do you mean, sir, that I’m to bring him in, to order him in, whether he wants to come or not?”

“Of course you can’t arrest him. Tell him——” The Inspector stopped and considered for several moments. “No, don’t tell him anything. I’d rather do that myself. It isn’t likely that he ever sees a newspaper, so he won’t know anything about the robberies, and he won’t suspect why I want him. He’ll be curious. . . . You’d better start right away this evening. You’ll be able to get to Turner’s Crossing and have a good sleep. . . . No, don’t stop there. We’ll keep all this between ourselves. It’s going to be a fine night, and you like sleeping in the open. Then you’ll be able to reach the 3-Bar-Y not too late to-morrow. Now get going. I’m going to have a talk with the bank managers.”

Facing Inspector Barker was a situation that kept recurring in some form through the years, a situation that made everyone concerned uncomfortable. The Mounted Police had authority to act in defence and enforcement of the law anywhere in the Canadian West, except at that time in British Columbia and Manitoba. Nevertheless they operated as little as possible in towns and cities that had their own police.

Recognizing the formula, the Inspector made it a habit to consult with the Medicine Hat chief of police when occasions promised to arise where he might be forced to act officially. At the same time he lost no opportunity of showing that he knew and was prepared to recognize and exert his own authority. Characteristically diplomacy was difficult for him, particularly since he had been a Mounted Policeman long before Medicine Hat was of sufficient size to have its own local force.

Sometimes, too, the calibre of the local Chief disgusted him. At the present time the Chief was a puffed-up, touchy, inefficient official, by the name of Dolan, who struggled to neutralize his inefficiency by a parade of authority.

Accordingly on the way up Main Street Inspector Barker had a fight with himself. Would he proceed with his plans without discussing them with Dolan? The plans he had in mind in no way involved assistance from the local police, yet he knew it would be impossible to carry them through without Chief Dolan being aware of them. And the Inspector was honest enough to recognize that Dolan would have just cause for indignation.

With the battle raging within him, he stopped to await the finish, pausing before a store window, as if interested in the display. Behind him on the sidewalk someone laughed—and only then he noticed that the window before him contained a display of women’s underwear. With a blush and a muttered oath he hastened along the street—and to punish himself for his carelessness he set his feet directly toward the city hall—and Chief Dolan.

The Chief was at his desk, and he welcomed the Inspector with the customary coldness and suspicion, behind which showed a disposition to banter. Even as he uttered the greeting, a cynical smile twisted his face.

“Anything I can do for you, Inspector?” It was clever, containing the suggestion that the Inspector, as part of an inferior force, would require assistance.

Inspector Barker was prepared for it. He seated himself—almost insultingly—on the corner of the Chief’s desk, one foot swinging carelessly from side to side, the attitude of one sure of himself in inferior company. Yet behind it was the feeling he always had of an almost irresistible urge to take the Chief by the scruff of the neck and shake him—not to injure him, but to shake from him some of the silly pomposity.

“Not for me, Chief,” he replied, smiling gently. “I was just wondering how closely you keep in touch with these bank robberies we’ve been having lately.”

“ ‘We’ve been having?’ ” questioned the Chief. “They haven’t come near us. Winnipeg and Regina are a long way away, hundreds of miles. Bank robberies have been going on somewhere ever since I can remember. In those larger cities the banks are more exposed.”

The Inspector nodded. “Yes, those local police don’t appear very effective, do they?”

Dolan straightened indignantly. “In a city—even here in the Hat—the local police have a million things to do at every hour of the day. They can’t stand as special guards over every bank; we aren’t paid for that.”

“No, of course not,” agreed the Inspector, in the tone of one indulging a child. “We have only two banks here, so it shouldn’t be difficult. I take it you wouldn’t find it difficult to take steps to guard them, if you thought they were threatened.”

“Of course not. Of course not. If I thought there was any chance of a robbery here, I’d take steps.” He smiled, struggling to duplicate the Inspector’s indulgent smile. “But I don’t think we need to worry much—not yet. They wouldn’t attempt it in a town this size. They get away with it in the larger places like Regina and Winnipeg, but not in a place this size.”

The Inspector’s foot continued to dangle, and he flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his knee. “But they’ve got away with it . . . and in a much smaller place than the Hat. In Swift Current.”

Dolan started forward, his face red. “You mean they—they robbed a bank in—in Swift Current?”

“That’s what I said. It reached me over the telephone just before I left the barracks.”

“I—hadn’t—heard.” It was little more than a whisper.

The Inspector’s face assumed an expression of sympathy. “Of course not. But the Mounted Police will have heard all across the West. We have to keep in touch with things like that, wherever they happen throughout the West. I thought you mightn’t have heard; that’s why I came. You said just now you’d take steps, if anything like that threatened us in these parts. Swift Current’s experience brings it as a threat, don’t you think? Now that you’ve heard they’re working this way you’ll be on guard.”

He had mercifully given Dolan time to recover himself. “We’re always on guard, Inspector,” declared the Chief. “I don’t mind telling you that I’d already recognized the possibilities. I’ve taken steps. I have my plans ready for my staff.”

“Yes, I knew you wouldn’t be caught unprepared, Chief. I hope you don’t mind letting me know what the steps are, so that we won’t be working at cross-purposes.”

Dolan frowned. “Why should we? I’ll take the responsibility for the town. You’ve enough territory outside for your special duties—rustlers and all that.”

“Rustlers,” said the Inspector, “aren’t bothering us much nowadays . . . but these bank robberies do. You know we’re always ready to help you.” He looked down thoughtfully on his dangling foot. “It might just happen that things would occur when we had no time to discuss things together, so we’d better be prepared now. If I knew what your plans are?”

The flattering appeal had its effect. In the Chief’s mind a plan leaped into existence. “Though I still think bank robbers would think half a dozen times before tackling such a job here, right within a block of my office, I’m taking no chances. Until the flurry of robberies is over I’m issuing orders for one of my men always to be within sight of the two banks. That’s easy, since both are on the corner of Toronto and Fourth Avenue.”

“The Swift Current job was carried through at night,” the Inspector informed him bluntly.

Dolan cleared his throat to give himself time to think. “I’ll have a man within hearing, day and night,” he said. “I’m here all day, and I’m within call at night.” He smiled into the Inspector’s face. “I think, Inspector, you’ve no need to worry. Just leave it to us.”

Inspector Barker removed his leg from the table. “Yes, I knew you’d do something, enough to satisfy yourself. Your plans sound good. . . . Then you won’t mind if I do something that won’t interfere with your plans in any way. We can work together that way. Thank you.”

And before Dolan had made up his mind how to reply the Inspector was gone.

Outside in the hall the latter cursed under his breath. Why, he asked himself, do I rile up my temper by bothering with that little rooster? He’s made plans! He doesn’t think they’ll—he doesn’t think—period. Bah!

He stalked along Fourth Avenue. At two of the corners of Toronto Street were located the two banks. Both he visited, and for half an hour was closeted in each with the manager.

Passing down Toronto Street afterwards, he pushed open the door of the second store from the corner. In the window sat a wiry old man, at work on a bridle. Beside him lay a heap of saddles, with one on a wooden form close at hand. It was studded with semi-precious stones, and the horn was of silver.

The harness-maker raised his eyes for a moment as the Inspector entered and laid a hand on the special saddle.

The old man grunted. “You don’t want a saddle like that, Inspector. It wouldn’t fit into your business.”

“Well, I can admire it, can’t I, Hutchy?”

“If,” grunted the old man, “I could cash in on the crowd that keeps admiring it, I could keep shorter hours and feel that the debt owed me by the owner of that saddle was paid.”

“Why don’t you sell it? Many a puncher would give you big money for it—or a rancher.”

The old man made a contemptuous sound with his lips but kept on working. “There ain’t any sale for work like that these days, not to the ones I’d sell to. Some dude rancher would buy it, but I wouldn’t insult the saddle by having it used that way.”

“How’d you come to get it?”

“Took it away back twenty years ago for a debt a puncher owed me. It’s been a good advertisement.” He eyed the saddle fondly. “I wouldn’t sell it now. I want to keep it right where it is, in memory of the days when riding was an art that included saddle and bridle and even saddle-cloth—more than elaborate boots and huge Stetsons and giddy shirts and hairy chaps. Anybody that comes along Toronto Street can’t miss that saddle . . . just like I can’t miss anything that happens on Toronto Street, sitting here like this.”

Inspector Barker nodded eagerly. “That’s what I came to see you about.”

The old man stopped his work and frowned up into the other’s face.

“Sure, Hutchy, that’s how I can use you.” He stooped and looked through the window and nodded. “Yes, you can see both banks as you sit here. Now I’ll tell you what I want.” . . .

When he passed out to the street fifteen minutes later, he left a bright-eyed little old man sitting idle for a long time, a delighted grin on his weathered face. All through the day he kept breaking into low chuckles.

“Gosh darn!” he muttered. “Who’d ’a’ thought I’d be working for the Mounties at my time of life? Now isn’t that something!”

It was still daylight, though almost ten o’clock, when Sergeant Mahon rode past the Mounted Police hut at Turner’s Crossing. Constable Murchison, already stationed there, had come to the door on hearing the thud of approaching hoofs. He leaned carelessly against the door-jamb, expecting the Sergeant to ride in and dismount. When Mahon merely waved and passed on, he shouted after him in some excitement.

“Hey, what’s the big idea? Don’t you like our beds?”

“Not on a night like this,” Mahon replied. “Orders, anyway. See you on the way back.”

“Who’s done what?” Murchison inquired. “Can’t I get in on this? It’s disgustingly dull stuck here all day.”

“You couldn’t help, Murchy.” Mahon pulled in for a few moments in a wave of sympathy. “I’m sleeping to-night in the open, and don’t go getting your blood-pressure up for nothing. I was late starting, that’s all.”

He couldn’t explain. Blue Pete was certain to stop at the hut on his way to town to see the Inspector, and Murchison might tell too much. Inspector Barker had been very specific in his instructions that the half-breed should not know beforehand why he was wanted.

Half an hour later he pulled in on the lip of a long coulee and, raising himself in the stirrups, looked about. It was a habit.

He could see little, for darkness was settling fast over the prairie, with the short twilight that comes in the Canadian West. So far as he could see was no sign of life. Not a sound disturbed the tingling silence. Even the gentle wind that always blows over the prairie seemed to have gone to rest, leaving the long, dry grass motionless. Only toward the south a long dark line lifted against the sky, the Cypress Hills with its thick forest crowning the heights, a dark line that extended far beyond his vision toward the east into Saskatchewan. Toward the west he imagined he could see the end of the Hills as they dropped away to Elk Lake. A curious swelling it was, a hundred miles long and almost a dozen wide, that few had even attempted to explain.

His lips parted in a smile. He loved the prairie, loved his work over it, loved most those lonely hours of riding with his own thoughts, seated on Jupiter, his own black broncho. Most of all he loved to lie down on a beautiful night like this and sleep, with nothing above but the star-dotted sky, nothing around but the still prairie, with now and then the gentle soughing of the night breeze through the dead grass. The whole world seemed to be his own alone then, and it soothed him as nothing else could.

Even as he gazed on it the prairie faded into the soft night. Only to the south remained that black line etched against the sky.

He dropped his eyes to Jupiter’s ears that he could imagine flickering back and forth, divided between listening for other life and for the word of his master.

Mahon reached forward and patted the broncho’s arched neck. “You like it just as well as I do, don’t you, Jupiter? It’s the life for both of us, isn’t it?” Alone so often with Jupiter, one-sided conversation developed.

The broncho had its methods of maintaining its side of the conversation: it neighed, waggled its ears, and pawed softly at the ground.

Mahon laughed. “Yes, I know you’d like to go into the Hills. I don’t know why, because it’s no place for a Mounted Policeman or his broncho, and no one should know it better than you—unless it’s Whiskers.” He laughed again as he thought of Blue Pete’s little pinto. “Anyway we don’t need the shade to-night, and we’ve no business to take us into the Hills, thank goodness. I don’t like riding about with my rifle in my hands all the time, and there in the Hills that’s how we have to do. We’ll stick right here to-night, boy.”

He gathered up the reins and peered ahead. “No, this way a little.” He shifted his rein-hand toward the right, and the broncho, Western trained, turned in that direction, moving slowly along the ridge until at a word it stopped.

“That’ll do, boy. You’ll have lots of grass down there in the coulee, and there’s still a little water from the Hills. Me, I’ll lie down up here where it’s warmer.”

They dropped down the slope, and Mahon dismounted, removed saddle and bridle, and applied hobbles. Jupiter neighed protest.

Mahon laughed. “Yes, I know you’re insulted. But away out here I daren’t risk anything. Without a mount I’d be in a mess to-morrow morning . . . and one never knows what might happen in the night.”

He pulled a handful of dry grass and wiped the broncho’s legs. Then, carrying saddle and bridle, he climbed back and lay down just under the ridge, his head on the saddle.

For a time he lay on his back, staring upward, wide-eyed, at the stars, and swallowing great, joyous gulps of the prairie night air. After a time he shifted his head. Off to the south the dark line of trees on the Hills continued to cut across the sky, and, without knowing why, he shook his head. Then, as if to change the subject, he commenced to rub his cheeks.

He had acquired the habit early after a day’s riding in the hot sunshine. His cheeks, dried and stiffened by the heat, seemed to respond to the treatment. And suddenly he remembered that he had been in the sun less than usual that day.

He turned to his other side. Well, this was the life he liked best, and he pictured a steaming night in his hot bedroom in town, where the surrounding cutbanks cut off every prairie breeze. He thought kindly of the Inspector who had suggested such a bed.

His thoughts lingered with the Inspector, and he wondered why his superior appeared so anxious to have Blue Pete within touch at this time. Of course the bank robberies had made him nervous. No, not nervous, anxious; and in times like that he usually had use for the half-breed. But what could Blue Pete do about the robberies? Nothing as yet had happened in the Inspector’s district to warrant such nervousness, and when it did, Mahon could not see how his half-breed friend would fit into the picture in any special manner.

Of course if there was a trail to follow, Blue Pete was the one to undertake it. And how he would enjoy it! Especially if there promised to be gunplay, which certainly did seem probable with men like that. That was the sort of thing in which Blue Pete revelled, the sort of work that kept him so close to the Mounted Police, though without the knowledge of the public.

It was, too, Mahon recalled with a wry grimace, the sort of work the Inspector always had for him. Though the Mounted Police shirked nothing because of its danger, the special tasks into which the half-breed fitted were unusually dangerous.

Scores of bullets marked the course of his work, and several had taken effect. It showed in that slightly drooping left shoulder, in a dozen scars. Once he had even been left for dead, but his iron constitution had pulled him through, leaving him nothing worse than a slight limp when tired. Few had noticed that, because, no matter how extended the chase or how strenuous and sleepless, Blue Pete was seldom tired. In moments of irritation Inspector Barker would admit nothing to account for the half-breed’s immunity but luck, “sheer pig-headed luck”. And yet he himself counted a lot on that luck to bring Blue Pete back alive—and successful.

Luck did figure, Mahon was prepared to admit, but with it went an uncanny adeptness with a .45. No one had ever succeeded in out-shooting him, no one else could draw so swiftly and shoot from any position with such accuracy. That in itself had saved his life many times. Then, too, there was his Indian cunning, his strength, his tirelessness, and his ability to follow a trail invisible to other eyes.

If the bank robbers did come, if Blue Pete should encounter them, that old, many-notched .45 would be more than a match for them—if they ever met. And, Mahon reflected uneasily, he would have no qualms about shooting straight.

That was what worried the Inspector. Where the Mounted Police risked their own lives foolishly to capture rather than to kill, the half-breed had his own code that was little influenced by the official one. Not that he killed recklessly, but he seemed instantly to sense whether to take a chance with a rogue. With rustlers he had few compunctions. Rustling was the special Western crime, and—“once a rustler, always a rustler” was the Western belief, a well-founded one.

Except—Mahon smiled and shifted his position uneasily—except that it did not hold good with his half-breed friend, whose years of rustling across the Border in the Montana Badlands far outnumbered those during which he had acted for the Mounted Police.

Blue Pete his best friend. On that thought Mahon turned to a more comfortable position and tried to sleep.

Sleep, however, evaded him. He felt unusually relaxed and happy. That, too, was difficult to explain. Well-educated, in no sense prepared by his earlier years in England for the life-work he had adopted, here he was in his own particular niche. Though man was a gregarious animal, his greatest pleasure was to get away alone. Like this.

He frowned. For some reason he could not get his mind off the half-breed for long. The Inspector had sent him purposely to bring him in, yet Mahon knew that Blue Pete would hesitate to obey without knowing why he was wanted. If he could have been told that the Inspector had a dangerous job for him there would be no hesitation, but Mahon’s orders had been specifically not to tell why he was wanted. As a matter of fact Blue Pete took orders from no one—unless he cared to obey. There were even times, and not a few, when he refused to work for the Mounted Police, and sometimes it so irritated the Inspector that he swore to have nothing further to do with him. He always forgot the oath.

Mahon had not seen his friend for many weeks, and the Inspector’s curiosity was infectious. He wanted to see him, to talk with him. In spite of himself there kept stirring within him a conviction that it was not well to leave long intervals between their meetings. The Inspector was brutally frank about that.

The half-breed had not been at the 3-Bar-Y on the Sergeant’s last visit, and, as usual, Mira knew nothing—or she said so.

Lying awake, Mahon wanted desperately to meet the half-breed. He fell asleep on that thought.

He could not have been asleep long when a low voice close beside him brought him suddenly to his elbow, feeling for his revolver.

“Sergeant!” A hand dropped gently on his shoulder.

“That you, Pete?” Somehow Mahon was not surprised.

“Shure. But yuh sleep too durn hard fer yer own good out here near the Hills, an’ yer gun-hand ain’t quick ’nuff. Some day someun’ll git the drop on yuh. An’ yuh ain’t got yer gun right neither fer quick shootin’.”

Mahon laughed a little sheepishly. “I wasn’t quite awake. I suppose it was automatic, grabbing for my gun. You know you would have done the same.”

Blue Pete snorted. “Yuh wudn’ ’a’ found me asleep. I’d ’a’ heerd yuh ’fore yuh got that close. Reckon I’d shoot ’fore I got real awake, anyways. Larned that long time ago over in the Badlan’s.”

Mahon rolled over on his back. “Funny thing, Pete, I went to sleep thinking of you. I must have felt you were around.”

“Lots wudn’ sleep none ef they knowed that.”

“Oh, you’re too hard on yourself, Pete. You don’t need to care what the rustlers think of you.”

“ ’Tain’t on’y the rustlers,” the half-breed replied after a moment. He had thrown himself on the ground beside the Sergeant. “I ain’ got no frien’s hereabouts. Not the ranchers, I mean. ’Tain’t reg’lar fer a half-breed to be a rancher.”

“Well, you’ve friends among the Mounted Police. Lying out here I couldn’t help thinking of you, with the Hills there in sight. They always make me think of you. They’re almost yours. No one knows them like you do. But how’d you come to be here? I looked everywhere just before dark. I didn’t see anyone, not even a cow—or a coyote. How’d you come to find me?”

Blue Pete chuckled. “I seen yuh all the way from Turner’s Crossing. Wal-l, ’twasn’t me so much as Whiskers. She seen yuh fust. I seen yuh stop here, an’ I knowed whar yuh’d be. . . . I was feered yuh was makin’ fer the Hills, an’ that ain’t no place fer yuh to be alone. I was goin’ on in after yuh ef yuh’d gone on thar.”

“But there couldn’t be any danger there now—not much, at any rate. Things have been very quiet. No rustlers for a long time.” Mahon laughed. “I think you must have frightened them off.”

He remembered suddenly the Inspector’s orders. “We haven’t had anything for you to do for a long time, have we? You’d better come in and have a talk with the Inspector, or he may forget you.”

“I’m not doin’ so bad right out here. I kin git into the Hills, ef I git hungry fer suthin’ to do. . . . An’ yit . . . an’ yit I’d like suthin’ more to do. Yuh’re lucky, you Mounties.”

“We often think we’re lucky having you to do certain things for us, Pete, things we’d probably flop on without you.”

Blue Pete was silent for a few moments. “Th’ Inspector’s bin mighty good to me. Ef he hadn’ things fer me to do now ’n’ then I—I do’ know’s I cud stand it. Sorta nice to git off fer the Inspector’s jobs. O’ course,” he added hastily, “we got things durn nice round the 3-Bar-Y. That otta do me.”

“We’re glad it doesn’t, Pete. Besides, I haven’t many other friends myself. . . . Before you came on the scene we were always suspicious of half-breeds, and with ample reason. The two or three half-breed foremen around here don’t change that; we don’t trust them very far.”

Blue Pete took some time to consider that. “ ’Tain’t nothin’ to do ’th colour ner blood,” he said. “Lots o’ skunks is white.” He shifted uneasily. “Yuh gotta ’member this: a half-breed’s part Injun, an’ some never git ’way from it. Then most half-breeds is thrown in ’th Injuns, an’ that don’t help none to keep ’em straight. They git mighty nasty, ’cause—’cause thur white blood ain’t—ain’t——”

“Satisfied?” suggested Mahon.

“Yes, reckon that’s it.”

“You mean that then they get defiant.”

“Shure. They go bad, jes’ plum’ bad.” He chuckled suddenly. “Never stopped to work it out like that before.”

“Well, anyway,” Mahon declared confidently, “you never went that way.”

“Yuh do’ know half,” laughed the half-breed.

“I know you better than anyone else does—except Mira, of course.”

“Reckon th’ Inspector thinks he knows me right through. Says I turn his hair grey.”

“That’s only his way of talking, Pete. Your ways are not our ways . . . and often it’s well they’re not. Even Inspector Barker recognizes that. He’s been trained in hard discipline, but he understands. You’ll notice he doesn’t press you for too much detail when you’ve finished a job for us.”

Blue Pete sighed. “I’m on’y a half-breed. I gotta do things my own way.”

Mahon yawned. He would leave until the morning the Inspector’s request. No use worrying his friend to-night. “Well, let’s get some shut-eye. It must be near midnight. By the way, where’s Whiskers?”

“Down rubbin’ noses ’th Jupiter. Left her thar, couple ole frien’s.”

“Well, good night!”

He slept immediately.

Not many minutes later he wakened suddenly and jerked to his elbow. A wolf had howled from the Hills.

“How I hate them!” he growled, as he sank back to the saddle. “I never get used to them. I hate them, howling or silent. They’re getting bolder, too. We have reports of them howling around towns where they haven’t been heard for a long time. They were at it the other night at Swift Current.”

The howl was repeated.

“Must be a young one practising,” Mahon grunted.

There had been no reply from his companion, and Mahon turned toward him. He could see Blue Pete against the sky, sitting upright, his face turned to the Hills.

Mahon laughed. “It shouldn’t disturb you much, Pete. You should be used to them—all the time you’ve spent in the Hills. Or haven’t you been asleep?”

The half-breed started. “Oh, shure, shure!”

“Well, I won’t let them waken me again, now I know they’re trying to frighten us. They know darn well we’re here; they’ve probably been sniffing about us all night. I’m going to sleep.” He settled back and slept.

The sun was blazing in his face when he wakened. He yawned, stretched, remembered, and turned with a laugh toward where Blue Pete had been.

“I guess we’ve overslept, Pete. I must have been——”

He stared. He was alone.

Inspector Barker leaned back in the unsteady deskchair, dexterously balancing it against its chronic infirmities, and let his eyes rest on the unwashed window before him. Badly in need of attention as it was, partly because of the nearness of the railway tracks, partly from the habit of years, he could, nevertheless, see plainly enough directly up Main Street across the tracks.

His eyes focussed on a rider loping easily down Main Street, speaking to no one. He leaned forward and watched, until the rider crossed the tracks and disappeared past the corner of the barracks.

The Inspector rose quickly then and hurried along the hall to the back of the building.

Sergeant Mahon had entered the back yard. By the way he climbed from the saddle, handing Jupiter over to Constable Langley, he was plainly tired. Wearily he turned toward the back entrance to the barracks, dragging his feet. But the moment he saw Inspector Barker he straightened and saluted.

The Inspector said nothing but stood aside and let him enter, pointed to the Sergeant’s small office at the rear of the building, and moved off, still silent, toward his own office.

Presently Langley returned, and a few minutes later he knocked on the Sergeant’s door. “When you’ve rested a bit, Sergeant, the Inspector would like to talk to you.”

Mahon sighed and rose, changed his tunic, and proceeded along the hall to the Inspector’s office. The door was open, and he entered.

The Inspector pointed to the empty chair across the corner of the desk. “Sit down, Mahon. Sorry to call you in before you’ve had time for a rest. I know you’re tired, but . . . but I know, too, that you’ve something to tell me. You’re worried. Take a few long breaths and let me do the talking for a few moments. Nothing further has developed about the Swift Current robbers . . . except that they appear, as usual, to have got clean away and left no trail. All we know is that it’s the same trio that operated in Winnipeg and Regina. They weren’t seen, of course, but there’s the same efficiency, the same mystery about them. For a reason no one can even guess at, at no bank have they taken all they might have. Even some money within sight they ignored. It’s one of the things that puzzle the police. At Swift Current, there in the vault, they did not touch a box of bills lying open before them. It seems that not more than a couple of thousand dollars was taken.”

As he talked his eyes remained fixed on the Sergeant’s gloomy face.

“Now get it off your chest,” he continued. “Take your time. You’ll feel better when you’ve unloaded your mind. I’m not guessing at what you have to tell me—beyond the fact that I know it concerns the half-breed. For Heaven’s sake what’s he been doing now?”

Mahon drew a long breath. “I—I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t know?” The Inspector frowned. “And yet you almost admit it concerns him. Man alive, don’t you know what worries you . . . or is it so shocking that you don’t want to know? Don’t hedge. What is it?” He was getting angry.

“I meant, sir, that I don’t know for certain that there’s anything to worry about.”

“But your common sense tells you there is. Where it concerns that half-breed friend of yours you can never let yourself believe anything wrong.” Suddenly he threw out his hands. “There it is again. More trouble. You’ll understand now why I wanted you to bring him in.” He swung about so violently that he was forced to clutch at the desk to steady himself. “Confound that fellow! He’s a nuisance to everyone. I’m afraid to use him; I’m afraid not to. No wonder my hair’s getting grey.” A slow smile twisted the corners of his lips. “I’m talking to delay what you have to tell, because I’d like not to hear it. Yet I must. I’ve got to face it. Go on.”

Mahon shook his head gloomily. “Part of the trouble, sir, is that such a simple and not unnatural thing happened, yet I know it means something we should know about. I don’t even know, sir, where to start.”

“Has he murdered someone, or gone back to rustling, his old game—skipped out with someone’s cows?”

“No, sir, neither.” Mahon heaved a heavy sigh. “I’ve been to the 3-Bar-Y. I didn’t see Blue Pete there—and I wanted to. I wanted it, much more than you know, because”—he drew a dirty scrap of paper from his pocket—“because I found this.” He passed it across the desk. “I asked Mira where he was, and she said she didn’t know. But the wind from the open window of the bedroom blew this note across the floor to my feet. She didn’t see it, and I put my foot on it and picked it up when she wasn’t looking. I don’t know why . . . unless I recognized the writing.”

Inspector Barker stared down on the paper, turned it to catch the light, grunted with disgust. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s writing, that I can see. At least I can’t read it. Hm-m! Far’s I can make out it says: ‘I . . . won’t . . . be back——’ ” With an impatient snap he tossed the note back to the Sergeant. “If you recognize that as writing, perhaps you can read it for me. Of course if it’s Blue Pete’s you can. I didn’t even know he could write. It’s an accomplishment for which he could have little use, I should say, with the life he leads. Read it. Go on.” He leaned back to listen.

Mahon had read it so often that he knew it by heart, though he followed the scrawl as he read: “ ‘I won’t be back for some time. If I ain’t back in three weeks I’ll be in the Hills.’ ”

The Inspector was bewildered. “It didn’t travel through the mails. What the blazes does it mean? Why should he write a note like that when it must have been left at the ranch—or carried there by someone else? Why should it worry you so much, at any rate? Does it mean that he’s afraid he might not be back at all, and to look for him in the Hills if he isn’t back in three weeks? Or is it to ask Mira to find his body and give him a decent burial?” He clacked his lips. “I could read a dozen meanings into it.”

He leaned forward suddenly. “You’ve read something into it, and you’ve a reason. What is it?”

“I think, sir, that he left the note at the ranch himself, because he didn’t want to face Mira and explain why he was going to the Hills—and about the three weeks. If he wasn’t back then she was to look for him.”

“Then he anticipated danger of some kind—that something might happen that he couldn’t return. Hm-m! That gets exciting. But if your guess is right, why should he be so reluctant to face her? Is it some crooked work he was setting out to do?” He pointed to the paper. “The writing of that note, by the looks of it, must almost have drawn blood.”

Mahon nodded. “I know it. I don’t suppose he has written more than two or three such notes in his life. I’ve seen his writing once before. One time he placed a note on me as I slept, warning me that rustlers were around, and to be careful. That was when he was at outs with us. I was a friend, and he took a chance in warning me. I think perhaps he didn’t dare tell Mira to her face, so that she would be able truthfully to tell us that she didn’t know anything about him.”

“You asked her,” questioned the Inspector, “and she said she didn’t?”

“Yes, sir. She said she hadn’t seen him for two or three days. Indeed, I’d seen him since she had.”

“But—but you said you hadn’t seen him for weeks. You told me that just before you set out to find him for me.”

“That was right, sir. But that night, the night I left here to find him, I saw him.”

The Inspector leaned eagerly forward. “You saw him? Say, what is this—a puzzle? How and when did you see him? What does all this mean?”

“He came to me that night, sir, while I lay on the prairie asleep. I wasn’t far from the Hills, and he came and touched me in the darkness. He lay down beside me, to spend the night, I thought, but some time around midnight a wolf wakened us from the Hills. He was there then, yet in the morning when I wakened he was gone.”

For several moments the Inspector said nothing. He sighed. “With anyone else that might mean something—would mean something. But with Blue Pete I can’t see much to worry about. Except”—he pointed at the torn paper—“except that note that somehow got into Mira’s hands. He’s so unpredictable that we may be worrying unnecessarily.”

Mahon shook his head slowly. “But I know, sir, he wouldn’t leave me in the middle of the night like that without some reason he wouldn’t tell me. . . . And that means, sir, that it’s a reason we ought to know. He even watched me that evening from a distance, thinking I might be going to spend the night in the Hills. He was going to follow, because, as he said, it wasn’t safe for a Mounted Policeman there.”

“Well, he learned you weren’t going into the Hills, so he didn’t stay. That’s all . . . if it weren’t for that note. Do you wonder that every time I have anything to do with him I wish I’d never heard of him?” His expression brightened. “By the way, did you let it slip why I wanted to see him? That might have frightened him——”

“I never mentioned it, sir. I was leaving it until the morning. He did speak of the jobs we have for him now and then, and that he hadn’t had anything to do for us for a long time. He didn’t complain—not particularly. It led me to hope that in the morning there would be little trouble in inducing him to come to town to see you. . . . Now? Now I’m convinced something happened to make him creep away without awakening me, and the something had something to do with the Hills.”

“Rustling—do you mean that?”

Mahon straightened indignantly. “Not rustling he himself was in.”

Inspector Barker shrugged. “Well, there’s a lot more on my mind just now. I made it a point to go and see Dolan.” He made a grimace. “He hadn’t heard of Swift Current, and it knocked out of him some of his complacency. It got him started on some preventive measures. I didn’t let it rest there; I talked with the bank managers. Here’s the plan I’ve worked out.”

As the broken howl of the timber wolf rang out through the darkness over the prairie from the forested heights of the Hills, Blue Pete wakened instantly and jerked upward to rest on his elbow. Tense and wondering, he listened. A tingle of excitement raced through him, so that he scarcely heard what the Sergeant said. His eyes were fixed on that dark mass rising against the southern sky. He held his breath as he listened.

The howl was repeated.

He sat back, his legs gathered beneath him, as if about to rise. Only then did he remember his companion, and he made some sort of reply, though he could not have told what it was.

Mahon, however, appeared satisfied, for he settled back on the saddle and slept.

The half-breed waited, motionless, still staring at the Hills. When he was certain that Mahon was asleep, he climbed noiselessly to his feet, paused for a moment to make sure Mahon had not heard, then crept away down the slope to where he had left Whiskers, his little pinto. Both bronchos were on their feet, startled by the wolf, and Jupiter snorted a little as Blue Pete approached through the darkness.

Whiskers trotted out to him and nuzzled against his shoulder.

The half-breed scratched her ears, his head shaking uneasily. “We’re gittin’ out, ole gal,” he whispered, “pronto. Suthin’ funny up thar, an’ you ’n’ me we gotta take a look to see wot it is. An’ we ain’ goin’ to tell the Sergeant nothin’, no, sir, till we know fer shure. I jes’ don’ like it nohow.”

The pinto seemed to understand, for she nickered, as if whispering her agreement.

“Shure, ole gal. Yuh wanta know jes’ much as I do. Thar ain’ goin’ to be nothin’ git ’way ’th nothin’ in the Hills ’thout us knowin’ it. We gotta unnerstand wot goes on up thar. Awright, come on.”

He picked up saddle and bridle and led off on foot along the coulee, the pinto at his heels. Jupiter tried to follow, but the hobbles held him back.

Blue Pete stopped and patted his neck. “Dunno ef yuh unnerstand, like Whiskers, but lissen. Yuh gotta stick right here fer the Sergeant. He’ll need yuh in the mornin’, mebbe need yuh bad. He’s out here fer suthin’, an’ mebbe it’s suthin’ in the Hills, an’ I gotta be thar fust to find out, ’cause he might git into trouble. S’long!”

Jupiter, too, must have understood, for he did not attempt to follow further, except with his ears.

The half-breed walked away into the darkness. “He unnerstood. He cudn’ help larnin’ a lot, bein’ ’th you so much, ole gal. You got brains to spare. Reckon maybe yuh kin pass a bit along to yer kind.”

He followed the coulee to the north, neither man nor pinto making a sound, a trick they had perforce learned in a dangerous life together. When Blue Pete decided they had gone far enough, he adjusted saddle and bridle and mounted. Keeping well to the north and moving slowly, he rounded off toward the west after a time, circled a herd to the north so that not even the cattle were aware of them, then set off at a fast pace into the night. There was much ground to cover before daylight, and certain risks must be taken.

Unerringly he rode, and presently he pulled in at the top of a long slope. Dismounting, he patted Whiskers’ neck, frowning uneasily down into the depression before him.

“Yuh gotta stick right here, ole gal,” he told the pinto. “I won’t be long, an’ we do’ wanta wake nobody. We gotta git out ’fore daylight, too, so thar’s some ridin’ fer us.” He shook his head gloomily. “Might be lots more later, as we gotta look out. . . . Mebbe more’n jes’ ridin’ too.”

He disappeared down the slope into the darkness. At the bottom a ranch house loomed into the sky before him, and he stood for several moments, listening. Now and then he frowned off toward where he knew the bunkhouse to be. Not a sound broke the stillness of the night, save for a faint rubbing that, he knew, was a broncho scratching itself on a corral post.

He crept nearer the ranch house and slid along toward an open window, where he paused once more to listen. With a satisfied grin then he returned around the corner, passed the front door, and moved on and around the other corner. A window on that side, too, was open, and he slid up to it and reached cautiously through. His hand moved along the top of a small desk within the room, close to the window. It stopped when it reached a pad with a pencil attached to it. These he drew softly to him.

Sinking to the ground beneath the window, he discovered that it was too dark to write, and so he moved back to the front of the house, squatted there, clicked a match alight with his thumb-nail, and, the pad held between his knees, commenced to write.

It was a painful, laborious procedure, and his tongue came out and rolled about between his lips. His eyes were screwed into mere slits, and his whole frame seemed to twist with the agony of it. Perspiration broke out on his forehead, so that he was not finished until four matches had burned to his fingers.

“i wunt be back fur som time if i aint back in 3 weeks il be in the hils.”

It was a terrific effort, and at the end relief and triumph struggled to recognize it. His tongue retired to its normal position, and with the corner of his neckerchief he wiped the perspiration from his face.

The sheet of paper he tore loose, folded it, and slid it beneath the front door. Paper and pencil he restored to their place on the desk.

He had started up the slope toward where he had left Whiskers when a new thought struck him, and he stopped and scowled back over the ranch house to another building faintly discernible beyond. The thought must have appeared good, for he turned back, avoided the ranch house, and stopped before a window in the kitchen of the bunkhouse.

Lightly he rapped on the frame.

Almost instantly the window rose an inch, and a low, startled voice whispered through: “What the blazes?”

“ ’T’s me, Wing,” whispered the half-breed.

“Velly bad time, boss,” returned the Chinese, but without rancour. “Wing sleep. Wing hear noise. Wing wake come see. You want chuck, eh?”

It was not the first time Blue Pete had called on the bunkhouse resources in a manner that warned the cook that he was not to talk about it. Wing had long since become accustomed to the strange ways of such a master.

“Sure, Wing. Want lots. Goin’ ’way. Mebbe long time. Won’ be nothin’ to eat whar I’m goin’, an’ I won’t be able to shoot. Got a cooked ham?”

“Shoo thing. Always got a ham.”

“Wal-l, gimme it . . . an’ anythin’ else yuh got.”

Wing, who never completely undressed for bed, feeling that it was a waste of time that cut into his limited hours of sleep, hurried to the kitchen, unlocked the back screen door, and let his employer in. The door at the end of the passage leading to the bunkhouse where the cowboys slept he locked with a bolt. Then he went to the south wall, opened a small door, and stepped down several steps into the earthen cellar that was the bunkhouse refrigerator.

Ten minutes later Blue Pete hurried up the slope, his arms well filled, and found Whiskers anxiously waiting. He had told her, hadn’t he, that he wouldn’t be long, and that they had a lot of riding to do before daylight?

Directly toward the south they went, slowly at first until beyond range of acute ears in the bunkhouse, then, as a brightening of the eastern sky warned him, the half-breed sent the pinto swiftly toward the south-east. They raced along the shore of Elk Lake and swung across south of the Hills, where no one was likely to see them.

Upward then, into the forest that clothed the heights.

The sun was just rising as they disappeared into the trees.

Days passed. Far away in the Mounted Police barracks Inspector Barker fretted—and wondered. Sometimes Blue Pete centred his thoughts, and there was nothing there to ease his mind. But mostly the bank robbers kept nagging at him. He could not think that Medicine Hat would escape the robbers’ attentions, which may have been as much from loyalty and pride in the city as from anything else. And he was not convinced that he had taken adequate steps to defeat them. That Winnipeg and Regina were much larger cities meant nothing, even before the much smaller town of Swift Current suffered.

Of course Winnipeg and Regina would have much more money in the bank vaults——

He stopped there. That was one of the worrying mysteries of the robberies, that all the money even within sight had not been taken. It not only puzzled the police but made their efforts more undecided and pointless. They were bewildered, working harder to explain the mysteries than to capture the robbers. At any rate no one knew where they were or where they would strike next. That they would strike no one doubted.

Of course, the Inspector decided, if they came to Medicine Hat it would be a daylight job. Too many people slept close to the banks not to be awakened by any explosion to open the vault. And everyone had a gun and knew how to use it.

At any rate there was nothing he could do to stop a night break-in; that would necessarily be more within Chief Dolan’s realm.

Not less worried was Mahon. The matter of the bank robberies he left to his superior. It was the Inspector’s job. It was Blue Pete that worried him. Why had his half-breed friend come to him, if he planned to leave in the night without a word? And if that was not his plan, why had he left like that? It was, he felt certain, something more than another unpredictable move. There was a reason, as he had told the Inspector, and that reason must be a concern of the Mounted Police.

Come to think of it, his last impression that night before he sank back to sleep was of Blue Pete seated upright, staring off toward the Hills and evidently listening. He could make that much out even in the darkness. The wolf had startled him, Mahon, but Blue Pete, who spent so much time in the Hills, was surely not seriously upset.

Of course it must have been a very young wolf—he had noticed that, sleepy as he was—but that meant nothing except perhaps, a call for its mother. A frightened little cub that had been left behind in the nightly forage for food. It might even have been a coyote, though Blue Pete would have said so.

Uneasy, tense, the two senior officers at the barracks waited for something to happen.

It was then that occurred the affair, the tragedy, that painted everything, even the bank robberies, in different, more startling, colours. Once more the robbers struck, and this time murder was included.

It occurred at Brooks.

Brooks is a small village between Medicine Hat and Calgary, much smaller than Swift Current; so small, indeed, that the opening of the solitary bank in such a village looked at first like a foolish venture. Toward the south, however, the country was fairly well settled, with well-to-do ranchers and a few experimenting farmers. And every one of them felt it a duty to see that the bank was justified. As a matter of patriotism, parochial as it was, that bank was evidence of coming greatness, of successful competition with the much larger Medicine Hat to the east. Brooks was to be independent of the Hat.

More or less isolated, the bank was forced to keep on hand larger sums of money than usual in such a small village, and that might have been a warning.

Like all Western towns, it consisted at first of a single street that ran along the railway, starting from nothing on the prairie and ending in the same way. The bank, however, looked ahead. It chose a site that would some day be a corner, though what was planned to be a side-street was merely another opening between buildings. Its new role, however, was encouraged by the residents of the surrounding district following it into town.

To the bank it appeared safer to be exposed on at least two sides.

The building had two stories, the upper occupied by the manager and his wife.

Two clerks were ample staff as yet. The manager himself had come from the East, which already he had learned contemptuously to call “the cent-belt”, since in those days the West recognized no coin of less value than five cents, the nickel they called it, following the Americans to the south, though the coin was of silver.

The teller was an ambitious youth who thought of himself as assistant manager and in so many subtle but unobtrusive ways lived up to it. Already he pictured himself as manager in—well, Calgary, for instance, or Edmonton. He would make a name for himself.

The other clerk, on ledgers, was the young daughter of a local rancher. She had found the life of a rancher’s daughter too confined and isolated for her taste, and in the bank she saw opportunity to meet the young men for many miles around. “In town” in itself meant a lot to her.

While the bank prospered, its business came largely at week-ends, with the end of the month calling for much irritating overtime to keep the records clean. Those month-ends brought quick tempers to them all, and the manager’s reaction increased the irritation.

It was the last day of July, with a long evening facing the staff, and everyone was fidgety and nervous. The blazing heat of the day, too, had made matters worse. It was close to the closing hour of three, and inside the building they waited impatiently for the doors to close, so that they could get to work on the records.

Outside on the street the village looked asleep. Only before the hotel was there sign of life, two dozing bronchos tied to the rail. Within the bar their riders were incapacitating themselves as rapidly as drinks could be poured.

Terence Long, the bank manager, seated in his little office near the front door, looked out through the side window and saw nothing but the clapboard walls of the hardware store across the corner of what was to be a side-street. He shifted his eyes to the front window and saw only the red-painted railway station and two grain elevators lifelessly awaiting the season’s crops a couple of months later.

He rose, yawned, and went to stand before the side window. In less than eight minutes the bank would close for the day. From outside in the bank-room he could hear the low drone of voices. A rancher had entered a few minutes before to draw a draft on a Toronto bank, and the teller was angry at the labour involved. “Friendly business” was the bank’s watchword, but the teller was watching the clock, with no mind left for figuring. He set down a figure, however, and yawned. The girl at the ledgers, seeing the yawn, followed suit, of course, grieving that the rancher had not sent his goodlooking son to do the business.

The manager leaned nearer the window. Far down the street toward the east a rider approached at a leisurely lope. Too distant to be recognized as yet, Long nevertheless knew that this was a stranger, not even a cowboy, though dressed as one. He appeared even to have difficulty directing his mount that was accustomed to western methods of direction.

From where he stood he could not see a pair of riders entering the village street from the opposite direction, but presently he heard them. He hoped only that they had no banking business to do. For fear they had he returned hastily to his seat at the desk.

He heard the riders meet before the bank, heard them enter the bank.

For some reason his thoughts flew to the bank robberies that had flamed in Western papers, and with a sheepish grin he half opened the drawer in which his gun lay. But he shook his head at himself and commenced to close the drawer. Still . . . still . . . it might be wise to—— He dropped back in the chair, his hand reaching half-way into the drawer.

It was too late. The door of his office was thrown open so violently that the glass shattered and showered the floor.

“No, don’t do that,” drawled a low voice.

He raised his eyes to a handkerchief-masked face—and a gun that pointed so steadily at him that he withdrew his hand empty from the drawer and rose.

“You’re not going to be hurt,” said the voice behind the mask, “that is, if you’re not foolish enough to start something that makes it necessary.” Such a quiet voice, almost like a customer remarking on the weather.

It was, nevertheless, the sort of voice that discourages disobedience—and Long had no thought at the moment of being a hero.

“Come out and join the happy party,” ordered the voice; and as Long stepped from the desk, the masked man returned the gun to his pocket. “Might as well carry it through in a friendly fashion,” he suggested, “don’t you think? But I’m mighty quick on the draw, and my friends out here keep their guns handy. They object to taking chances. I’m not trying to terrify anyone. All we want is the money. It’s not yours anyway, so it won’t mean any loss to you.”

He stood aside and let the manager pass through the doorway before him.

It was quiet out there, very quiet. The rancher lay on his face on the floor, a masked robber standing over him with drawn gun. The teller and the ledger-girl were on the floor behind the counter, under the gun of another robber.

“All right. One!” said the robber who had visited the manager’s office.

Instantly the robber guarding the rancher leaped the counter and entered the teller’s cage, scooping into a sack the money in sight. He held the bag up for the leader to see and shook his head angrily.

“Ah, not enough, eh?” murmured the soft voice of the leader.

He turned to the manager. “I suppose it’s been stored already in the vault. We were a few minutes late . . . you think. Well, you think wrong, I fear. Go on and open the vault.”

The manager shook his head. His wits had returned and, somehow, he felt no fear. There was even a tingle of pleasant excitement racing through him. Actually in the heart of a robbery, and he had no thought of fainting or grovelling! He was proud of himself.

“I haven’t the whole combination,” he said.

The leader shook his head. “Don’t try that one, please. My men might be angry. We’ve watched this place for days. There are only the three of you. But perhaps the teller has the rest of the combination. All right, go to work, both of you. We’ll go round the counter through your office. I don’t like jumping counters.”

The manager hesitated. From the corner of his eye he could see the clock over the vault. Only a few seconds now—if he could stall things off that long.

“Go on,” ordered the leader, pushing him ahead.

The manager turned and slowly made his way through the office and through the back door that led behind the counter circling the room. There was a delay of a few seconds in opening the last door.

Then, out before the vault, he raised his eyes to the clock. As he did so, there came a click. He smiled.

“That’s the time-lock working the vault lock,” he explained. “It won’t open now until to-morrow morning.”

The lower, exposed half of the masked face reddened, and for a moment or two the manager’s heart beat rapidly. He was more a fool than a hero, he thought.

“That was clever,” came from behind the mask. “If I were the ordinary bank robber it would be the last clever thing you did—and at such a price. I’d forgotten about time-locks. I’ll know better next time. That’s one thing you’ve taught me.”

The robber herding the teller toward the vault snarled. “Give it to him. He can’t get away with that.” His gun raised.

“Stop it, you fool!” ordered the leader. “We’ve enough for this time, I suppose. Have you the teller’s gun?”

“I forgot it.” The man turned.

“No, never mind. We’ll get out of this. I may lose my temper and do something I don’t want to do. Five!”

His two companions leaped back over the counter. The leader passed quickly through the manager’s office, taking from the drawer the manager’s gun. His companions waited for him near the door.

He took the bag from his companion and with the third man went outside.

The one left behind faced the room, what was visible of his face red with anger.

The teller had returned to his cage. Free of the threatening gun, he picked up his own and, peering over the counter, commenced to level it. He was certain to be manager now.

The robber saw it. He pulled the trigger of his own gun. The bullet, from an experienced hand, struck the teller in the forehead.

The robber ran.

The pair outside already were in their saddles.

“Scare them?” asked the leader. “But that was foolish. Someone might hear it outside, and they’ve used guns in these parts for years. We must hurry.”

The murderer chuckled. “I sure scared ’em. No danger them takin’ a shot at us now.”

Something in the tone brought the leader’s eyes round to him, but he said nothing.

They rode along the street, past the two dozing bronchos. At the end of the street they turned north and disappeared. They could be seen veering off toward the west.

The leader laughed. “Well, that wasn’t difficult. Now we’ll separate. Slow and I’ll keep together.”

“It’s the life for me,” laughed the murderer.

To the north the country was unoccupied. It was lined with coulees extensive enough to conceal an army.

That was different. Bank robbery was bad enough to ensure that Inspector Barker would neglect no precaution to prevent it in his district, or to capture the robbers if they tried it. But those efforts were shared by the officials of other districts concerned, and to that extent personal responsibility was weakened. Murder altered all that. What other officials did mattered nothing. Every personal concern, every individual effort of his men, were concentrated now in a grim and unrelenting chase.

Heretofore no one had been injured by the robbers; not so much as a blow had been struck. Indeed, the methodical course of each operation had been so impressive that it had never entered the minds of victims to resist. Drastic treatment had been unnecessary. The robbers were experienced, determined, cool, confident that no one would resist, and unconsciously this had spread to their victims.

There had even been a great laugh aroused by the teller in Regina who, several minutes after the robbers had left the bank, had rushed to the street and blindly fired his gun into the air. It succeeded only in startling passing pedestrians and hurrying them out of range.

In no case had anyone even seen the robbers remove their masks on leaving the banks.

Seriously as the Inspector had taken the robbery in Swift Current, murder at Brooks, in his own district, made him furious. Swift Current was one hundred and fifty miles away, in another district, and even in the West, where distances were great, it made a difference. Murder anywhere in the West dissipated borders.

The news of the murder caught him when he had almost decided that the robbers had passed Medicine Hat by. As he sat, after the news, fuming and considering how to act, the telephone rang. The Superintendent at Lethbridge was on the other end.

“Good God, Barker, what’s going on up there?”

The Inspector swallowed hard before answering. “You’ve heard already, sir? I just got the news myself. I was going to call you up to warn you. This has come too close to us both.”

“Glad you notice that,” came the sneering voice over the wire.

Inspector Barker bristled. “At least, sir, they didn’t try anything here—and I’m on the job . . . as soon as I have time to think.”

It was close to insubordination, and the Superintendent laughed shortly. “How far away is Brooks? Don’t be too sure they’ve passed you up. Did you think they’d give you warning of the day and the hour—or hold you up there in the barracks?”

The Inspector drew a long, sobering breath. “I promise you they won’t get away with anything here in town. I haven’t been asleep. Nor am I asleep about the Brooks affair. I’m sending one of my best trackers out there. The robbers won’t find it simple to clear out from that district without leaving a trail. I’ll send Sergeant——”

“Don’t send Sergeant Mahon. You may need him right there.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send Jenkinson then. He’s well fitted for that sort of job. The robbers fled toward the north, but they can’t go far in that direction, unless they’re prepared to starve to death. Nobody lives in that direction for a couple of hundred miles.”

“Hm-m! Too bad we haven’t good dogs to put right on the scent. But the robbers were mounted, of course. . . . By the way, have you a good Indian you’d trust? What about that half-breed you sent down this way to work in the foothills a couple of times for me?”

“I’ve been thinking of him, sir,” replied the Inspector. “Indeed, I’d already sent Mahon to find him, but he’s disappeared; we don’t know where he is.”

“Not in the bank robbery game, I hope,” laughed the Superintendent.

“Not likely, sir. These were the same fellows who struck at Winnipeg and Regina, and, I think, in Swift Current.”

“Well, get someone out immediately.” The Superintendent hung up abruptly.

The Inspector talked it over with Sergeant Mahon: “I was going to send you, Mahon, but the Superintendent vetoed it. Said to keep you here in case you were needed nearer home. I think he’s right. Jenkinson and Murchison will start out right away. Jenkinson is good at tracking. . . . The Superintendent wanted Blue Pete. I had to tell him we don’t know where he is. This is where he’d fit in perfectly, if he hadn’t run out on you that night.”

He stirred impatiently. “Hang it, I always think of him when we get into a tight spot, and I resented the Superintendent pushing the idea forward, as if I didn’t know who’d be best at the job. . . . Best, perhaps, except for my peace of mind, blast him!” He looked up suddenly. “You’ve heard nothing more about him?”

“No, sir. Jenkinson did the round last week. I told him to call at the 3-Bar-Y and try to find something out. Mira professes still to know nothing about her husband, but you know how little we can depend on that.”

“So the last word we have of him he was leaving for the Hills . . . and we’ve no idea why. Let’s see, wasn’t it three weeks he gave for Mira to look for him if he hadn’t returned?”

Mahon nodded.

“I can see,” said the Inspector, “that you’re as worried as I am. He’s had lots of time to get back, unless something has happened. What could it be? Ordinarily his disappearance into the Hills would mean nothing, but—but there’s that note of his to Mira.”

His lip curled scornfully. “The Superintendent suggested—laughingly, of course—that he might be involved in the Brooks affair. But that was the same gang that worked in Winnipeg and Regina. . . . We’ve had no report of disappearing cows of late, either, so Blue Pete couldn’t have been thinking of rustlers when he gave Mira the idea that he might not be able to return.”

He frowned into the Sergeant’s face. “Have you told me everything?”

“Everything, sir, except—except that the more I think of it, the more confident I am that we should not leave things where they are. His creeping away in the darkness that night means something we should examine. And I was able to follow the trail Whiskers left as they went. Plainly he didn’t wish to waken me.”

“You say you didn’t speak to him of the bank robberies.”

“No, I didn’t. You told me not to.”

“Then he probably knows nothing about them. I don’t think they take any paper but the Medicine Hat Times, and he wouldn’t even read that. If only I could get him out right away to Brooks! Between you and me, I haven’t much confidence in anything Jenkinson can do by the time he gets there. The robbers have too long a start, and they can lose themselves in a thousand ways. I don’t think for an instant that they kept going to the north; that was just a blind.

“One thing that might be useful to us: the leader appears to have talked a lot more at Brooks. The bank manager says he’d recognize the voice again. He declares the fellow is well educated, that nothing in voice or manner seems to fit him into this sort of work. Apparently continued success is making him more reckless, and that in time should be his fall. But I want him to fall here. I want to be the one to get him. . . . I could even hope that he doesn’t pass the Hat by, just for that reason. The Superintendent was quite nasty with me over the phone.”

Neither spoke for a couple of minutes, the Inspector staring unseeingly through the window. Suddenly he turned.

“I’m sending you right away into the Hills. I want him; I must have him. Go first to the 3-Bar-Y to make sure he hasn’t returned. Do some quiet questioning about the ranch. Wing—there’s a chap who misses nothing. If he isn’t there at the ranch, go straight into the Hills and find him.”

A slow smile crept into the Sergeant’s face. “If he doesn’t wish to be found, sir, my chances are small, I’m afraid.”

“I’m counting on your friendship. You’re the only one who could hope to break down any desire he might have to keep out of sight. If he isn’t up to something illegal he can’t have any reason for evading you.”

The Sergeant was less hopeful. “I wouldn’t like to decide against him, if he won’t let me find him.”

“Don’t I know it! Well, do your best. If you do find him, get him in here as quickly as possible. . . . You might even tell him why we want him. With a murder before him it’s the sort of thing he’d jump at. He may be too late to do much about the Brooks affair, but I want him at hand. I’ve an idea I may need him. He doesn’t like murder. That should fetch him.”

He laughed almost apologetically. “Murder? Not that he hasn’t been at the safe end of many a murder—though, of course, he wouldn’t think of it as that. He’s even done not a little killing in our service, and I’ve been careful not to be too curious. . . . I’ll say this for him: I don’t think that any killing he ever did could be called murder.

“Now don’t delay a minute. I don’t like the tone of the Superintendent’s voice, and I don’t want to be doing nothing when I hear from the Commissioner. I want to get these fellows myself, right here in my district.”

“I’ll be away in half an hour, sir,” Mahon promised, as he rose.

“And Jenkinson is already on his way in. I’ll get him on that trail while it’s hot.”

Eighty miles away, at the 3-Bar-Y, Mira was equally worried. She made inquiries of Texas, the foreman, but he had nothing to tell her. He had always accepted Blue Pete’s absences without much concern.

Wing heard the questions and tried to keep out of sight, but Mira ran him down. And Wing would not lie to her.

“Shu, shu, missy. I seen him. He come one night—got some chuck—go ’way foh long time, he say.”

“Did he tell you that?”

Wing shook his head. “He say nuttin’ moh, but Wing knows.”

Of the details he knew nothing more than the woman before him, and with her he worried, more because she did. Mira worried in part because she knew the Mounted Police were anxious, and the note had meant as much to her as it did to Mahon. She would not let herself think that her husband was engaged in something illegal. All the time she carefully counted the days to the time when the note hinted that she should go and look for him in the Hills. In her heart she knew she would not wait that long.

Wing read the worry in her face. “Blue Pete all lightee, missy,” he assured her. “Don’t you wolly. He come back when it’s done. He always does.”

“When what’s done, Wing?”

The Chinese shrugged. “Wing not know. Missy not know. Blue Pete all lightee. Wing know that.”

Sergeant Mahon’s next visit to the 3-Bar-Y did nothing to ease Mira’s anxiety.

He did not beat about the bush. “You’ve heard nothing from him since I was here before?” He watched her closely, feeling for the truth.

“Not a word. I know nothing more than I did then.”

He knew she spoke the truth.

“Did you ask Texas?”

She nodded. Then, in her anxiety, she saved Mahon a visit. “Wing had something to tell me. Pete went to him one night and took a ham away. It means he intends to be gone for some time.”

“What night was that?”

She turned away that he might not see the flush that rose to her cheeks.

He took pity on her. “I know when it was.”

She wheeled on him angrily. “So that’s where his note went. You took it.”

“It blew from the bedroom to my feet. I read what it said.”

“It didn’t mean a thing,” she protested too vehemently. “It was just that he didn’t want to waken me, and you know as well as I do how he loves to spend his time in the Hills. He took the ham and other food. He said he wouldn’t be able to shoot——” She stopped and bit her lip.

“He said that? What does it mean?”

“That he didn’t want anyone to know he was there,” she explained, almost defiantly, “and I hope the Mounted Police won’t interfere. The note was for me.” She came and stood before him. “Does the Inspector want him?”

Mahon nodded.

“What for?”

“You’ve heard of the bank robberies?”

“Only what was in The Times—Winnipeg and Regina and Swift Current.”

“You haven’t heard of the one in Brooks?”

“Why, no. Was there one there? That’s getting nearer home.”

“It is . . . and a clerk was shot—killed.”

She stood over him, frowning. “You don’t think—you can’t think Pete was in a thing like that?”

“Of course not. But the Inspector wants to use him to help run the robbers down, if they’re still in the district.”

Mira moved restlessly about the room. “More danger, more danger! If they shot a clerk, then they’re prepared to shoot to kill . . . and you want Pete to face that.”

“He’s the best one to follow a trail. He’s far better than any of us.”

She threw out her hands helplessly and sighed. “And he’d jump at it—if only because it’s dangerous. But—Brooks! Then they’ve gone on past Medicine Hat to the west. They’ll be out of Inspector Barker’s district by this time.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The Inspector has a feeling about these things: he thinks we haven’t seen the last of them. That’s why he wants Blue Pete.” He rose. “And I’m going into the Hills right now to find him.”

She laughed scornfully, and he flushed.

“Yes, I know how difficult it’ll be, if he wants to keep out of sight, but I must try. The note said in three weeks—— He won’t be looking for anyone before that, so there’s a chance for several days yet. He knows you wouldn’t tell anyone about the note.”

“At least,” she declared, “he’s done nothing wrong. You’ve no need to fear that. I know him too well for that.”

He smiled at her. “I, too, know him, and I agree. But Jenkinson is after those robbers now, and he hasn’t much chance. You should wish me luck.”

Jenkinson did better than they feared. Up to the north of Brooks there were few tracks to confuse him, and he quickly discovered that the robbers had swung away to the west, then southward. When he saw them working west he thought of Calgary. When they turned to the south, he was puzzled and disturbed. He was able to keep to the trail until they crossed the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and he thought then of Lethbridge.

Then he came on a clue that told him he had not gone astray.

A small herd of the LT ranch lazily fed in the early morning light along a deep coulee. Two cowboys, waiting impatiently to be relieved by the day herders, rested on the dry grass just under the crest of the slope. Their bronchos grazed close by, waiting, too, for relief.

One of the bronchos raised its head abruptly and stared off over the rise toward the west. Its owner noticed it and climbed slowly to hands and knees and crawled limply to the height where he could look out to the west.

Two riders were making directly for him, and he called back lazily to his companion. “ ’Tain’t for us,” he grumbled. “Don’t know who they are.”

The other came up beside him, and together they moved away to their bronchos and mounted, they could not have told why. The oncoming pair loped easily forward and pulled in only a few yards away.

“Howdy, strangers!” greeted one of the cowboys. “Where yu makin’ for? Lost?”

“Not lost,” replied one of the pair. He smiled. “In fact we’re exactly where we want to be. And”—he jerked a gun from his belt—“we’re getting just what we want. We want those horses.”

The second stranger’s gun was out and pointing.

The two cowboys blinked, and one commenced slowly to raise his hands. Something about those two steady guns discouraged delay.

“Get off!”

The cowboys dismounted.

“Drop those guns over the edge there. We’re not taking them, but we don’t want you to get hurt using them.”

Helpless, the cowboys obeyed.

“Move over—twenty yards, say. We need room.”

Again the cowboys obeyed.

The pair dismounted, walked to the other bronchos and mounted. And the cowboys noticed then how weary were the bronchos they discarded.

The leader laughed. “We hate to do this, you know, but it won’t hurt you. Your relief will be here shortly, I suppose. In the meantime you might be able to catch the bronchos we’re leaving, but I doubt it. We hope you won’t be able to do it in time to follow.”

He rode to the bronchos they had discarded and lashed at them with the quirt from the saddle beneath him. The riderless bronchos, tired as they were, broke away and raced off to the west.

“Good-bye!” the leader called back. “It’s a pretty fair exchange—when you catch them. They’re good horses.”

He led away to the south and disappeared into a coulee, his companion close behind him.

As they tore along the leader frowned. “A fool-thing to do, but those horses we had were pretty well done out. Perhaps they’ll know who we are when they hear of the robbery, though the bank is quite a distance from here. I wonder how Jim got along.”

The Mounted Police did know; it was not difficult to connect the two affairs. But it did them little good. Jenkinson had kept on their track long enough to know what direction they took. He learned of the exchange of bronchos and promptly thereafter lost the trail.

Finally he reached a telephone and got in touch with his superior. He told of the latest robbery. “As far as I could follow they continued south for some time, but just before I lost the trail they swung away to the east. They were seen once more, but they seem to have avoided the herds. They’re three days ahead of me now. What will I do?”

“Keep on for another day or two,” ordered the Inspector. “Make inquiries. There are more to see them where they were when you lost the trail. I’ll warn Lethbridge, though I don’t think they’ll—— Anyway, you’ll find more telephones now, and you can let me know when you discover anything more. I’m trying to get someone to help you.”

He did not mention Blue Pete, for the public did not know how the Mounted Police used the half-breed.

Two days later Jenkinson was called in. Murchison had not been sent, and the Inspector had only him to talk to. “If only I had Blue Pete!” he moaned. “I wonder what success Mahon has had, and where he is.”

Wing’s confidence in his boss appeared not to be justified by events occurring, even as he tried to reassure Mira.

From the south Blue Pete had swung into the Hills that early morning. Down there was no one to see him, for nothing lived, no herds fed, south of the Hills for fear of rustlers. With only a dozen miles to the Border into Montana no rancher was willing to take the risk. The sun was already rising, but there at the south the prairie close to the Hills still lay in shadow.

As he rode into the deeper shadows of the trees he felt almost happy. There he was alone, in a wilderness seldom visited except by himself, and by the Mounted Police in pursuit of rustlers. There he spent many a day and night. Raised in the Badlands of Montana to the south, he had never learned to be content on the open prairie, and the Cypress Hills furnished the isolation and broken ground he loved.

With miles of the western end of the Hills he was familiar almost to the last rock and tree and ravine. A hundred times he had wandered there, sleeping in a dozen caves he had discovered. In some of them he kept grass for feed for Whiskers, and for a couch for himself. Often he had been forced to take shelter in them when in pursuit of rustlers.

Odd, that, too. There in the Hills he had suffered most, wounded almost to death, captured and bound by some of his many enemies, aware, too, that any rifle encountered within the forest would be ready to shoot to kill. For the rustlers from the Badlands knew they might have to face him there, and there were times when they came more to kill him than for cattle. Some of them had paid dearly for it.

Whiskers, too, was happy. Always in her mind the Hills meant excitement, the strange understanding that existed between her and her master, her chance to show that she understood, to play a role in hide-and-seek with him against his enemies. Bullets had whistled about her ears, and once she had been shot and left for dead, when Blue Pete had been forced to creep away and leave her. With the half-breed she had been captured, and once she had been driven off by her captors to the Badlands. But Blue Pete had found her and had brought her back.

The Hills had furnished a great life for them both.

This time, however, it was no casual visit, no desire to get away by themselves. They had not come to escape the blinding and burning sunshine of the open prairie.

And so, from the moment of entering the forest, Blue Pete went cautiously. His keen eyes were everywhere, though for an hour it was still too dark to distinguish much beneath the thick foliage. Whiskers understood, for she moved noiselessly along, picking every step. That was how she had learned to act in the Hills, where every shadow might conceal a threat.

Blue Pete did not ride aimlessly. For a few moments he paused when they entered the trees, planning his course, then he struck back toward the western end and continued until through the trunks of the trees he could make out the prairie beyond. By that time the sun had risen sufficiently to filter through the leaves, and he turned to the north, carefully examining the ground as he advanced.

At the northern fringe of the forest he turned about and cut back toward the south-east. A dozen miles or more, and the open prairie to the south stopped him.

All through the day he zig-zagged, now south-east, now north-east, eyeing the ground, and as the sunlight lessened he dismounted at the northern edge of the Hills and looked out over the prairie.

It was still light out there. Far away to the north he could make out the dark projection that was the stand-tank in Medicine Hat. Two small herds were in sight, far away, with a couple of cowboys visible.

He was not interested in them. Carefully he examined the prairie, and after a few minutes he appeared to be satisfied, for he nodded and smiled. Down there, more than a mile away, was the coulee where he had left Whiskers while he went to lie down beside Sergeant Mahon. Standing there, he turned to peer back into the trees. His forehead wrinkled as he examined the ground, but it was too dark to see what he sought, and he settled down for the night, after unsaddling Whiskers and leaving her to find her own bed.

He wakened to find the prairie bathed in the rosy beams of the rising sun. It was still dark, however, within the forest, and he lay where he was, staring up through the foliage, thinking. They were puzzled thoughts, for his forehead was wrinkled, and several times his head shook. Whiskers came and nuzzled at him, reminding him that it was time to get to work once more; then, seeing that he was not prepared to move, she settled back to nibbling at the grass in a more open space not far away, raising her head now and then to look at him to see if he was ready.

When it was light enough around him, he rose and commenced to walk about, bent over the ground, keeping close to the open to take advantage of the sunlight.

Several minutes passed, with plainly mounting uneasiness, then suddenly he stopped, sank to his knees, and a smile broke out on his dark face. He returned then to the edge of the trees and once more picked out the spot where he had thrown himself down beside Mahon. And again he smiled.

Whiskers came to him, and he saddled her and mounted. Slowly he directed her back into the trees, leaning far forward over the saddle. It was still too dark, however, deeper in the forest, and he pulled in and waited.

Presently he started on. A patch of rock appeared before him, and he carefully circled it, picking up the trail beyond. And once more he smiled, noting that the trail had branched sharply aside from the rock, altering its course. It was a trick he himself had used a thousand times, and for which he was prepared.

It defeated him later in the day. Three times he lost it, spent many hours searching for it—picked it up—lost it entirely. Stray cattle had found their way into the Hills and had wandered aimlessly about, blotting out the trail he followed.

Angry and disappointed, he gave up and once more commenced to zig-zag, working always slightly toward the east.

The day passed. As he rode he listened, and his eyes kept moving over the shadows about him. Whiskers’ ears were evidence that she, too, was on guard. So many times had they warned him—sounds too distant or too indistinct for his own ears.

Night caught up with him. As yet he had covered so little of the vast area of the Hills, yet he knew he had missed nothing of importance. And so he sought one of the caves he frequently used and settled down for the night.

The morning found him impatient as he waited for the light. There in the heart of the forest it was hours after sunrise before the rays penetrated sufficiently to make trailing possible.

A third night. He was restless now and uneasy. The cave in which he spent the night was dry and comfortable, but he was unable to sleep. As he lay he wondered what he thought to find, wondered if he was not wasting his time, unduly disturbed over something that should not concern him—wondered suddenly what Sergeant Mahon must think of him. A dozen times he rose and went to the cave entrance to stare into the darkness and listen. Always Whiskers was close behind him, waiting for him to make a move. The myriad sounds of nightlife were familiar to him, but there was nothing else.

Not until most of the night was past. Then from far away came the howl of a wolf, and his head jerked forward, a tingle of excitement swept through him. Suddenly he relaxed. He smiled and shook his head, and returned to his grass couch and slept.

Next day was no different from the days before, criss-crossing and finding little he sought. Here and there were tracks of strays, but under the trees they remained fresh for weeks, since sun or wind or rain could not reach them.

He did come on the tracks of bronchos, but so briefly that he returned to them again and again to satisfy himself. Always they petered out in rock or beneath the tracks of cattle. But they did encourage him to persevere—though there had never been any doubt of that.

On and on and on he went, peering cautiously into every ravine, neglecting no thicket, exposing himself as little as possible until he was satisfied that the way was clear.

And then——

It was almost dark within the forest, and he had made up his mind to stop for the day and find a place to spend the night. His thoughts returned to Mira and the 3-Bar-Y, to the note he had left her and that now he realized would only alarm and puzzle her. He could not figure out how long he had been in the Hills, could not remember how long he had told her he would remain; but he knew that if he was not back at the ranch at the end of the time she would set out to look for him.

He pulled Whiskers in and sat thinking. Straight before him a shaft of sunlight penetrated the foliage, and as he gathered up the reins he knew that he must not ride into that spot of light. Carefully he guided Whiskers round it—and beyond laughed at his precautions. The search was getting on his nerves.

Bracing himself against it, he sent Whiskers toward the south to a tight little ravine he knew, where there was grass and water for her.

He found it and dismounted, aware of a growing uneasiness. He wondered vaguely why he had not chosen a cave in which to spend the night. Sleeping in the open had always been pleasant to him, but something out of the ordinary appeared to be connected with it to-night. And so he hobbled Whiskers, against her protests, and lay down.

The pinto, driving her protest home, refused to leave him, and he laughed and reached up to twist her ears.

It was then he heard the wolf—and he knew he might not have heard it had he been in a cave. So suddenly did it pierce the darkness that he jerked himself to his elbow, slapping Whiskers from him. The blood seemed to race beneath his scalp and down his spine. Motionless, holding his breath, he listened, staring wildly into the shadows but seeing nothing.

It came again!

Whiskers moved nervously about him, her ears flickering back and forward. She pressed her nose against his shoulder to tell him that she, too, understood.

He sat up, laughing excitedly. “Shure yuh unnerstand, ole gal. ’T’s wot we come fer—at last.”

He sat where he was, still waiting and listening. And again the howl was repeated, this time much nearer and to the north.

Blue Pete rose. “I gotta go, ole gal. Not you. Yuh stay right here. I cudn’ use yuh none yit.”

Without a sound he crept away into the darkness.

He knew where the howl had come from, and he had figured out its progress; and he made directly toward the spot where it should be by the time he reached it. Running through the darkness almost with the assurance of a wild animal, he avoided every betraying twig and dead leaf.

Again the howl. With a low curse he stopped. It had come from behind him, so that he had misjudged, had made a mistake somewhere. And now it was too late. His teeth grated together.

But for some reason he did not move. And then—the howl once more, and now so close to him that he crouched behind a tree and held his breath.

He heard the broncho moving off toward the north-west, not thirty yards from where he stood. He heard a low laugh, and at the end another howl—another.

That was it. He had known it from that first howl when he lay beside Sergeant Mahon far away on the open prairie. It was no wolf but a human being attempting inadequately to imitate a wolf.

The broncho passed, and he followed. He could see nothing, but it was easy to follow the sound of the hoofs. They moved on, always toward the north-west.

After a time they reached the edge of the forest. The rider did not stop there but rode on out over the prairie, down the slope. There it was lighter, and the half-breed made out the figure of a man. The unknown had broken into a fast lope.

Blue Pete stood and watched the shadow disappear into the darkness, and for a long time thereafter his ears followed the pound of hoofs. Who was the rider? If only he had brought Whiskers! But he could not have followed without being heard.

He wheeled about and started back. Then he remembered. That other howl! One had come from far behind him, and then there had been the broncho close to him. So that someone else was there, trying to howl. A signal, of course.

He thought of rustlers. But rustlers would work together and would have little need for signals. Besides, one had ridden off into the open, leaving a companion behind in the Hills.

He hurried back to where he had left Whiskers. The pinto seemed not to have moved, and he lay down and slept. In the morning he knew where he was going. After all those discouraging days of search he had a goal before him now. His sleep was sound and restful.

It was still dark about him when he wakened, but the sky through the tree-tops was bright from the rising sun, and he did not delay. No longer would his patience be tried by searching for a trail that might mean nothing when he followed it to the end. He knew where the answering howl had come from, knew the direction—and he thought he knew the distance. There was a pleasant ravine just there.

Whiskers was almost as excited as her master, and her little hoofs beat a fast tattoo as he mounted. . . .

He reached down and patted her neck. “Easy, ole gal, easy! We ain’ got things near settled yit. We gotta go mighty keerful from now on, too. This ain’ jes’ sarchin’ fer a trail no longer. Thar’s lots we gotta find out, an’ pronto. An’ yit we do’ wanta be seen till we do find out a lot more. Yep, I know,” as he felt her tremble beneath him, “yuh’re achin’ to tell me to stop talkin’ an’ git goin’. I reckon that won’t make yuh keerless. . . . Awright, git goin’.”

The pinto started on, edging toward the north-east. He had decided to find the trail left by the broncho he had followed the night before. Without difficulty he found it when the daylight was sufficient, and he back-tracked along it to the east.

Presently he dismounted. Though he had pictured the ravine toward which he was now working his way, with this further east portion of the Hills he was less familiar, and he felt less confident of himself.

Leaving Whiskers in a thicket, he went on on foot, cautiously, eyeing the trail he had followed. At every step he stopped to listen. As he advanced he noticed that even the ordinary animal sounds of the forest were inaudible, and it made him more careful. Some life not far ahead must have silenced the wild life.

Suddenly, as he rounded a thicket, he saw the ground drop a few yards before him, to rise into view a couple of hundred yards further ahead. It was the ravine.

He stopped behind a tree, listening. He knew there was human life ahead, but as yet he could hear nothing of it.

For several moments the silence continued. Then someone yawned loudly from the depths before him.

He stood still for several seconds, listening for more to direct his next move. How many there were he had no way of knowing, but he knew there would be more than the one whose yawn had broken the stillness. What were they doing in the Hills? Plainly the one who had yawned had just wakened.

The yawn was repeated, this time more restrained, as if, more fully awake now, a certain amount of restraint was considered wise.

“Hey, Slow,” a voice called, “it’s time to eat, and I’m hungry.” The speaker laughed. “The boss won’t be back for days, so we can do what we like. But we gotta eat. Get the water, lazy-bones.”

A slightly muffled voice replied: “Oh, what’s the hurry? Why donchu sleep in when you got the chance? After the hours we been keepin’ we need lots o’ sleep. Huh,” he continued, after a moment, “the boss don’t seem to need sleep nor nothin’.”

“I’m up now,” replied the other, “and I’m starvin’. Get the water, an’ quick about it.”

“You got yer wood there?”

“Enough for breakfast. Don’t worry about my end of it.”

In the silence that followed Blue Pete set off through the trees toward the south. In that direction he could see a bush along the edge of the ravine. He reached it, crawling on his stomach for the last few yards. A small break in the bush provided a satisfactory peephole, and he looked through.

For fifty yards of its length the ravine lay open before him. Behind him, toward the south, it disappeared round a bend. To the north it was mantled with a thick growth of small trees.

Close to the trees a tent had been set up.

It was a comparatively new tent, erected by someone who knew how. A small plateau on the opposite slope furnished a good location, with room for a fire as well as the tent, and there under the opposite height the tent was protected from the wind. It was so situated, however, that a fair amount of the day’s sun would reach it, keeping it dry and comfortable. It had ample head-room, and mosquito netting covered the open flap in front.

What puzzled him most was three new camp chairs set out between the tent and the fireplace, and his lips curled.

The chairs did not seem to fit into the scene, yet it was evident that they played no inconsiderable role in the camplife of the occupants of the tent. Everything else, however, told of the experienced camper. Even the fireplace had been constructed by someone who had lived in the open. A shallow hole had been dug, and round it had been built a wall of stones. Off to one side a sapling was held down by a rope, so that it hung over the fire to hold a kettle. Behind the fireplace was a background of logs to reflect the heat.

In the most comfortable chair, the one with arms and a footrest, a large man lolled, his legs stretched before him. His hands were clasped behind his head.

At that moment the mosquito netting over the tent flap parted, and a second man stepped into the open, stretching lazily.

His face wrinkled to a sneer. “I see you take the boss’s chair when he’s away. I wish he could catch you in it.”

The other laughed. “It’s the only chance I got, ain’t it? He gets the best of everything, doesn’t he?”

“Now Jim, now Jim!” chided Slow. “What about the money?”

“He don’t need it, that’s why.”

Slow shook his head in a bewildered way. “I don’t understand that. Here he lets us take it all.”

Jim snorted. “Pooh! It’s the fun he’s after. I don’t ask no questions about that, long’s we get the dough, eh?” He laughed again.

Hanging on a pole fixed between two saplings was a row of cooking utensils and a pail. The latter Slow lifted from the twig on which it hung and slouched away down the slope toward the little stream that gurgled through the ravine.

“You ain’t got enough wood there, Jim,” he called back. “Get busy yerself for a change.”

Jim drew in his feet, stared a few moments at the little pile of firewood, and raised himself by the arms of the chair. A hatchet leaned against the stone wall about the fireplace, and he picked it up and slowly climbed the slope.

“Have the breakfast ready by the time I come back,” he threatened, “or I’ll use the hatchet on your wooden head.”

Slow replied by putting his fingers to his nose and making a contemptuous sound, before picking up the filled pail and climbing back to the tent. There he poured some of the water into the kettle that hung over the fire and proceeded to light the bark beneath the firewood.

The kettle was already singing when Jim returned, his arms well filled with dead branches which he flung down and attacked with the hatchet.

The kettle was lifted from the wire looped over the sapling. It was placed on the stone wall where it would keep hot, and a sheet of tin was laid on the wall over the fire. On it a frying pan was well covered with slices of bacon.

When the odour reached the half-breed, he could stand it no longer. An almost irresistible impulse attacked him to break into the open, gun in hand, to help himself from the pan. Fighting it, he hurried back to where he had left Whiskers.

For a time he stood beside her, considering what to do next. One thing—he had reached his goal. The rest to do now was just to watch. But for the time being at least he must not be seen; his presence must not even be suspected.

He looked about. The man he had followed the night before would be returning—the boss, they called him—so that he must conceal Whiskers where she would not be discovered.

Accordingly he led her away to the south and urged her into a thicket. Not far away she would find grass, and in the ravine beside her was water.

“Yuh’ll be awright here, ole gal,” he told her. “Thar’s grass, an’ thar’s water down thar. Yuh kin git to it when yuh want to, but yuh mus’n’t let ’em see yuh. Allus come back here when yuh’ve et. Unnerstand? We gotta find out a lot ’fore we let ’em know we’re here.” He patted her neck as she bent her head to his hand. “I ain’t leavin’ yuh fer long. They ain’t like to come in this direction. Tha’re waitin’ fer the boss. Musta bin the one we heerd las’ night, the one I follered. I’m goin’ jes’ to watch ’em. Dunno wot tha’re doin’ here. They bin here fer days too, that’s shure.”

He frowned and dropped his eyes thoughtfully to the ground. “They ain’t rustlers. They ain’t even punchers . . . not even Westerners, er I ain’t half white—an’ you ain’t no pinto. . . . Don’ like the looks o’ them nohow neither. Tha’re bad, jes’ bad eggs.” He raised his eyes to the pinto’s and grinned. “You ’n’ me we’re goin’ to find out, ain’t we?”

Whiskers had caught his sleeve in her jaws until he was finished. Now she let go and stood watching him as he left the thicket.

Slowly he returned to the bush from which he had such a good view of the tent. “They ain’ doin’ nothin’ jes’ now,” he told himself. “Wisht I cud ’a’ follered that other chap.”

He did not know that a life would pay for the failure.

The day passed slowly. The two men at the tent talked little. For the most part they slept, sometimes in the chairs. Their meals were sketchy and irregular, prepared only as one or the other felt like it. With early darkness they retired to the tent.

Another day, and the scene was repeated, though the tempers of the pair obviously shortened. Neither wished to move to perform the daily tasks that appeared to have been assigned. Slow, the cook, was tardy with the meals, and Jim ate them grumblingly, more censorious with each meal.

Slow reacted to the criticism. “You got the easiest job,” he complained. “If you ain’t satisfied, git yer own meals.”

“It’s your job,” Jim returned. . . . “Come to think of it, you ’n’ me we got the work to do, even gittin’ the money. The boss jus’ looks on—sits here an’ guzzles ’tween times. An’ my way o’ thinkin’ he’s too damn nice when we’re gittin’ the money.”

“Well, we go git it, don’t we? An’ it’s my meals he guzzles. You got nothin’ to kick about.”

“It’s my wood cooks the meals, ain’t it?” demanded Jim.

Slow lazily teetered one of the chairs closer to the fire and continued to cook from it.

“You burn that chair an’ there’ll be the devil to pay,” Jim warned.

“We can git others, can’t we—same way we got these.”

The other’s lip curled. “We git ’em if the boss says so. We gotta do everything like he says. Sometimes I git mighty sick of it.”

Slow turned to face him and half closed his eyes. “I dunno. . . . I dunno.”

“What donchu know?” demanded Jim.

“It ain’t goin’ on much longer, the boss says. Jes’ a couple more or so, he says. Keep yer shirt on. Then you can go doin’ these jobs alone.” He leered at his companion.

“Well, I kin do it. I done it before.” He thought for a moment. “A couple more, eh? That’s all right. We jus’ live from one to th’ other. I ain’t countin’. An’ the next one might be the last—fer any of us. Either wings or the coop. The way the boss runs it it’s risky, I say. Some o’ these times I’m goin’ to break loose; I ain’t goin’ to take no chances.”

“Got an idea you’ll do what yer told,” sneered Slow.

Blue Pete heard every word but understood none of it, and it puzzled him so that he wandered back to Whiskers in an effort to quiet his imagination.

Three more days passed. On that evening, as the daylight thinned, with the pair lolling in the chairs after the night meal, Slow looked up at the sky. “Wonder if the boss’ll be back to-night. Shouldn’ take more time then this. He said he’d try to make it to-night.”

Jim stretched. “I’m gittin’ fed up waitin’. I wanta do another job. I’m goin’ to sleep now.”

He rose and disappeared behind the netting, followed a few moments later by his companion. A deep silence settled over the forest.

Blue Pete dare not sleep. The boss was expected, and he wanted to be on hand for that. But as the hours passed and nothing happened, he lay down where he was and fell asleep.

He was awakened abruptly by the howl of a wolf. It came from a great distance toward the north-west. For a time there was nothing more, for the pair asleep in the tent appeared not to have heard.

Blue Pete listened, a slight smile twisting his face. Then, raising his head and cupping his hands about his mouth, he returned the howl, but this time it would have deceived a wolf.

Indeed, a wolf did reply from a great distance to the south-east. What was more, it wakened at least one of the men in the tent, for he came to the flap and made a weak effort to reply.

It was too dark for the half-breed to see who it was, but a moment later a match flared before the tent, and in its light he recognized Jim. Before the match had burned out, Slow came hurriedly from the tent.

“Gimme a match,” he said. “I gotta have this fire goin’. The boss’ll be hungry an’ thirsty, I bet. Give him another signal.”

Jim obeyed, this time the effort better and louder.

The answer came from not far away.

Blue Pete hurried back into the forest, grinning, and gave the howl. Returning, he saw in the light from the fire the two men staring into the gloom. For several seconds no one spoke, then the light from the new fire flickered up suddenly and Jim said almost in a whisper:

“That wasn’t the boss. Musta bin a real wolf. I’ll git my gun.”

Slow nodded and bent over the fire, glancing at short intervals fearfully over his shoulder. “I bet they bin right here all night around the tent. Makes me shiver. I hate ’em. Why didn’t the boss make the signal a dog’s bark? We could do that. Give the boss another howl. I’d like him around if there’s real wolves.”

Jim tried once more, and the answer came almost immediately. A few moments later the boss called to them from the top of the bank: “Say, you chaps must have been practising while I was away. One of you has it down a lot better than I can do it.” He dropped into the ravine and climbed the opposite slope.

“It wasn’t us,” Jim told him in an awed voice. “Musta bin the real thing this time, boss. You musta fooled him.” He laughed sneeringly. “Slow here’s scared stiff.”

The man they called boss rode close to the fire and dismounted. He handed the reins to Slow. He was plainly exhausted.

“Take him to the others, Slow,” he ordered. “Rub him down, and don’t forget to hobble him.”

Slow started off, leading the broncho, but after a moment returned. “I want my gun. I don’t like goin’ off there alone without it, not with real wolves around.” He vanished into the tent and reappeared, a gun in his hand.

When he was gone, the boss, who had stood before the fire, staring into the flames, turned slowly to Jim. “Is that the first time you heard the real wolves?”

“They ain’t bin around before. I’d ’a’ heard ’em for sure. I hate to think they’re just off there in the dark, lookin’ down on us. Never had nothin’ to do with wolves before.”

“Were they far away?”

“One seemed to be up there not far from the edge of the bank. I guess it’s hard to tell, because we were—well, frightened, I guess. I don’t know what wolves might do. The tent ain’t any protection.”

The boss did not reply; he continued to stare thoughtfully into the fire.

Jim watched him in silence for a few moments. “You musta sounded like a real one yerself to git an answer from ’em. Guess Slow an’ me we better do some practisin’, eh?”

Still the boss did not reply.

Jim tried again. “Didju learn all you wanted to know?”

The boss started. “Yes, I think so. I took my time. I could see everything from a height near the village.”

“Think it’s goin’ to be worth while?”

“Oh, yes. There’s sure to be enough. But I’m too tired to talk. I’m too tired even to eat.”

“When do we make a go at it?” Jim threw after him as he disappeared.

“I’ll talk about that to-morrow, when I’m rested.” He stooped to pass through the mosquito-covered opening in the tent. There he turned. “If you hear that wolf again, be sure to waken me. I’ll be too dead asleep to hear anything.”

In a few minutes the fire died out, so that it was quite dark around the tent when Slow returned, panting and cursing under his breath. Jim greeted him with a low, sneering laugh.

“Sh-sh! The boss is asleep, an’ he wants to hear that real wolf. Wants to polish up a bit on the signal, I guess. Me to hit the hay—an’ no more o’ this bes’ chair for me—or you.”

Again silence. Blue Pete remained where he was. A great confusion in his mind made him grind his teeth together in his helplessness. What did it all mean? What were they going to do? Who were they, and why did they find it necessary to use such a signal between themselves? It had failed to deceive him, but others would probably be less familiar with the real thing.

After a long time, when the snoring from the tent told him that the three were asleep, he crept back and lay down near Whiskers to sleep.

Dawn was not far off, and he had little time for sleep. Nevertheless it was not that that wakened him. A familiar sense of approaching danger, on which he had depended for many years, brought his senses abruptly back. Whiskers stood beside him, her nostrils wide, staring down on him. Even as he wakened she bent her nose to him and gently nudged his shoulder.

He rolled over and raised to his knees. Fortunately the thicket was dense, and he felt safe for the moment to look through the foliage in the direction of the tent.

His eyes focussed on a figure moving slowly about, not a hundred yards away. It was, he knew, the one Jim and Slow called the boss. The man zig-zagged about, his eyes on the ground, though it was still too dark there under the trees to be sure of seeing much. Now and then he stopped and looked around, and even at that distance Blue Pete read concern on his face—a face very different from those of his companions.

Blue Pete waited; there was nothing else to do.

Someone called loudly from the ravine, and the man turned and retired over the bank.

Blue Pete followed. And now he was careful to leave no trail. From behind the concealing shrub where he had lain so long he saw the three men at their morning meal, and a strange silence had fallen over them. Once or twice Jim essayed to start a conversation, only to be waved to silence by the boss.

The meal finished, the boss retired to the tent. When he emerged he carried an automatic in his hand, and after a few low words to his companions he set off up the opposite slope into the trees.

The half-breed hurried back to Whiskers and, keeping the thicket as cover, led her away toward the south for half a mile. There, in another thicket, he left her. And this time he struck directly through the ravine toward the east.

It did not take long to find the boss, and from cover he watched him prowling about, as he had done an hour earlier on the other side of the ravine.

Plainly he was suspicious, and Blue Pete cursed himself for having yielded to the urge to let these strangers hear how well the human voice could imitate a wolf. Mira always said he did so much without stopping to think, and on occasions like this he was inclined to agree with her.

Throughout the day he carefully kept out of sight, not even using the bush that had before proved such a satisfactory screen. He could always be certain that the men were there, for Jim’s voice in particular was loud and grating.

Only when dusk came did he venture to look down on the tent, and this time from a greater distance. He saw the trio, knew they were conversing, but he was too distant to hear what was said. There appeared to be some argument as they ate the evening meal, for Jim gesticulated a lot, and Slow appeared to support him by nodding. The boss, however, was unmoved. Once he extended his hand peremptorily, as if making an order more emphatic, and Jim and Slow glanced at each other and grimaced when the boss was not looking.

Another day passed with nothing worth noting, but some sort of preparation was going on, for Slow cooked more than usual, and it was not immediately eaten. Blue Pete had returned to the bush to watch, growing more restless in his uncertainty.

With darkness the three vanished into the tent, and some sort of light shone through, and shadows moved across the canvas.

After a time Slow came into the open. He went to the fire that still burned feebly and kicked dirt over it, extinguishing it.

Thereafter it was too dark to see, but Blue Pete could follow their movements with his ears. Presently the men left the tent and set off along the ravine.

He followed along the top of the bank, heard them reach the spot where their bronchos were hobbled, heard the creak of saddles as they prepared to leave. They came riding up the bank then, passing within a few feet of where he lay behind a tree.

Not a word had been spoken, except for an oath from Jim as, in the darkness, he had trouble preparing his mount. As they topped the bank, however, he laughed excitedly. “Well, here goes for another try.”

“I hope,” declared the boss shortly, “you won’t have a chance to say that many times more.”

Jim snorted. “Why break up such a good payin’ game?”

“Because it’s not a game to me, and I’m almost through. You can do what you like, but my part is almost finished.”

“Well,” laughed Jim, “you’ve sure showed us how easy it can be. We can go on alone perhaps.”

“I’ve nothing to do with that. . . . Only I hope you go on in the same way, that’s all.”

“The same way? Whachu mean?”

“You know my orders,” snapped the boss.

“Oh, that!”

They moved off through the trees, leaving their bronchos to pick the way. They worked toward the north-west, the same direction their leader had taken several nights before.

At a safe distance Blue Pete followed, easily keeping pace with them through the darkness. But he was not happy. For a few moments he considered returning for Whiskers and keeping after them, no matter where they went, but he quickly saw that would be impossible. Even if the three men failed to hear him, the bronchos would know and would give warning that could scarcely be misunderstood. The half-breed knew now it was unwise to take liberties with the leader.

Back in his mind, too, was the certainty that they intended to return, for they had left everything as it was about the tent.

It irritated him that he was so helpless. It even popped into his head to run forward and challenge them, but in the darkness they would have all the advantage. They were, he knew, telling nothing, and if they knew he was spying on them he would learn nothing.

There was nothing to tell him that at least such a challenge would have saved a life.

It was still not completely dark out on the prairie when they reached the edge of the trees, and for a short time they waited. Then they rode down the slope into the night. Behind them an angry watcher watched them disappear, and for a long time he could hear the dull thud of hoofs as they moved away toward the north-west.

Puzzled, impatient, convinced that he had neglected to do something that should have been done, Blue Pete walked slowly back. He reached the edge of the ravine and started eagerly down into it, only to change his mind. The tent would wait until it was light enough to see what it contained, and to make certain that he left no trail. The men, he felt certain, would not return for several days; he had gathered that from what he had heard.

He remembered Whiskers, and he went to her and once more moved her further to the south, leaving her in another ravine where she would find grass and water. He slept there, waking several times during the night, listening for the amateurish howl but convinced that it would not come.

In the morning he returned to the old bush. Though he knew the men would not be there, he was cautious, and for almost an hour he lay watching and listening. Then cautiously he descended the slope. He did not approach the tent directly but worked around to the north and approached through the thick growth of trees in that part of the ravine.

Creeping around the tent, he examined the flap. It had been buckled down over the mosquito netting. With shaking hand he loosened the buckle and threw the flap back. Pushing the netting back, he peered inside.

It was a comfortable tent. Two sleeping bags lay open against the side walls. Across the rear wall a third bag was rolled up. Beside it stood a small table, with writing paper, a fountain pen, and two books on its top. The ground was covered with canvas that was laced against the walls, so that with the netting closed, insects could not enter.

He was curious about that closed sleeping bag, and after staring down on it for a few moments he carefully unrolled it.

Inside several revolvers came into view.

At a glance he knew they were not guns used by cowboys. He had seen a few guns like them back in Montana, always in towns.

Beside each open sleeping bag was a small roll. He was curious about them, too, but he did not touch them. It had come to him suddenly that he had better be careful, and so he re-rolled the bag he had opened.

Hanging against the centre pole at the back was a large piece of bacon and a bag of flour. On the pole, beneath the food, a circle of flattened tin was fastened to prevent squirrels reaching it.

After a look around he made certain that everything was as he had found it, and he left the tent, closing the flap behind him. Thoughtfully he climbed the slope. He had a feeling that some of the story was there in the tent, but he could not imagine what it was. The key to the riddle was there, but he did not know how to use it.

If only Mira was there!

Oh, well! He sighed. There was only one thing to do—to wait until the men returned.

The wait was longer than he had expected. It was five days before they returned, days when he feared he had missed out, when he almost convinced himself that the trio would not return, that something had happened to them, or that they had no further use for the tent and had left the district. And he cursed himself for having let them go. Mira would have known everything—or Sergeant Mahon.

Sergeant Mahon! The picture of his friend came before him. Mahon would have read the whole story . . . and deep within him he felt certain that it was a story the Mounted Police should know.

As yet, however, it was no concern of his. They were not rustlers, and that was all that could attract criminals to the Cypress Hills. Nevertheless he was not satisfied. He even started back to the ranch to talk it over with Mira, but he changed his mind when he reached the edge of the forest. There was nothing about the event to justify suspicion, and if he took time for that he might miss them on their return.

And then, on the sixth day, as the forest was darkening, he heard the signal. From far away to the west came the undeceiving howl of a wolf. There was no answer, and it was repeated again and again as it approached.

Behind the bush Blue Pete waited. Presently through the trees came Jim. At the top of the bank he stopped and frowned down on the silent, deserted tent, then, slowly descending, he crossed the little stream and pulled up before the tent. For a time he appeared to listen. Dismounting at last, he led the broncho out of sight along the ravine.

It was almost dark when he returned, and he paused once more before the tent as if listening. At last he unbuckled the flap and threw it back. He started to enter the dark tent but changed his mind and dropped into one of the chairs.

Suddenly he laughed. Blue Pete, watching every move from behind the bush, frowned. He did not like that laugh, and he could not have told why.

Once more came the laugh, abrupt and mirthless, and from a pocket Jim drew an automatic and looked it over, shaking his head. Reaching into another pocket, he withdrew a jack-knife and proceeded to cut a nick in the butt of the gun. At the end he patted the weapon proudly.

Looking about, he picked up a stick, drove it into the ground beside the tent flap, and hung the gun on a twig near the top.

For a time then he lay back in the chair, gazing fondly at the gun, smiling broadly. Presently he rose, took the gun from the stick, stood with it in his hand as if considering something not so pleasant, stooped and picked up some loose earth in his free hand. This he rubbed vigorously into the nick.

With wide eye Blue Pete watched. The butt of his own .45 was almost covered with nicks like that, but he had never tried to dull them. Every nick was a human life, and each had its own story to tell, but only to himself. He was not proud of them, nor was he ashamed of them. To him they were merely a visible record of passing events in which he had been forced to shoot to kill. Even Inspector Barker, stiff in his observance of Mounted Police regulations, would never call him a murderer. To the half-breed death to an enemy never haunted him afterwards.

It grew darker. The man down there before the tent frequently studied his watch, and as the hours passed he grew more impatient, even angry. After a time he stirred, and with a grunt rose and commenced to gather together the pieces of firewood that lay about.

The fire laid, as he straightened, from a distance to the north-west came the now familiar howl of a wolf.

His face lit up, and he placed his hands about his mouth and answered as best he could.

In disgust the half-breed’s hands rose to cup about his lips, but he caught himself in time, shook his head self-accusingly, and dropped his hands.

He thought of Whiskers. She, too, would know those sounds were not from a real wolf, and she would be excited and uneasy, perhaps alarmed for him, and he hurried back to where he had kept her through the days of his waiting.

A word or two in her ear, an affectionate patting and scratching of her forehead, and he was off again through the darkening trees toward the north-west.

He heard them coming at last, and, safe behind a tree, the two riders passed within a few yards of him.

Someone laughed. It was the boss. “Jim will have to do a little more practising,” he said. “If anyone else heard that howl of his they’d know it was no wolf. We must remember that these people around here have heard wolves many a time. Neither of you appear to try very much, I must say.”

Slow snorted. “We ain’t had your experience in the wilds. Remember that. We bin livin’ in towns, doin’ our jobs there. That’s what you wanted us for, wasn’t it?”

His companion agreed, but in a tone that would have angered anyone with more intelligence: “Oh, yes, it’s your experience in that direction that’s of value to me—though it must be paying you better with me than it did before. If this sort of thing continued much longer you could retire.”

“Huh!” grunted Slow. “We ain’t complainin’, not about that. If you keep on——”

“We’ll talk about that later,” snapped the boss.

Slow laughed. It appeared to please him that he had angered his companion. “It’s your business, boss, but it must be what you bin wantin’, more’n diggin’ for the gold you say you was at.”

“Did I tell you that?” broke in the leader sharply. “Sometimes . . . sometimes I think I’m a fool.” His voice had dropped so low that the half-breed heard the words with difficulty. Then the leader’s voice rose. “These horses of ours seem to be able to pick their way back. They must like the woods.” He laughed a little bitterly. “Every one of us happy.” Another mirthless laugh. “I was forgetting. These aren’t the horses we started out with.”

They dropped into the ravine. By that time Blue Pete was too far behind to hear what was said, but he heard Jim’s laughing welcome, and he hurried to the screening bush and lay down to listen.

It was lighter down there, since there was no immediate cover or foliage. The leader and Jim were there at the fire, now burning briskly. Slow must have gone with their bronchos.

“Did you have any trouble?” the leader inquired.

“Not a bit. I picked up another horse from a corral I struck one night. Them you got ain’t the same ones either, are they?”

“No. A couple of cowboys were kind enough to exchange with us. I’m not sure they didn’t get the better of the exchange. By the way, did anyone see you?”

“I don’t think so. I seen a few cowboys, but I kept outa sight. When I broke away from you an’ Slow I made straight this way. I jus’ struck that ranch las’ night an’ got the horse. The rest o’ the time I was mighty careful. I see you got the bag.” He laughed eagerly and rubbed his hands together.

“You’d be sure to notice that,” said the other.

“Sure thing. That’s what we’re workin’ with you for, ain’t it?”

“Obviously. . . . And you don’t forget it’s all yours and Slow’s.”

“Well, seein’ ’s you don’t let us grab all in sight, what we don’t take’s yours.” He laughed nastily. “That was our bargain.”

“And I’m sticking by it,” returned the leader shortly, “as long as you stick to your side of the bargain. Anyway you won’t have it long.”

“ ‘Won’t have it long?’ Whachu mean?”

“Easy come, easy go. You may have heard of that.”

“Oh, we’ll take our chances, Slow ’n’ me. Anyway we’re takin’ risks; we’ll take the risk of it lastin’.”

The other turned his back abruptly, a contemptuous movement that did not escape Jim, who frowned and glanced toward his gun, hanging from the twig at the top of the stick beside the tent flap.

“You’d better get some more wood,” the leader ordered. “And keep your eyes and your ears open up there. I don’t feel quite safe here now, for some reason. We don’t want to be found, not before our next job, at any rate. Then——” He did not finish the sentence.

Jim laughed sneeringly. “Who’d ever think o’ comin’ into this dismal place? It’s only guys like us ’ud have any use for livin’ like this. Never bin in such a lonesome place before. An’ then that wolf—the real one the other night, I mean. Scared the life outa me. Some ways it didn’t seem so bad. Showed something else managed to live in a hole like this. But I hate the place. I’ll be glad when we can move on.”

“It won’t be long now,” his companion assured him. “Just one more job. And we’ve never been so safe anywhere else since we started. This place was made for us. By the way, bring down some green stuff with the firewood; we’ll have to smoke these mosquitoes out. They’re worse than ever to-night.” He slapped at his neck and muttered an oath.

Slow returned along the ravine and climbed to the fire.

“Get the water,” the leader ordered. “Take the larger pail. I could drink it empty. And be sure to wash it out first. You and Jim have used it, I suppose, for washing dishes.”

“An’ ain’t the dishes clean enough for you, boss?” growled Slow, as he took the larger pail from the wire and started down toward the stream.

“I’m enduring it, at least,” replied the leader, with a short laugh. “The dishes must have left some of their grime on the pail, and I’ve a constitutional objection to having my drinking water fouled in that way.” He laughed more easily. “That’s another thing for which you and Jim are my debtors: I’m teaching you something about cleanliness, sanitation, and how to run a camp comfortably. I don’t expect pay for it. Go on with your work.”

Slim dropped grumblingly down to the creek.

There had been moments when Blue Pete had to strain to hear what was said, and more and more he was convinced that he must not miss a word. Hints thus far, and that was all; hints that left him more confused than ever, and his patience was wearing thin. He studied the ground about the tent. Could he not get nearer, so as not to miss a word?

He decided to take the chance.

Working his way through the trees, well back from the ravine, he passed along to the north and, a hundred yards behind the tent, dropped down into the ravine, pushing his way cautiously through the thick growth of small trees that had sprung up there. It enabled him to get within a few feet of the tent with ample cover.

But he was behind the tent now, and the trio must have lowered their voices with the growing darkness, for he could hear little better than before.

Jim had returned with the firewood and the smoke-making green boughs. He had dropped his load near the fire and stood clapping the dirt from his hands.

“See or hear anything up there?” inquired the leader.

“Aw, there ain’t bin nobody anywheres near. Can’t see why you’re so worked up about it. Anyways, it was too dark to see.” He came nearer the leader. “Well, d’you know what we got that time? Musta bin pretty good, I’d say.”

“I haven’t had time to work it out yet,” replied the leader. “I’ll look into it and tell you later.”

“Oh, sure, sure! I ain’t in no hurry. I know you’re square. There ain’t no chance to use any of it hereabouts, anyway,” he added with a short laugh. “That time’s comin’.”

There followed a long silence, broken only by the rattle of cutlery on the metal plates they used. The leader’s tone had carried an unmistakable hint that he did not wish to talk. From where he stood in the trees Blue Pete could see nothing, but he waited.

It was Jim who broke the silence. “What’s the next job, an’ where?”

The leader did not reply for a few moments. “I’m going to take a look around. I’ll tell you then.”

“Where’ll it be?”

“I’m not sure of that either. Let it rest now. I’m too tired to think of it. . . . To-morrow night I’ll be ready to take a look. You can be sure I’m not going to waste time. I want to get it over with.”

Jim laughed. “You don’t get as much out of it as Slow ’n’ me, looks like, but it was you got us into it.”

“What I get out of it is different,” replied the leader shortly.

“An’ that’s what’s got my goat,” said Jim in a low voice. “But it’s your box o’ tricks, not ours, eh, Slow?”

From his new position the half-breed could hear little better, and he could see nothing, so he returned to his old lookout and lay down.

The meal was finished, and the green boughs were on the fire, throwing a thick cloud of smoke over the front of the tent. There was little flame, but now and then a blaze revealed the leader seated in his chair, staring into the fire. He did not look happy. The other two had moved their chairs into the thicker smoke, coughing now and then but spared the mosquitoes.

After a time the leader rose and disappeared into the tent. In a few minutes the others followed. No light showed through the canvas. . . .

They were up early in the morning. The leader came into the open first, impatiently ordering the others to prepare the breakfast. Silently they ate, and at the end Slow carried the soiled dishes down to the creek. The leader paced about the open space between the fire and the tent, Jim watching furtively and evidently waiting for a chance to speak.

Slow returned with the breakfast dishes and silently set them in their places on a stump behind the fire. The leader stopped suddenly in his pacing and raised his eyes to the sky. Something then he said to his companions that Blue Pete could not hear, and Slow set off down and along the ravine.

Jim’s face had broken into a smile. “You sure ain’t wastin’ no time, boss. You said you wouldn’t start till to-night.”

“I’m rested enough,” said his companion. “I’ll be there in time for things to open up to-morrow. I’ll have a look.”

“When’ll you be back?”

“You’ll know when I’m back,” came the short reply, as he vanished into the tent.

Slow came along the ravine with one of the bronchos, and the leader emerged from the tent and mounted.

For a moment or two he sat looking down on the pair. “When I’m gone,” he said, “I want you to be careful. Don’t think we’re safe here. Be suspicious of everything. Don’t talk too much. If you hear that wolf again, try to get near enough to see it. Remember what I say. There are things I don’t like.”

He rode up the other slope and turned directly toward the north into the trees.

Jim watched him go with shaking head. “What’s he scared of? There ain’t nobody within miles of us. We’d know. An’ that wolf—lord, if he thinks I’m goin’ chasin’ through this place after any wolf he’s got another think comin’.” He frowned. “He’s gettin’ crankier an’ crankier all the time. I’m gettin’ tired of it. Snaps a fellow up like he don’t count for nothin’. We all got our part, I says, an’ he couldn’ do nothin’ without us all. Anyways we do the real work. He jus’ stands an’ watches us at it. Jus’ spouts the figures.”

“An’ we git it all,” Slow reminded him. “Them figures run the hull show better’n we ever done the thing before, an’ quicker an’ safer.”

Jim was in no mood to give way. He shook his head gloomily. “We bin lucky. Never know in this game when your luck’ll run out. I bin mighty close to it manys a time. I bet you too. It’s comin’.”

“Aw, don’t start that kind o’ talk, Jim. You bin at it for years, an’ you’re still lucky. I bet you never had things as easy as now.”

“That’s what I say—too lucky. It can’t go on. You know it an’ I know it—there’s an end to luck like that. . . . Besides, what I done before ain’t done me much good.”

Slow spat noisily. “That’s it—what you done before. You got yer jeans pretty full right now. An’ for Heaven’s sake stop yer growlin’ till the boss gits back. He’s got something big in his mind this time. I wouldn’t wonder——”

What he wouldn’t wonder he never said, and Jim did not appear interested enough to ask.

The day passed, and the next, and a third. The pair lolled about the tent, almost too lazy to prepare meals.

On the morning of the fourth day, with the sun up but its light reaching only the few open spots in the forest, one of them about the tent, the howl of a wolf came through the trees.

The pair asleep in the tent heard it, and in a moment Jim pushed through the mosquito netting and answered. Slow tumbled through behind him and grabbed a pail, to run down the slope to the creek.

The howl was repeated, Jim again replying. Five minutes later the leader rode down the slope and dismounted before the tent. Slow squatted before the fire, blowing it into flame. The leader heaved a heavy sigh; he was very tired. He dropped into his chair and his head went back, his eyes closed. Slow set off along the ravine with the broncho.

For a few moments Jim stood, watching but saying nothing. Then he picked up the hatchet and started up the slope toward the east.

The leader’s eyes opened. “Did you see anything while I was away—hear that wolf or anything?”

“Not a sound. There ain’t nobody else within miles, like I said.” He laughed. “How’d my howl sound this time, boss?”

“You’re doing better. Go on. I’ll sleep for a few minutes.”

Jim disappeared, and the leader’s head went back, his eyes closed. After a time he rose and entered the tent. Slow returned and set to work preparing breakfast. The leader had not reappeared when Jim returned. He looked at Slow, nodded toward the tent, and, going nearer, whispered something. Slow pushed him impatiently away and continued his activities.

Suddenly the leader emerged and seated himself.

Jim stood near the fire, shifting from foot to foot. “Well, how do things look, boss?” he asked.

“Pretty good, I’d say. It won’t be more difficult than the others, I’m quite certain, and this time I’m inclined to let you go all out. That town’s big business.” He laughed quietly. “Perhaps . . . perhaps it’ll satisfy us all.”

His eyes focussed on Slow. “You asked me last night, Slow, how long this would continue. I wasn’t certain then. I know now. This will be the last. When this is over we’ll separate.” His head shook as he looked from one to the other of his companions. “You both know we could never be friends, not real friends. There isn’t much in common between us. I don’t mean by that anything that need hurt your feelings; it’s just that our ways don’t run parallel, except for this one thing. You fitted into my purpose, and you’ve been satisfied with that. It’s meant easy pickings for you. We’ll go our several ways after this next job . . . and,” he added, after a pause, “I must confess that I’ll try to forget that I ever knew you. . . . You’ll remember me as long as the money lasts. You won’t owe me a thing, and I don’t think you could consider me a debtor.”

Slow cleared his throat and looked round from the fire. “I—I sorta hate to think o’ quittin’, Terry.” It was the first time the name had been used, and in its use was a suggestion of affection. “We bin doin’ mighty well, an’ we owe it to you. Why can’t we go on, jus’ for a while anyways?”

Terry shook his head. “No, my purpose will have been fulfilled. I’ve made up my mind. I’ll be satisfied. I never intended to continue after—after the goal I had set was reached. This has never been my sort of game, and you know it. You can go on without me, as you did before. I wash my hands of that. I didn’t start you at it; I made sure of that.”

“It sure won’t be so easy without you, boss,” said Jim. “It’s gone like clockwork, every job.”

Terry smiled, a sad sort of smile. “After we separate I’d prefer not to know anything about you. I don’t want to feel responsible for—for anything you may do when my rules are not before you. It has worked out well. We’ve been lucky perhaps.” There was a sadness in his voice that made his two companions eye him uneasily.

Slow cleared his throat again. “I don’t understand you, boss; I never did.”

“Thanks!” returned Terry in a low voice. Suddenly he laughed—a short, harsh laugh. “The fact is I don’t understand myself.” He rose abruptly and retired to the tent. “Get that breakfast going,” he ordered, as he disappeared. “I’m famished. I managed to get a newspaper in town. I haven’t seen a paper for weeks. We’ve been out of circulation, one might say.”

He reappeared a moment later, a newspaper in his hand, and dropped into his chair, slowly unfolding the paper on his knee. Jim had gone to seat himself beyond the fire on a stump, one knee caught in his hands, staring off across the ravine.

Suddenly Terry jerked forward in his chair, and the half-breed was not too distant to see an angry flush mantle his face. Terry rose, stood for a moment scowling at Jim’s back, and turned to the gun caught on the twig of the stake before the tent. He reached out to it, hesitated, and his hand dropped. He stalked nearer the fire.

Jim must have felt something, for he turned, rose, and came round the fire. Terry thrust the newspaper before him, swallowing hard and pointing to a large heading.

Then, without a word, his fist shot out. It struck straight into Jim’s face, toppling him over backwards.

Jim’s frightened face rose above his elbow, and with a sudden movement he rolled toward the tent and grabbed his gun from the stake.

Terry leaped toward the tent and ducked as Jim pulled the trigger. The bullet passed over his head through the canvas. One more shot into the canvas, and Jim was off at full speed up the slope.

Slow had not moved. Open-mouthed, frightened and bewildered, he stood and watched. Neither of the others paid any attention to him. At the top of the slope Jim threw himself on the ground, watching the tent, gun pointing. It would have been death for Terry to leave the tent then—if already one of the bullets had not done its work.

Blue Pete looked on with buzzing thoughts and a bewilderment as great as Slow’s. The impulse came to him to drive Jim away with his own .45, for he did not want Terry to be killed. He knew there was some good reason for the blow that had knocked Jim down, and it had something to do with that staring headline in the newspaper. But he managed to control himself. He did not think Terry was killed; that did not fit into the scene.

He knew it when Terry suddenly came in sight behind the tent. He had cut his way through the canvas. He carried a gun now, and he moved cautiously into view, looking for Jim.

The latter saw him and fired. The bullet missed once more, and Terry commenced to move up the slope, covering himself with what trees there were.

Jim, in panic now, shot wildly again and again.

Terry kept on, holding his fire.

Jim’s gun emptied. Madly he struggled to reload. Terry evidently had counted the shots, for he stepped boldly into the open. He pulled the trigger of his gun—turned and moved slowly back down the slope and dropped into his chair, shoving the gun into his pocket.

He beckoned to Slow, who still stood open-mouthed. “Get up there, Slow, and bury him,” he ordered. “And I hope no one was near enough to hear.”

Blue Pete clambered to his feet. He ran back to where he had left Whiskers and led her further away. He scarcely knew what he was doing; everything seemed unreal, inexplicable, and somehow he felt as excited as ever he had felt. He had seen many a man shot to death, had shot many himself; but he had never seen anything like this, so calmly carried through, so unexpected, so casual.

And somehow he knew that Jim had got what he deserved.

A wave of admiration for Terry, the killer, passed through him. Cool, daring, cleverly picking every move, he had continued what had evidently been in his mind from the moment he had sent his fist crashing into his victim’s face. And at the end only a single shot, and, “Get up there, Slow, and bury him.”

He remained with the pinto until he had better control of himself. With a long breath he looked about through the trees. Abruptly he turned and let a hand drop affectionately on Whiskers’ neck. “I’m leavin’ yuh now, ole gal,” he told her, “an’ I don’ know how long I’ll be . . . mebbe a very . . . very . . . long time. So don’ wait fer me more’n two-three days. Git back then to the ranch. Mira’ll know. Yuh kin bring her then, ’cause she’ll be lookin’ fer me shure. . . . Ef it takes that long, reckon thar mightn’t be much wuth findin’. S’long!”

Whiskers whinnied as he turned away, but she did not attempt to follow.

Blue Pete retraced his steps slowly through the trees. He stopped at last and looked about. Then he cupped his hands about his lips and sent the howl of the wolf into the silence.

It was not the howl he knew so well how to give, but an imitation of Jim’s. With a smile then he walked openly toward the ravine and the tent.

A bush rustled off to his left but he did not show that he heard. He kept on. It came again, this time behind him.

A sharp voice brought him to a stop.

“What are you doing here, and who are you?”

He turned, to look into the little round hole of a gun he had just seen used with deadly accuracy.

Blue Pete tried to look embarrassed and frightened. He grinned and raised his hands above his head.

Terry’s expression was very grave and troubled. “I didn’t order you to raise your hands. We’ll wait until I find out if it’s necessary. With this gun I’m not afraid of anything your hands can do. I’ve handled a gun too much and too often for that. Yes, I know some of you Westerners pride yourselves on the swiftness of your draw, but I’ve done a bit at it myself; I’m willing to take a chance with the best of you. I’ve had to practise it, and in a part of the country where one had to be swift, where the law was even less urgent than it is here. Turn your back and continue the way you were going.”

Blue Pete did as he was told. For a few feet he shifted along, still apparently frightened.

From behind came another sharp order: “I see you have a gun in your belt. Drop it on the ground. It looks too serviceable to leave with you.”

The half-breed half turned. He frowned. “I ain’ thinkin’ o’ usin’ it. An’ yuh ain’ got no need to keep me covered neither. I jes’——”

“Do as you’re told.”

Blue Pete slowly released his .45. He had not anticipated that, and for a moment he considered testing his captor. It was not fear of the result that made him change his mind. The gun dropped to the ground beside him, and he continued along through the trees.

Terry picked the gun up as he passed, and thrust it in his own pocket. “I asked what you were doing here,” he demanded sharply.

“Wal-l, I heerd them funny howls. I heerd ’em this mornin’, so I come to see who was tryin’ it on. ’Twudn’ fool nobody in these parts.”

“Huh! Evidently it didn’t fool you. So you thought to teach us a lesson. It’s you who’s been fooling my friends with something more like the real thing. I hope you don’t mind my saying that you didn’t fool me, not very much, though I was too far away to be certain. It means you’ve been around here for some time, spying on us. You remained a little too long.”

“I wasn’ doin’ no spyin’. I was jes’ wonderin’.”

“Well, wondering has got you into trouble—more trouble than you think. This was the wrong place to wonder, the wrong one to do it with. Where do you come from?”

“From ’cross in the Badlan’s.”

“The Badlands? Where are they? And don’t stop walking while we talk.”

“The Badlan’s ’s ’cross the Line, over in Montany. An’ take care o’ that gun o’ mine.”

Terry’s laugh was short and unpleasant. “Don’t worry. You won’t need it—where you’re going. I’ll take care it doesn’t get back into those hands of yours. If I’m not mistaken you know how to use it, and the nicks on the butt support the idea. Just bear in mind that you won’t need it, never again.”

“I allus need it, mister. I’m all lop-sided ’thout it.”

“Well, that certainly is difficult for me to bear,” sneered Terry. “You afflict me grievously.” His tone altered. “Now what are you doing here where you heard those howls?”

“I—I come over jes’—jes’ to take a look at things.”

Terry scoffed. “You came all the way over from Montana just to take a look at things. Just a pleasant little jaunt, a sort of holiday trip, I suppose.”

The half-breed rubbed a hand across his face. “I come to see—to see if thar’s a chance to—to do a bit o’ rustlin’.” He turned to glance back at his captor. “Yuh ain’t a rancher here, are yuh, mister? Yuh ain’ got cows ner nothin’?”

“I’ve never been in this part of the country before the last few weeks,” the other replied, “and,” he added, “the sooner I’m out of it the better—for everyone.”

“Then mebbe yuh’re doin’ a bit o’ rustlin’ yerself, eh?”

The harsh laugh from behind him brought the half-breed’s eyes swiftly round.

Terry waved him angrily on. “I told you to keep going.” He laughed harshly. “Well, yes, you’re almost right. I am doing a bit of rustling—of a kind. But it’s not cattle. I haven’t fallen to that.”

“ ‘Fallen?’ ” Blue Pete was indignant. “Yuh ain’t fallin’ when yuh git to rustlin’. Yuh gotta keep mighty smart on yer feet, I kin tell yuh. It’s the slickest way to make a livin’, an’ the mos’ fun.”

“And dangerous, I should say.”

“Oh, shure, shure. That’s part o’ the fun. Over whar I come from nobody knows who really owns a cow, an’ yuh can’t tell from the brand—not ’less yuh’re mighty smart—so anybody jes’ helps hisself—an’ hopes . . . mostly to sell it. I’ve sold lots.”

“I’ll bet you have,” Terry laughed.

They had reached the top of the bank above the tent. Terry pointed. “This isn’t anything new to you. Oh, I know. I’ve known there was someone around. I’ve been looking for you.”

Blue Pete grinned. “Shure, I seen yuh lookin’.”

“And you, too, have done some looking of your own—among other things, you’ve looked in the tent when we were away.”

“Shure. I took a peek. It didn’t tell me nothin’, nothin’ ’tall. Yep I been around fer a long time.” He drew a long breath of relief. “It’s shure nice to hev someun to talk to. I bin all alone——”

“And listening. Did you learn nothing from our conversation?”

Blue Pete shook his head. He decided to alter the role he had adopted. “That’s why I give that howl jes’ now, so yuh’d git me, an’ then we cud talk.”

“If you think that is all that is going to happen to you, you’re living in what they call a fool’s Paradise,” replied Terry bitterly. “You’re destined to learn a lot of things it won’t do you any good to know.”

They had dropped down the slope, crossed the little creek, and climbed the opposite slope to the tent. Slow, from the bank above, had seen them coming, and he approached cautiously, gun drawn, glancing from Terry to their captive, as if awaiting instructions.

“Where’d you git him, Terry?” Slow inquired.

Terry frowned. “You unutterable fool! Don’t you know better than to use names? Don’t forget what happened—our friend.” The frown was wiped away by a dry, mirthless laugh. “But what does it matter—now? He isn’t going to be in a position to use it.”

He turned to Blue Pete. “Sit down there—on the ground, and keep your mouth shut. I must do some thinking; I wasn’t prepared for this. You certainly have messed things up for me.”

The half-breed seated himself beside the fire. For several minutes Terry sat staring at him and frowning.

Suddenly his face reddened. “Go on, grin if you feel like it. You won’t have much chance again. You don’t seem to understand the mess you’re in. You’ve seen too much. Don’t imagine I don’t know you’ve been at my bed-roll when we were away. You saw those revolvers.” His expression was hard, his tone cold and threatening.

Blue Pete nodded.

“And,” Terry continued, “you recognized them for what they are—bank guns. We took them from the banks we robbed.”

The half-breed straightened, and his lips fell apart. He stared at Terry, swallowing again and again. “I—I didn’t know nothin’ ’bout that. I didn’ know no banks was robbed. Out here, yuh mean, in the West?”

Terry shrugged and drew a long breath. “You mean you didn’t know any banks had been robbed?”

“I don’ read no papers,” said the half-breed. “I ain’ bin to the ranch fer a long time.”

Terry’s eyes focussed on him. He smiled. “I need only keep you talking, to learn all I need know.” He frowned once more. “But what does it matter? You know now, and it’s just too bad for you.”

He drew the half-breed’s .45 from his pocket and held it in his hand beside his own. “Two good guns,” he murmured. “They could do so much together. You think it has saved your life so often that you can always depend on it to repeat.” His head shook slowly. “There comes a time when—when records are broken.” He looked down on the guns. “You’ve killed with this gun of yours, killed many times, by the looks. You killed when you felt it was necessary. . . . Well, that’s the way I feel now—about my gun. If ever there was a time when it was necessary to kill, this is it.

“For, you see . . . you see, I daren’t let you go now; I daren’t let you live. It means . . . it means one more job for this gun of mine.” He sighed. “And I hoped I was through with that.”

He seemed only then to remember Slow, and he raised his eyes to him. “My friend here can tell you how well I shoot. He knows that I, too, shoot to kill, when I think it necessary. . . . I even shoot a friend—when he disobeys. You can see how much more likely I am to shoot a stranger who might send me to the gallows—or life imprisonment—with what he knows of me. Neither gallows nor jail are for me. It’s a role I don’t intend to fill.”

Blue Pete was unmoved. He nodded. “Yep, I seen yuh shoot yer friend.”

Terry’s eyes grew even more pitiless. “You saw that? Then you must see what your end will be.”

Again Blue Pete nodded. “I see wot yuh think, awright. Yuh think yuh jes’ gotta shoot me. I dunno wot fer. I ain’ done nothin’ but jes’—jes’ try to find out.”

“And now you’ve found out.” Terry leaned forward, staring into Blue Pete’s eyes. “You’ve made it difficult. I hate the job—somehow. I shot Jim with scarcely a qualm; I can’t feel that way about you. Did the Mounted Police send you?”

“I told yuh I didn’ even know thar was any banks robbed.”

“Then what brought you into the Hills? We haven’t seen another soul even near them.”

“I often come here. I know this place from here to there. I——”

He stopped as Terry’s face broadened to a smile. “Yes,” said Terry, “you gave it away a few moments ago. You have a ranch near here somewhere. I knew you lied about the Badlands.”

“But I didn’ tell no lies, mister. I come from the Badlan’s, awright, but that was a long time ago. Me an’ Mira we got a ranch off to the west. I was sleepin’ on the prairie one night when I heerd the fust howl yuh gave. I knew ’twasn’t no wolf, so I come to find out, ’cause the rustlers they work from these Hills, an’ the 3-Bar-Y has cows feedin’ not far away.”

“Does anyone else know you’re here?”

Blue Pete shook his head.

“Not even this Mira, whoever she is?”

“She’s my wife.”

“Is she Indian too?”

“I ain’t all Injun. Mira’s white.” He grinned. “Yep, I know it don’ sound right. Allus is funny to me, too.” He sank back, a knee caught in his hands, and stared up at the sky. “Funniest part of it is she seems to like me a lot.”

Terry rose abruptly and walked away, standing for several moments with his back to his captive.

Suddenly he turned. “Damn you, every moment you make it more difficult to do what we both know I must do.” He jerked a thumb toward the gaping Slow. “All this must sound strange to my friend here, after seeing me shoot another friend.”

“Whyju shoot him?” Blue Pete inquired.

“He disobeyed an order.”

“You mean yuh—yuh—yuh shot him jes’ ’cause he didn’t do suthin’ yuh told him to do?”

“No. It was because he did something I told him not to do.” His tone softened at the look of disbelief on the half-breed’s face. “From the beginning I’ve tried to drill it into my two companions not to harm anyone.” He stooped and picked up the newspaper he had brought from town. “Not till I saw this did I know that in our last robbery Jim killed one of the clerks, killed him, too, when it was unnecessary.” He sighed, and a hand brushed vaguely across his forehead. “I never anticipated anything like this when I set out to—to collect.”

He leaned over Blue Pete and looked into his eyes. “I know you’ll find it difficult to believe it, but I’d rather shoot myself first.”

“Yuh shot him,” murmured the half-breed, wonderingly.

“He shot at me first. There was nothing else to do. I don’t regret it. What I regret is that poor teller who did nothing but what he was expected to do.” He sank in his chair and buried his face in his hands. “It’s made everything look so different, so—so hideous. I had no idea when I set out to collect that anything like this could happen—murder.”

The two guns had fallen to the ground and lay at his feet. Blue Pete reached out and pushed them away.

“It’s on my shoulders now. It makes me a murderer. I should have known what would happen, with a companion like Jim. And I told them so often not to kill. I couldn’t do more than that, could I?”

He raised his face, saw the two guns on the ground within reach of the half-breed, and a look of surprise made his eyes open wide. He picked the guns up.

“You could have done that,” he said in a whisper.

Blue Pete only shrugged.

“Strange, too, that I should be talking like this to a stranger, an Indian, too.”

“I’m on’y part Injun, I told yuh. I never seen my dad. He was white.”

“He left no outward mark on you, but . . . but inside? I’ve known many Indians in my life. We use them as guides in Northern Ontario. I never made friends with them.” He laughed bitterly. “I never made friends with anyone.”

“We got Injuns here, too, lots o’ them. Most’s a bad lot. I don’ hev nothin’ to do ’th ’em . . . ’ceptin’ now ’n’ then when they kill someun. Then I git after ’em. Th’ Inspector sends me.”

Terry’s eyes hardened. “As I said, all I need do is keep you talking. So you’re with the Mounted Police.” His hands came together tightly. “Why do you tell me these things?”

“I jes’ work fer ’em now ’n’ then, I ain’t no Mountie. I was oncet, but a jedge kicked me out. Sometimes th’ Inspector’s got nasty work to do, an’ that’s wot I like, that’s all.”

Terry’s body swayed back and forward in the chair, and he stared up at the sky. “This gets funnier and funnier . . . and more difficult . . . and worrying. It doesn’t make sense. I could shoot a friend with scarcely a qualm, yet I find it hard to shoot a stranger whom I daren’t not shoot. Slow, here, I’d shoot him without a second thought, if he did what Jim did, and he knows it. It’s no crime to kill a man’s who’s killed needlessly. The police do it.”

He looked down on the half-breed’s gun. “So that’s where the nicks come from.”

“No they don’t . . . er mighty few of ’em. The Mounties don’ like nobody to kill. They don’ needta mostly.”

“In a lawless country like this?”

“This ain’t no lawless country, not ’th the Mounties. They see to that.”

“They’d shoot me if they caught me robbing a bank.”

“They’d try to ketch yuh fust alive. They’d take a mighty lot o’ chances doin’ it, too.”

Terry laughed harshly. “They’d have a right to shoot to kill. For they’d never have a chance to catch me alive. I’d see to that. I’d shoot myself first.” He shrugged. “But why talk like this? They won’t have many more chances to try. Only one more job and I’m through. I’ll have done then what I set out to do.”

Blue Pete looked curiously up into the eyes above him. “Wot’d yuh set out to do, mister?”

The strange man seated in the camp chair before the fire stared down at his captive, and a slow smile gathered on his face. Blue Pete’s eyes remained on him, and he smiled back. For several moments neither spoke.

Suddenly Terry heaved a long breath, straightened, and flung out his hands. Deep lines marked his forehead, and a look of bewilderment came into his eyes.

“I don’t understand. This is—is something—I didn’t bargain for. Something has happened to me, and it’s confusing.” His voice was low, as if he talked to himself.

He shook himself and frowned. “You must know there’s only one end for you now. I daren’t let you live. . . . If only you hadn’t—wondered! Why did you have to break in on my plan, and when it was so near fulfilment? Everything was running so smoothly . . . except for what Jim did. In another week it’ll be over, and I’ll be able to rest, to sleep at nights without the haunting nightmare of all these long years. I haven’t been able to sleep without it since I was a child. It’s been with me even during the day; it’s made life miserable. . . . It’s made me—bitter. Yes, I know it. But can you wonder?

“I never had a friend.” He sighed. “I never wanted one . . . for fear he’d learn what I had in mind . . . just as I’m going to tell you now. With you it doesn’t matter, for you won’t live to tell. I couldn’t afford friends. They might come between me and my plan. I realize now, with you there before me, how wise I was. This thing I always had in mind has been a canker that ate into my life. I have never been happy. I know . . . it has done something to me.

“And now,” almost angrily, “you threaten to interfere, just when happiness promised. You—you’ve muddled me, confused me. If you hadn’t heard us try to imitate a wolf, I’d have been clear in a few days, prepared to go out and live the life I’ve missed, the life any man should live . . . with friends.”

A look of distress had come into the half-breed’s face. “I—I didn’t mean nothin’, mister. I ain’t never had no wish to change nobody’s plans. Yuh ain’t got no need to shoot me.”

A bitter laugh burst from the face above him. “You say that because—because you pity me. You don’t need to. In three or four days I’ll be happy, free of this haunting purpose I’ve never even tried to forget. Besides, you don’t know everything. You forget what I told you—that we’ve been robbing banks, taking money, thousands of it, to which we had no right—except for my purpose. And,” fiercely, “we’re going on taking it. I’m not going to be stopped now, so near the end. Just one more robbery . . . one more . . . one more.” His voice trailed off to a whisper.

He seemed then to remember Slow, and he faced him and angrily waved him away.

Terry watched him go. “Everything’s suddenly so uncertain. Ever since Jim let me down I can’t trust Slow. I picked them both because they’ve lived on crime, and I thought I could control them. Slow is stupid, and he was willing to let himself be led. Jim knew the ropes better, and I had to have one like that, because—because it was a new game for me, though I’d lived with it in mind for thirty years.

“And now Jim is gone . . . and you came. . . . And everything looks so different. That murder has upset everything—even my self-confidence. I know Slow will be more nervous, and that means danger to the way I must have things done. But I’m going on. I’m going on, I tell you,” he grated through closed teeth.

He picked up his captive’s gun and looked it over, and his glance slid off to Blue Pete’s face. “It’s a good gun, and you know how to use it. . . . And you’re not a murderer. We could—we could carry this through to the end together, this gun and I.”

“That gun ain’t no good ’less yuh know how it shoots,” declared the half-breed. “It wudn’ help yuh none.”

Terry gave a thin smile. “It would be in your hands, not mine. If you would take Jim’s place——” His eyes pleaded. The hands that gripped the two guns showed white at the knuckles.

Blue Pete’s lips had parted and hung like that. He blinked. “Yuh mean—yuh mean you want me to help yuh rob a bank?”

“It was foolish of me, I know,” sighed the other. “I should have known it. You haven’t any reason for it, like Slow. . . . Like I have. You see, I don’t keep any of the money; it all goes to Slow and Jim. What I get is—something else, something so much more valuable—content, happiness, a debt collected . . . friends I can look in the face without a purpose haunting me. You? There’d be nothing like that in it for you, and if you own a ranch the money wouldn’t mean as much to you as it does to Slow. And it would be a new life for you.”

He rose and paced the level before the fire. A slight flush coloured his cheeks, and his eyes shone more brightly. “There’s a story, a long, long story . . . in years. I’ve never told it to anyone before, and it has eaten away every moment of content I could ever have had. I’ve made millions, but they’ve meant nothing to me but the chance they gave me to—to collect what I’ve been collecting now for weeks. Robbing banks to you is a crime. To me it’s . . . retribution, cleaning up a score that has stood against banks for more than thirty years. And I was the one to do the cleaning, the only one who could.”

He stopped abruptly before the half-breed. “I think I’d like to tell you the story,” he murmured.

Blue Pete smiled up at him but said nothing.

Terry stood considering, his hand to his face. “But first there are arrangements to make. I must have your word not to move from where you sit now, while I talk, because I’ll forget . . . forget that you’re not a friend I could trust. Telling it will take a burden from my mind, and I’ll be at your mercy. Do you promise?”

Blue Pete nodded. “I ain’ thinkin’ ’bout the gun. I’m jes’ listenin’.” He dropped his eyes. “But I ain’t promisin’ I won’t git my gun back some time. It’s mine. It’s an ole friend, an’ I ain’t never lettin’ nobody else keep it. But I won’t use it anywhars yuh do’ want it used. Same time yuh bes’ put it whar I can’t grab it.”

Terry smiled and shook his head. “Somehow I know I can trust you.”

He left the gun lying on the ground, where it had fallen when he rose from the chair. His own he thrust in his belt as he dropped back in the chair. His head sank against the back of the chair, and his eyes were turned on the sky.

Slow appeared at the top of the slope, saw that he was not wanted and retired. A bird sang sleepily from somewhere along the ravine, its deep note echoing through the trees. A pair of squirrels played tag round the base of a nearby tree, chattering as they saw the two men.

After a long time the man in the chair stirred. He drew a long breath.

“I don’t know exactly how long it was ago,” he commenced, “but I was very young, so young that it was a year or two before I learned all about it. There were four of us, father and mother and Ken. Ken was four years older than I, and to me he seemed grown up. . . . He couldn’t have been, for he was still going to school.

“We had everything in life to make a family happy and comfortable, money enough coming in to buy what we needed. Mother was a beautiful woman. I think that must have been true, not just my love for her. I remember her as the loveliest woman who ever lived. I almost worshipped her.”

He stopped, and his head shook slowly. “Perhaps I loved her too much, because that’s what brought me here—to this. Always I knew, ever since I was old enough to realize what happened, that I had to pay her back for what she suffered . . . that the banks had to pay for it . . . for the life they took from her.”

He turned swiftly on the half-breed. “Surely that was murder.”

He rose and commenced once more to pace about.

“Dad worked in a bank, a teller, I think, though I wasn’t born then, then an accountant, and at the last a manager. Salaries were not so high then, but living was much cheaper. The bank he managed was in a Toronto suburb. It was a busy suburb, and the bank prospered.

“It was all very pleasant for us all. I remember mother singing as she went about her work in the house; and she laughed a lot, with twinkling eyes I can still see. I’ll never forget. . . . That year, I remember, they gave me my first bicycle, the only one I ever owned. Few of my school companions had one, and they were all my friends. . . . Then it happened.”

He dropped back into the chair and drooped over his hands caught between his knees. Blue Pete said nothing, waited.

“Something happened at the bank.” It came so softly that Blue Pete strained to hear. “Quite a bit of money disappeared. . . . They blamed it on dad, and the bank took action against him. . . .

“I was there in the house when the horrible news was brought to mother. It was the accountant brought it. . . . Dad didn’t come; he was under arrest . . . in jail . . . jail! I scarcely heard what the accountant said. All I was interested in was mother. To her it was worse than a physical blow, and she seemed to wilt before my eyes. She didn’t faint, she didn’t weep. It was too awful for that, but that tragic look in her eyes, the suddenly white cheeks and quavering lips—I’ll never be able to get them out of my mind. It’s that picture that sustains me through what I’m doing. . . .

“Mother never sang again.”

His lower lip was caught between his teeth, and he drew a hand hastily across his eyes.

“Mother suddenly remembered me, and she sent me from the room. But I remained near the door, and heard the accountant talking. Then mother was weeping, softly, brokenheartedly. I couldn’t stand it. I burst into the room and threw my arms about her neck. I faced the embarrassed accountant. ‘It’s a lie,’ I stormed. ‘He didn’t do it.’ Mother caught me to her. ‘We both know he didn’t,’ she whispered. ‘They can’t do this to you, mum,’ I told her. ‘I’ll make them pay for it.’ That’s the promise I’ve never forgotten. Perhaps . . . perhaps in a few days now I can. I scarcely knew what had happened, but I did know dad was blamed for something, and I knew it was false. But how I hated the banks!

“Ken was the one of us at home who suffered most from outside. At school everyone avoided him, and soon they hammered it into me that dad was a thief . . . a thief. Mother had thought me too young to be really hurt except for her, and I never told her different.

“Of course we had to give up our home. Mother had to have money to try to save dad. It was no use. Everything was against him, and he was sent to jail. Mother took up some kind of work, tutoring at first, then in an office. We sold everything we could get along without, and every cent we could spare—and more—was paid back to the bank.

“It was not that we felt we owed it. We all knew dad couldn’t do such a thing. . . . That continued . . . for three years, I think it was.”

He leaped to his feet and glared across the ravine, his fists clenched at his sides.

“It killed Ken first. He died during those years of struggle—let himself die rather than tell mother the disease that ravaged him, because we could not afford a doctor, and he would not add to her worries.

“Then mother!” His teeth gripped together. “It was murder, plain murder.”

“Murder?” queried Blue Pete.

“Yes, murder. For only a few weeks after her death the accountant, on his death-bed, confessed.”

The angry man planted himself before the half-breed, his legs spread wide. “Do you blame me for what I’ve been doing? Is it any wonder I’ve been making the banks pay? I knew the price when I started—I’d worked it out, with interest, down to the last cent. That’s why we take only a little from each bank. It’s the system that must pay. . . . And now they’ve almost paid. Just one more . . . one more!”

He saw Blue Pete’s eyes fixed wonderingly on the tent, and he smiled.

“I’ve lived this sort of life for many years, far north in the gold fields of Ontario. That’s how I made the money that makes all this possible, that will let me retire now and live in peace with myself and the world. I’ll make friends for the first time . . . perhaps . . . I don’t know.

“The rest? When the accountant confessed they released dad, of course. But with mother gone, and in the way she went, he had no desire to live. There was such a protest in the newspapers that the banks wanted to pay dad for the time he’d been in jail. He refused it with scorn. He was far too proud to permit them to salve their consciences so easily. They should have known he couldn’t steal. . . . Two months later he died of a broken heart.

“It left me alone in the world, except for a sister of mother’s who took me in and kept me at school in another city. With my course at the University completed I went to Northern Ontario. I discovered three mines that turned into millions for me, many millions.”

He saw the bewildered look in Blue Pete’s eyes.

“I needed those millions . . . or I thought I needed them to break the banks, to put at least some of them out of business.” A bitter smile crossed his face. “But you can’t break banks now, not in Canada. The Government looks after that to a point, and the other chartered banks attend to the rest.

“Oh, yes, two or three banks have failed, but they were all rather small affairs, and usually few suffered. It’s not like in the United States. I couldn’t have my revenge that way, so I was forced to devise another.

“All these years I’ve kept to myself, little more than a name to the public. I avoided the limelight. I had to be free to think things out, free to drop out when the proper time came. There aren’t more than half a hundred who know me even by sight. I was able to work the ropes from behind the scenes. . . .

“The proper time came. I had all the money I could hope to spend; I could devote myself to my plan. Everything else failing me, I turned to robbing the banks. Dad was imprisoned for eight thousand dollars that he didn’t steal. That eight thousand, with interest all these years, I’ll have from the banks after the next job. We’ve robbed six banks, four here in the West. I came West so that if anything happened, if I was captured, no one would know me. There must never be another blot on the name of Lawrence. Jim and Slow have no idea who I am, so they can’t tell. If I’m captured, I said. But I never will be captured alive. I’ll shoot myself first. I’ll keep a shell for that.

“And now . . . and now the debt is almost paid. One more robbery, that’s all. Then—happiness . . . I hope.”

Blue Pete squinted up at him. “Whar’s that to be?”

“The last robbery? In Medicine Hat.”

The half-breed started to his feet. Like a flash Terry’s gun came out, and with an apologetic smile Blue Pete sank back.

“I wasn’ goin’ to do nothin’,” he said. “I was jes’ thinkin’.”

“What were you thinking?”

“The 3-Bar-Y’s got its money in one o’ them banks.”

Terry smiled. “The 3-Bar-Y won’t suffer. Each bank is but one of a large organization. It’s the organization that pays.”

Blue Pete shook his head doubtfully. “Mebbe, but——”

He looked up suddenly. “ ’Tain’t safe, not in the Hat. Yuh can’t do it, not fer shure. It’s too risky.”

Terry shrugged. “I’ve looked the situation over. I see no special difficulties. There are two banks, on opposite corners. I don’t know yet which one we’ll tackle; I’ll decide that later. We don’t want many customers to bother us.”

“But thar’s the Mounties,” Blue Pete warned.

“There were Mounted Police at Regina, at Swift Current, at Brooks—or that’s where they work, isn’t it? There are hundreds of police in Winnipeg. It made no difference to us.”

“Thar wasn’t no Inspector Barker, ner Sergeant Mahon, at them places. Tha’re different.”

“Do they live in the banks? It’ll take us but a minute or two. We’ll be miles away by the time the Mounted Police take up the trail. I’ve learned how to hide on the prairie.”

Blue Pete’s head continued to shake. “ ’Tain’t safe, I tell yuh. I know the Mounties thar in the Hat. They don’t let nothin’ like that go on in the town.”

The expression of the other softened. “You seem to be worried about me.”

“Shure, mister, I am.”

Terry shrugged and sighed. “That’s nice of you. . . . You know, I’m more than a little worried myself, and I don’t know why. It’s the first time. Somehow since you came this sort of thing is less—less satisfying. I wish it was over, that I was free now. But,” stiffening, “just this one more. And it’s going on.”

He turned and whistled, and Slow appeared at the top of the slope.

Terry called to him: “Have you got Jim out of sight? Get the money he had on him. There’ll be more to send to his mother when we’re through this next one. Remind me to send what he has now, first thing when we go to town.

“Oh, and he must be buried decently. By the way, I’ve a beautifully written little book in the tent. I don’t know the funeral service, so I’ll read a chapter over the grave. It’s the best we can do. Many a better man has been buried with less.”

With ceremony and solemnity the funeral service was completed. The dead man had a better funeral than he deserved, than he would have had anywhere else.

Blue Pete did not attend. As Terry started up the slope he stopped and looked back questioningly.

The half-breed understood. “I ain’t movin’. Thar’s the gun; I won’t tech it.”

The man part way up the slope frowned and shook his head. “It gets more difficult every moment,” he muttered.

When he returned, he pointed to one of the chairs. “That was Jim’s. You inherit it.” He walked about the confined level space, his hands thrust in his pockets. He had carried Blue Pete’s .45 into the tent and had left it there. “You know, I hope, that you’re a nuisance, that you’re a greater nuisance with each passing minute. I don’t know what to do with you.”

Blue Pete grinned. “Yuh ain’t got no need to worry none ’bout me.”

“But I can’t help it. You won’t take Jim’s place; I daren’t even let you do his work. I’m not going to let you out of my sight.” He scowled. “It complicates everything. I’d never expect a half-breed to be squeamish about robbing a bank.”

“I ain’ done nothin’ wuss’n rustlin’, an’ I ain’ goin’ to start now.”

“It can’t be more dangerous—robbing a bank, I mean.”

“Reckon mebbe not. I got marks on me from the rustlin’, lots o’ them. Got one wot shuda did fer me. Mira saved me that time. She’s done it more’n once.”

“Mira’s your wife, you said. . . . But you’re no rustler by nature. You rustled, I’ll wager, because it was what you call lots of fun. . . . Well, you never were in greater danger than you are at this moment. Is it lots of fun?”

“I ain’t frettin’ none. I ain’t sorry I come to see who was tryin’ to howl like a wolf. ’Tain’t none o’ my business wot yuh do to the banks. Not yet ’tain’t leastwise. I allus wait fer th’ Inspector to start me off on jobs like that, an’ I shure won’t take it on ef he sends me ag’in’ you, mister.” He looked up. “But, say, ef yuh’re goin’ through ’th this thing in the Hat, don’ tech the one on the north-west corner. Mira ’n’ me’s got our money thar.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Terry promised gravely. “In fact, the other one looks more tempting.”

“An’ yuh ain’t plannin’ to kill nobody?”

Terry pointed up the slope. “The proof is up there, under a couple of feet of earth.”

“But ef they—ef they git yuh cornered?”

“I’ll shoot myself before I’ll kill anyone else.”

Blue Pete nodded toward Slow. “Wot ’bout him?”

Terry looked troubled. “I’ll keep an eye on him. . . . Which isn’t what bothers me now,” he added gloomily. “The question is what am I to do with you? The more we talk, the more difficult I find it to do what I know must be done. It’s been such a relief to talk to someone who understands, to tell my story, that I’m afraid I’m just fool enough to forget. I’ve been a lonely man all my life. Now that I’ve been able to talk—— I wonder if I’ll be able to talk like this when it’s all over.”

He walked nervously up and down, sighing and shaking his head.

Blue Pete was no more comfortable. He knew there was something he should do, something to dissipate the bitterness in this man’s mind, a bitterness that blinded him, warped him, changed him from what it was in him to be, and now would have little chance of changing him back. He saw tragedy ahead, but what form it would take he did not even try to guess.

It did not enter his mind to escape. This man trusted him, so that he could not have warned the Mounted Police if he had taken advantage of the opportunities he had to get away. Indeed, he was much too interested to think of escape. There were things to do right here.

Terry stopped before him. “If you promise me never to speak of this meeting, never to tell my story to anyone or to help them to capture me we can—we can go on like this. Otherwise . . . you must see——”

Blue Pete nodded. “I ain’t tellin’ nobody nothin’.”

“Not even your wife?”

“I don’ tell her much, ’cause she’d worry. She’d worry ’bout this, ’cause she’d see thar was suthin’ I shud otta do, an’ I do’ know wot ’tis.”

“It’s strange,” murmured Terry, “how I accept your word. It’s absurd to take the word of one who knows I should shoot him rather than let him go, but I do. . . . One more promise I’d like to get from you, but I don’t see how it could be necessary, and I know you’d hate to give it.”

“Wot’s that?”

“I thought for a moment of demanding that you promise not to try to interfere with this last venture of mine, this final act that is to satisfy me, that will ease this boiling demand within me. If only I could forget. But I can’t forget; I won’t forget. . . . I can even see that it would not be unfair if I exacted lives for mother’s and father’s and Ken’s. They were all—murdered. But I won’t do that.

“One thing more: I said I’d let you go, but it won’t be until after we’re through with Medicine Hat. You must stay here till we return. Of course, if anything happens—— I always have to face that. We might even be disturbed here, just as you came on us.”

Blue Pete sniffed. “Yuh don’ seem much skeered o’ that. Yuh ain’t done nothin’ to take keer o’ that neither.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ef someun come on yuh, wot ’bout yer broncs? Yuh cudn’ git to ’em, cud yuh?”

“They’re handy enough, aren’t they?”

“Shure, shure! Too durn handy. Ef the Mounties come on yuh, yuh cudn’ git to ’em.”

Terry nodded thoughtfully. “What do you suggest?”

“Hide the broncs in another cut. Yuh kin sneak away to ’em thar ’thout bein’ heerd, an’ yuh’d pick ’em up ’fore they’d find yuh.”

“Do you think the Mounted Police might come?”

“Yuh never know whar they are, them Mounties. That’s why tha’re doin’ thur job so well. Tha’re the on’y ones ever come into the Hills, too, ’ceptin’ me.” He looked worried. “Yuh can’t trust them not findin’ yuh. Thar ain’t nobody breaks the law in these parts ’thout comin’ here to hide, an’ the Mounties know it. It’s the on’y place thar is.”

Terry whistled, and Slow came into sight.

“Take the horses away to some other ravine there to the east. I’ve seen one there, and it has grass and water.” He turned to Blue Pete. “Where’s your horse?”

Blue Pete shook his head. “Shure I come on one, but she ain’t here nohow now. I left her back that ways a bit, an’ I told her to git back to the 3-Bar-Y pronto. She’ll be thar a’most now. Yuh see, I didn’ know ef I’d ever git back.”

“And yet you came.”

“Shure. I hadta know.”

Even had he thought Whiskers was still there he would not have left her with the other bronchos; it would interfere with his independence. He was uneasy. He could not imagine that the Mounted Police would not come on the scene sooner or later, and he did not want them to find Whiskers with the bronchos belonging to the robbers.

“Then you promise not to escape?”

“I ain’ goin’ to leave ’less I gotta.”

“Then we’ll leave it at that.” Terry smiled. “I can’t imagine any condition arising where you’d have to leave. This spot is out of the world. . . . And I don’t know now what I’d do without you to talk to. We’re settled here for a time at least.” He laughed, the first laugh with any mirth in it that Blue Pete had heard from him. “Now we’ll eat. You don’t know how great it is to have a real companion.”

Terry’s confidence in the isolation of the Cypress Hills was not justified.

Ever since Sergeant Mahon’s story of the night on the prairie when Blue Pete had crept away in the darkness the Inspector had been uneasy. More so because he saw that Mahon, too, was uneasy.

Three times since then Mahon had visited the 3-Bar-Y and had come away with nothing to tell his superior. And day by day the latter grew more anxious and eager to know more.

During the Sergeant’s visits Mira had displayed no unusual concern. He had not told her in detail of that night on the prairie, but she had gathered enough from what he said to understand his uneasiness. However, she knew her husband better than he did, and nothing like that could worry her unduly. It was Wing’s story that weighed most heavily on her, but she contrived to conceal it from the Sergeant. Mahon had assured her that her husband was not engaged on some task for the Inspector, and that relieved her.

Inspector Barker, however, had nothing to make the picture brighter. The half-breed had always been a worry to him, whether on a job for the Mounted Police or not. The half-breed’s past kept rising before him, and the methods by which he accomplished so many seemingly impossible tasks for the Mounted Police.

He talked it over with the Sergeant.

“I don’t like it, Mahon. There’s something mysterious about the whole affair, and that means it’s something for us to unravel. We must know more about his strange disappearance that night. That he did not wish even Mira to know is enough to make us curious, and the fact that he has been gone all this time is the last touch. I can’t go on not knowing like this.”

There was something almost apologetic and sheepish in his tone, and he shifted dangerously in the old chair, jabbing holes in the blotter with the point of the paperknife made from an antelope horn. “We’ve no way of knowing what his purpose was in that note to Mira. Was he trying to mislead her—that he isn’t there in the Hills but has something else less reputable in mind? He warned her that he might not be back—or that’s what I take from the note. . . . And yet—and yet I think he really wished her to go there and look for him if he did not return. I don’t like to follow that through in my mind. Why wouldn’t he return? What is the danger he thinks he may have to face in the Hills?

“He had some reason for not wanting Mira to look for him right away. He wanted to be alone, to search for something, and what he would find he did not know. The very fact that he took the trouble to write at all, a task that must have been a form of agony for him, adds to the seriousness of it . . . so serious that we can’t let this uncertainty continue. We won’t wait for Mira to get into action to look for him. We’re going to do that ourselves, and without waiting for the three weeks.”

He looked the Sergeant over with a deep frown. “And you’re the one to do it, Mahon. In many ways I’d prefer to send someone else, for I may need you here. I don’t know what might happen with those bank robbers. You’re the one who knows the Hills best, and you’ve the sense and the experience to be cautious. . . . I can’t help thinking you’re going to need them both. You’ll take a look in the Hills; it’s the only place we can search for him, from what we know now. If he’ll show himself to anyone, it’ll be to you, his best friend.”

“And if”—Mahon smiled—“if he doesn’t wish to be found, sir, neither I nor anyone else will find him.”

“Unless . . . unless he’s——” The Inspector stopped. “But I won’t let myself think of that possibility. If Mira could find him in that case, you would. Yes, I know: you might wander all over the Hills without coming on a trace—and at the end discover that he was following you, watching you, wondering why you were there. It’s the chance you must take, for I can’t go on like this. I’ll let you have Murchison. . . . No, better take Langley. He’ll be more useful there than here, and I might need one of the older boys here.”

Mahon considered. “And if I find him, sir?”

“Why—why, blast it, find out what he’s doing there. If you can bring him in, all the better. Tell him I want him, that I’ve got a job for him—or I want to talk to him. Tell him anything you like that’ll get him in here where I can see him—and know he’s not getting into trouble. Tell him about the bank robberies, if you like. That would interest him. If he sees something dangerous to do he’ll come. He did good work in that bank robbery in Red Deer; I’ll wager it gave him enough thrills to tempt him to try again. Of course you can’t arrest him.

“Well, there it is. Jenkinson’s failure after the Brooks affair puts me in a bad position with the Superintendent, and until I’m sure the robbers are well out of my district I’m not going to miss any move to run them down. They’ve had enough time since to show their hand again. This uncertainty makes me jittery. We’ve so little to work on. Those two cowboys whose bronchos they took can tell us even less than the excited bank clerks; and you know how unreliable are witnesses.

“I really would like to have Blue Pete here to put on their trail . . . if there’s one to follow at this late date. I couldn’t even tell him where to look for it.” He sighed and flung out his hands with a despairing gesture. “But we’ll let that worry us later. Just now I can think no further than that I want him here. You know the location of some of those caves of his there in the Hills. Look them over and see if there’s any evidence of recent occupation. Besides, he has Whiskers with him. Don’t delay. I’m not sleeping well these nights.”

There was no need for delay. Mahon was always ready to set out on any duty. Langley, the youngest member of the Force, was enthusiastic about it. To him the Cypress Hills was a mystery into which he had never had much chance to delve, and it had always attracted him. He knew it only as a hide-out for rustlers, and, while thought of facing them in such a maze made him swallow once or twice, it sent a tingle of anticipation through him.

That very afternoon the pair rode out southward over the crest of the cutbank that surrounded the town.

They reached Turner’s Crossing in time to snatch a few hours of sleep, then shortly after midnight they set out for the Hills, riding hard in order to reach them before daylight.

It was almost three o’clock when, with the eastern sky already rosy, they rode into the trees. As the shadows closed about them Mahon drew a long breath of relief.

“I was afraid we’d left it too late,” he said, in a low voice, and Langley glanced at him with wide and excited eyes. Mahon himself could scarcely have explained why he felt so relieved, except on the general principle that it was wise that no one, even out on the prairie, should know they were there.

It was still too dark within the trees for their purpose, and so they rode slowly on toward the west within the shadows, Mahon setting the pace—and the silence.

He had formed a plan. He would make the search a complete one, missing nothing. He would work from the western end toward the east, zig-zagging from north to south, examining the ground for evidence that Whiskers had been there. That was his most promising clue—if he found it. So far as following a trail there was concerned he was modest about his accomplishments. The ground was so broken, with great patches of unmarked rock or of soft, dead needles that sprang back to cover a mark, that only Blue Pete himself could find much to follow.

For the moment he would be content to know that Whiskers had been there recently.

Langley kept at his heels, excited, eager—and for the time being of little use. Once he flung his arms over his head and whistled. “This,” he exclaimed, “is the life and the place.”

Mahon grunted. “This is the place—to talk little, to whistle not at all. Huh! You should be a rustler. They’re the only ones who seem to enjoy the place.”

“And Blue Pete,” Langley added.

“And Blue Pete,” Mahon murmured wonderingly and not too happily. “I hate it.”

“But see how—how different it is—all this cool shade, the green trees, the ups and downs, the little streams, the—the——”

“The mystery of those shadows, the hiding-places among those trees, the tangle of ups and downs, the simplicity of ambush, the difficulty of following a trail. I come only when the Inspector sends me . . . and mostly then in search for the man we’re looking for now. Looking for?” He laughed shortly. “Where are we to start? What folly to think we’ll find him if he doesn’t wish to be found!”

“There are the caves,” Langley reminded him.

“Yes, the caves—a score of them, a hundred.”

“He favours some, doesn’t he?”

“That’s what I count on. We’ll visit those we can find . . . but only in our course. We’ll be lucky if we find any of them. And now less talk.”

He pulled in, turning to look out through the trees over the prairie. The sun had risen, a startlingly red ball below them. It threw a warm glow over the long, dead grass. It touched the outer fringes of the trees about them, bringing them to life. It picked out brilliantly the yellow flowers of a cactus here and there down the slope.

He shrugged, and his hand tightened on the reins. “Come on. We’ve work to do, and I’ve a feeling it isn’t going to be easy. We’ll know a lot more about the Cypress Hills before we’re through.”

At the western end he turned toward the south, slanting a little to the east until he reached the southern edge of the forest. They rode slowly for the light was still weak among the trees, and what they sought was on the ground.

They turned then toward the north-east, slanting still.

Langley bubbled with excitement. As yet he had had little opportunity to figure in the scenes he had painted for himself from the moment of joining the Mounted Police, and he felt it was coming to him. He watched Mahon, and after a time he, too, used his eyes.

And so, riding about a thicket that Mahon circled on the other side, he suddenly stopped and exclaimed in a loud whisper:

“Here, Sergeant, look!”

Mahon came quickly. There it was, plain enough, the gleaming yellow of a recently broken twig, a spot in the dead needles that the sunlight at that moment reached through the overhanging foliage.

Mahon dismounted. “That’s it. Something has been through here. Yes, there’s another mark. It’s a broncho.” He moved on a few steps, found nothing more, and returned. “That was broken some days ago, how many I can’t say, because it would look fresh in here for days.”

He thought for a few moments, then, not content, went forward on foot again. “Yes, here’s something else . . . a small broncho this time, a very small broncho.”

“Whiskers!” whispered Langley.

“Let’s say so. And good for you, Langley. I’d have missed it where I rode.”

Langley flushed with pleasure. “Then—then all we have to do——” He stopped, and the red deepened. “But that isn’t easy.”

Mahon laughed. “It certainly isn’t. Only Blue Pete could follow a trail in here for any distance . . . and I’ve seen him fail when failing was dangerous. I’ve tried it many times, without much success. We’ll just have to trust to luck—to picking it up again somewhere as we go along. Tracks have been left here through the weeks, even the months, and it’s impossible—for me, at any rate—to date them. There’ve been strays in here, too; they seem to know they’re pretty safe from pursuit in this maze. But cowboys do follow, and they hate it . . . like I do.”

He climbed back into the saddle. “Just the same that’s something Whiskers left for us; I’m sure it is.” He sat for a time, considering. Then he gathered up the reins. “We can only go on. We’re not going to follow that trail; it would only delay us. We haven’t time for that. We’ll look for something fresher.” He glanced up through the leaves. “It’ll be dark in here in a short time. We’ll make for one of the caves. I think I can find it.”

He turned off toward the south-east. At intervals as they rode they stopped to listen. Langley’s heart pounded so fiercely that he could hear little else. The forest was very still.

Mahon pulled in and looked around, and after a moment he turned down a slope into a ravine, following it for a hundred yards. A curtain of vines hung over the cliff to their left, and Mahon’s face brightened. He pushed the vines aside and passed behind them.

Langley followed, his hand on the gun in his belt. Surely in that darkness something would happen.

A hole opened in the cliff. Mahon dismounted and disappeared. Langley waited where he was, leaning forward, listening, a growing disappointment bringing a scowl to his youthful face.

Mahon called out to him from the darkness. “He’s been in here,” he said, “but not for a long time. It’s the cave he likes best.” He came to the opening, his head shaking. “It wasn’t just for shade and privacy he came to the Hills this time; there isn’t another cave so comfortable. Hm-m! We’ll go on for a while. I know another cave not far away. I think I’ll be able to find it before it’s too dark.”

He mounted and they climbed the slope to the east. As they went along, Mahon kept peering about him, and at last they dropped into another ravine, with the night now thick about them. Mahon rode close to the left bank, eyeing it closely.

“Ah, here it is. We’ll stop here for the night.”

They dismounted. And while Mahon stopped to unsaddle, Langley entered the cave. In a moment he called out:

“He’s been here all right, and only yesterday—or so.”

Mahon entered. Langley had struck a match. Mahon laughed. “Yes, they’ve been here, but not for many days. Still, it was during this visit, for I know he hasn’t been in the Hills before for some weeks, and this is too fresh. A man can cover his trail, a broncho can’t. This is much fresher than any other marks we’ve seen.”

In the morning the trail was even fresh enough to follow for some distance, then it vanished.

Two days passed, days of nagging disappointment, almost of discouragement. Criss-crossing about through the Hills, they found only two more tracks, but it sufficed to raise their hopes.

A third track. Mahon sank to his knees beside it, and when he rose his cheeks were flushed. “That’s fresh,” he whispered. “Now don’t talk any more.”

Langley felt the blood race through him. “Where now?” he whispered.

Blue Pete had given his promise without hesitation. Nothing in his code suggested refusal or even caution. Terry’s story had impressed him deeply, arousing his sympathy. Terry was a man like himself, without friends, eager to avenge a wrong and ruthless in carrying it through; and how he carried it through was no concern of the half-breed’s.

Besides, he liked this stranger who made of him a friend such as he had never had before, the only one to whom he had ever told his story.

The shooting of Jim required no justification. Jim had disobeyed an order, had broken a promise, had killed when it was not necessary. And he had tried to use his gun when Terry had disciplined him for the killing.

Thought of escape did not enter his mind. He seemed to have taken Jim’s place, to have slid into the life of the tent. No, not Jim’s place. Terry had drawn him much closer than that.

Underneath it all was something more, something that kept driving him to action, but what action he did not know. Terry had to be saved—from something. It was not from robbery but rather from something in himself, something that had so discoloured life for the lonely man. And almost unconsciously there arose in his mind a picture of tragedy, of disaster; and vaguely he connected it with the planned attack on the Medicine Hat bank.

His thoughts flickered off to Sergeant Mahon. He could not imagine that the Sergeant and the Inspector would not be involved. Every local crime focussed on them. It made him doubly uneasy. Someone would pay, and the someone, whoever it was, was his friend.

It flashed into his mind then that the Inspector would want him. Here was the sort of thing for which the Inspector always asked his aid. Suppose he was put on the trail of the bank robbers!

It struck him with the force of a physical blow, so that he lay back suddenly and frowned. That would be unfair to Terry. And yet the Inspector would expect it of him, and he could not explain why he must refuse.

Not to refuse would be treason. . . . And to the Inspector it would be something like treason to refuse. An involuntary shudder ran through him.

He did not speak of it to Terry, who showed no concern throughout the rest of the day that he might escape. That, too, was a trust he must justify.

He slept in the tent, on Jim’s bed-roll, but he slept little. He saw now the mess into which he had deliberately walked. Another proof of Mira’s wisdom: she contended that he was always running his neck into a noose, that he did so much without thinking. That was all right sometimes—for instance in the drawing of a gun.

He wished now that he had not noticed that signal, that he had not in disgust given them the real thing. And yet—and yet, if it had not happened, he would never have met Terry, never have heard his story, never have found this new friend.

Two days later he knew what he must do: somehow he must prevent this last bank robbery, not because it was a crime but because there was danger in it for everyone he liked. If only he knew how to talk him out of it! But that, he knew, was impossible. The picture of the end of those haunting years had made Terry inflexible in his plan.

But with lives to save, the lives of friends!

He thought of Sergeant Mahon again. Surely the Mounted Police would be in it, and there would be shooting. And he knew how Terry could shoot—and Mahon.

It never occurred to him to get away and warn the banks or the Mounted Police. That would mean death for Terry. Besides, Terry would never be content, never happy, without this one last robbery that was to settle the debt the banks owed him. However he looked at it, the picture dismayed him, distressed him.

Above all, this new friend must be considered. Just this one robbery—then peace. If it failed, if the Mounted Police broke into it, someone would die. Whoever else, one would be Terry. For Terry had said that he would never be taken alive, that he would shoot himself first, that there might not be another stain on the Lawrence name.

Slow, too. If cornered, Slow would have no qualms about shooting to kill. The slow-moving, stupid fellow would think only of himself, and another murder would break Terry’s heart.

Throughout breakfast the half-breed sat silent and embarrassed.

Terry noticed it. “What’s on your mind, my friend?” he asked. “You slept little last night.”

“Howju know that?”

“Because I, too, could not sleep. I think we can afford to be frank now, can’t we?”

Blue Pete shook his head gloomily. “Jes’ like I said—yuh’re takin’ a big risk tryin’ it on the Hat. Never anythin’ like that ever happened thar before. It can’t.”

“If the danger is from the local police,” Terry laughed, “I’m not alarmed. I saw the Chief. At least there was someone loaded down with gold braid like a station-master in France. I’ll wager he’d take a back flip if he saw a revolver pointing his way.”

“I ain’t thinkin’ o’ the Chief. It’s the Mounties.”

Terry scowled at him. “You seem to know a lot about the Mounted Police—and to have a lot of confidence in them.”

“Shure. I have. That’s why I do’ want yuh to git hurt.”

“Do they pay you to anticipate things like this?”

“They never pay me nothin’,” Blue Pete replied indignantly.

Terry eyed him with shaking head. “I never knew anyone so difficult to understand. You do dangerous work without pay, you take your life in your hands to come here as you did . . . and you seem to be concerned about the life of one who was a complete stranger to you only a few hours ago.”

“Shure. I am.”

“And so you want to prevent me completing my plan. Well, you might as well give up trying. It’s going on. I couldn’t face a life with my plan incomplete. Not now when I’m so near the end.”

They ate for a time in silence. Blue Pete was not finished.

“Th’ Inspector, he’ll know all ’bout the robberies, o’ course, an’ he’ll be ready. I bet he’s jes’ waitin’ fer yuh.”

“Not now he isn’t.” Terry shook his head confidently. “I passed by Medicine Hat, so they’d be thrown off guard. They’ll be looking for us in Calgary, or in Lethbridge. It’s the safest looking job we’ve tackled. I’m looking forward to it.”

He stopped eating, sat back slowly in his chair, and looked off through the trees. “I am looking forward to it,” he repeated, as if trying to convince himself. “I’ve looked forward to the end ever since we started. I want to enjoy life at last, to have friends, to be able to look back over a plan fulfilled. . . . And when my end comes I can face dad and mother and tell them their deaths are avenged, that—that it’s been settled.”

He laughed shortly. “Funny that—thinking of facing them after what the world would call crime. This will be only among us three—no, four. It should make them happier where they are. Another strange thing: I never recall doing anything heretofore to be ashamed of. I mean, as the world would think of it,” he added hastily. “I’m not ashamed. I had to clear the family name, didn’t I? No matter what the truth is, that should stand in my favour when the books are made up. After this I’ll be a model citizen. I’ll endow universities, the Y.M.C.A., hospitals, missions. I can afford it.”

A smile flickered across his face. “I might even endow a school for bank employees—to make them more cautious in their suspicions, more lenient, less reckless, less heartless.

“I don’t regret telling you my story. I feel you understand. It would be difficult for anyone else. Something about you inspires confidence. I wouldn’t trust you too far with a gun, mind you, because I don’t think your ideas about using it would coincide exactly with mine, but you’d never commit murder. . . . If only I’d met you before I saddled myself with the two I had. I know I could trust you.”

He turned away with a shrug. “That’s a long speech, but you don’t know how much it means to me to have someone at last to whom I can talk frankly, as a friend. I trust you.”

“Thar ain’t many does,” Blue Pete told him. “Nobody trusts half-breeds. ’Sides, I bin a rustler, an’ everybody knows it.” He glanced appealingly at Terry. “Ef yuh trust me, lissen when I say yuh shudn’ take no chance in the Hat. I got a hunch.”

“The hunch I have,” said Terry, “is that this gnawing duty of mine must be satisfied. It’ll be the last. I promise it.” He frowned. “And please, please stop trying to prevent it. I couldn’t stand the strain of all these years for the rest of my life. . . . Shall I make another confession? I’ll be glad when it’s over. I confess I haven’t been happy about it, but that’s to be expected—till it’s over. . . . And yet—and yet I’m less certain as the days pass. Since you came I’m certain of nothing, except that . . . just this once more.”

Blue Pete gave up. He knew it was useless, and he understood why. To persist might only make Terry more reckless. Poor Terry!

He caught himself there and looked up with an embarrassed smile.

“What is it, friend?” Terry asked softly.

But Blue Pete only shook his head.

They finished the meal and the dishes were cleared away. Slow was down at the creek, washing up. Terry and his captive were seated beside the fire, idly watching Slow. Terry thoughtfully puffed at a cigarette. Blue Pete had lighted his corn-cob pipe, but he could not keep it alight, so many uneasy thoughts flooded through him.

Suddenly he straightened and jerked forward, his chin thrust out. His head turned sideways, as if listening. Terry noticed it and laid a hand on his knee. He did not speak, but a warm spot burned on either cheek, for he, too, listened.

With a jerk Blue Pete was on his feet. “Someun off thar!” he whispered. “Git Slow up. We gotta git to the broncs, an’ quick!”

Terry beckoned frantically to Slow who came running up the slope, leaving the dishes beside the creek.

Blue Pete had dashed into the tent. He remembered the .45, and he knew where Terry kept it. Outside once more, he pushed Terry before him.

“Quick, tha’re comin’! We jes’ got time. Make for the broncs.”

Terry hesitated. “But—but the tent!”

“We ain’ got time fer nothin’ like that, I tell yuh. Come on.”

Slow was already almost to the top of the slope at their backs. Blue Pete caught hold of Terry’s arm and almost dragged him away. Then they were both running.

At the top of the slope Terry was in the lead. He saw Slow cutting through the trees, and he set off at top speed after him.

Blue Pete glanced after them, then turned away.

Whiskers it was who was responsible, the little pinto that would gladly have given her life for her master. For Whiskers, for the first time in her life, had disobeyed orders: she had not returned to the 3-Bar-Y. Sensing in her knowing way that something unusual was happening, that Blue Pete was running blindly into trouble, she had figured it out that she might be needed.

As it looked later, Whiskers had started back to the ranch but had changed her mind, and it was her wanderings, distressed and anxious, yet not daring to reveal herself to Blue Pete, that had left tracks Sergeant Mahon read and in the end was able to follow.

For days he and Langley had criss-crossed the Hills. Here and there they had come on tracks Whiskers had left. It told a story, an incomplete story, to be sure, but one that worried the Sergeant, for he read from the tracks that she wandered undirected.

It was Jupiter that found her, Jupiter who, as the Sergeant’s favourite mount, had long been the pinto’s friend. Many a time they had worked together in the pursuit of rustlers, sharing with their masters the dangers of these same Hills, those reckless gunmen from across the Border who, accustomed to the laxness of law enforcement in the Badlands of Montana, were always prepared to shoot themselves out of trouble. Especially they had learned to hate and fear the Mounted Police; and there in the seclusion of the Hills they shot to kill. Escape across the dozen miles that separated the Hills from the Badlands was simple and safe.

It was when, weary after the long unpromising search, the Sergeant noticed Jupiter’s head rise, and his ears point suddenly forward, that he knew something requiring investigation was near. Quickly he leaned forward and, to prevent a whinny, slapped the broncho smartly on the side of the neck. He knew Jupiter had sensed the presence of something familiar, and he moved ahead more slowly, peering into every shadow, excited and hopeful.

Whiskers came trotting from the shadows, whinnying softly. To no one but the Sergeant would she have shown herself.

Mahon drew in and eyed her, wondering and alarmed. She was without saddle and bridle, as Blue Pete had left her to feed in the ravine where he figured she would never be found. Mahon read that instantly, and from her distress he read, too, that she had not seen the half-breed for some time. The pinto rubbed against him, still whinnying, as if trying to tell him her troubles.

His first thought was that something had happened to his friend, that he had been attacked as he slept. There was no possibility that he had lost his way. Had Whiskers been saddled it would have meant that her master was injured somewhere—or dead.

One thing was certain, that he would not be far away, for Whiskers would not wander far from him.

A sign brought Langley to a halt, to sit waiting, his heart beating fast. For Langley, too, had read much—much more than his superior, though most of it arose from a wild imagination.

Mahon scarcely knew what to do, except that to find Blue Pete was now more urgent than ever. And then, as he hesitated, Whiskers started away, glancing back at him.

He followed. The pinto led into the ravine where Blue Pete had left her, and Mahon saw by the cropped grass that she must have been there for several days.

He dismounted and searched the ravine, while the pinto kept close to him, watching every move. He found saddle and bridle, the familiar old saddle with the single cinch, and it, too, showed that it had lain there for some time, for mice had nibbled at the leather.

And then, as he studied the scarred saddle, he read something else: since it was hidden so carefully, Blue Pete must have anticipated an extended absence. Removed from Whiskers for the night only, there would have been no necessity to conceal it so carefully.

It added to the mystery—and to Mahon’s worry. Time, he knew now more than ever, was pressing. The narrowness of the ravine showed, too, that it was more a place of concealment than of good grass and water.

The half-breed had left on foot, then, but for what purpose? To that there was only one explanation: someone was being watched. He remembered the note left for Mira, and the story became somewhat easier to read. It was to watch, or to follow, someone that the half-breed had come to the Hills.

And here had been the end of the trail.

Rustlers? He could think of nothing else, and a shudder of misgiving sent him hastily back to where he had left his companion.

“We’ll leave the horses here,” he whispered. “He’s not far away. We mustn’t let them hear us.”

“ ‘Them’?” The blood raced once more through the younger man’s veins.

Mahon did not reply directly. “He can’t be far from where he left Whiskers.”

“Is it—rustlers?”

The Sergeant ignored that, too. “Bring your rifle,” he ordered, “but don’t use it till I give the word. There’s so much about this I don’t understand that we mustn’t act hastily.”

He considered trying to get Whiskers to lead them, but the pinto refused now to leave the ravine. It was as if, now that she had brought help, the rest was up to the Sergeant, and she did not wish to appear in it.

There was, of course, only one way to go—to the east. The Hills to the west they had covered. And so, in a very few minutes, they came on tracks left by the recent passage of horses. The tracks pointed in both directions but last of all toward the east. Mahon followed.

It was not difficult now. The trees were thicker, so that the horses had kept to a trail, and plainly quite recently.

With the practised soundlessness of long experience he moved ahead. Langley, excited and eager, was less cautious. Now and then a twig snapped beneath his feet; to Mahon’s ears it was like a pistol shot.

“For heaven’s sake,” he snapped, “make less noise. Keep directly behind me, step in my tracks. Watch your feet, not what’s ahead. I’ll take care of that. Sounds like that carry for hundreds of yards in here.”

He stopped abruptly, and Langley, watching his feet and following closely, crashed into him. Mahon stood, his fingers to his lips, his eyes wide with excitement. He sniffed the air.

“There’s a fire,” he whispered. “They’re right ahead of us. Come on—and keep your rifle ready.”

They ran then. They could hear movement, running feet, as they broke out on the edge of a ravine. Down before them Langley saw the tent.

Mahon saw something more—on the opposite slope a running figure. Just a glimpse before it vanished into the trees, but his lower lip caught between his teeth, and he glanced hastily toward where Langley’s eyes were fixed on the tent, the three comfortable chairs, the still burning fire.

It was Langley spoke first. He drew a sharp breath. “Is anyone still there—in the tent?” he whispered, shifting his rifle forward.

Mahon grunted. “Little chance. They heard us and ran for it.”

“Is it rustlers?”

Mahon flushed. “Certainly not.” He was conscious of the indignation in his tone, and he glanced once more at his companion. “Rustlers don’t carry chairs about with them. Whoever it was planned to be here for some time, and they made themselves comfortable.”

“But—but they ran away.”

“There’s a reason, of course,” Mahon agreed.

“Aren’t we going to—to get after them?”

Mahon shrugged. “Not much use—just now. If they’re dangerous, they’d only ambush us. They can’t go far without mounts, and if they have them near we’d only waste time chasing them. . . . I’m curious about that tent. I don’t want to give them a chance to return and destroy the evidence I need, while we’re off chasing them. I want to know who they are, what they’re doing here. They had no time to destroy the evidence that must be there in the tent. Listen!”

The thud of running horses was plainly audible.

Mahon threw out his hands. “Just as I expected: they had their horses convenient for sudden flight. Now we’ll take a look at that tent.”

They set off down the slope. For a few moments Mahon examined the chairs and the fire. There had been many fires, that was evident, and without a word he pointed to the ashes.

He stood for a moment looking the tent over. “Stay out here,” he ordered, “and keep watch.”

He entered the tent alone; he did not want Langley with him. Inside the open flap he stood still for a time, looking about. That the occupants had fled in a hurry was evident. At the back, against the canvas wall, a bed-roll lay open. On it lay two revolvers. He stepped swiftly forward and picked them up. His head twisted to look back through the open flap, as he kept the revolvers out of sight. Langley was there, his rifle held ready, looking about through the trees.

Mahon was pushing the revolvers into his pockets when Langley suddenly thrust his head through the open flap.

“Find anything?” he asked. He saw the guns and whistled. “They certainly skipped in a hurry, to leave their guns like that.”

The Sergeant hesitated. Then his teeth closed tightly and he held the guns out. “Ever see guns like that?” he inquired.

Langley looked them over, his head shaking. “They’re not puncher guns, that’s certain.”

“No. They’re the guns kept in banks for protection. For protection,” he repeated bitterly.

Blue Pete’s advice concerning the placing of the bronchos had proved wise. Terry and Slow, in their escape, made straight for their bronchos to the east. The half-breed, thrusting Terry before him, stopped in the trees above the ravine, glanced after his companions to make sure they had forgotten him in their excitement, and slanted off to the south.

At the last moment he turned his head and shot a glance back across the ravine; and his heart jumped as he saw the pointed Stetson of the Mounted Police. As he ran, racing away now in almost a panic, he hoped that he had not been seen, or if seen had not been recognized. The Mounties would not expect to find him under such conditions.

More or less blindly he dived into the forest.

Without realizing it he set off then toward the ravine where the bronchos had been left. He reached the top of the bank in time to see Terry and Slow mounting. Slow, confused and terrified, fumbled with the bridle.

Terry hesitated, his hand on the horn and one foot in the stirrup. He looked back, as if suddenly he remembered Blue Pete.

The latter stepped into the open.

A sharp order from Terry brought Slow to a stop as he climbed into the saddle and set off up the slope. There he waited, cursing the delay.

Blue Pete had started down the slope.

Terry looked at him, and a short laugh broke from him. “You surprise me,” he said. “I thought nothing would frighten you, but you look as scared as if you’d seen a ghost. If you could get white you would. I hate you to drop in my estimation, for I’ve been thinking of you as a friend. There’s really nothing to be alarmed about. They won’t dare follow us, whoever they are. They didn’t even see us.”

He pointed to the third broncho. “There’s Jim’s. Take it and come along.”

Blue Pete recovered himself. “I ain’t ridin’ no cayuse like that. ’Sides, I got suthin’ to do, an’ it don’ need no bronc.”

“Where’s your own horse? You must have brought one.”

“I told yuh I sent her back to the ranch.”

“Who was taking her?”

“Nobody. She’d go alone, ’cause I said so. Whiskers does wot she’s told.”

“Then you expected to stay, I see. I’d like to know more about that—when I have the time. But you can’t be left here without a horse. It’s a couple of days’ walk to the nearest house, isn’t it?”

Blue Pete only shrugged. “Yuh bes’ git goin’. Yuh’re wastin’ time. I’ll be awright.”

The eyes of the other bored into him. “I’m trusting you not to tell.”

“I told yuh I wudn’t. Now git goin’. Yuh don’ know wot yuh’re up ag’in’. That was the Mounties. An’ they’ll find the tent an’——”

Terry jerked upward into the saddle and gathered up the reins. “My God, yes! The tent! And there are things there they mustn’t find. Those bank guns will give us away. It’ll bring all the Mounted Police on our trail, and I must have time to complete my plan. That’s all I live for now.”

He jerked on the reins and beckoned to Slow.

The latter dropped back down to him, and they set off along the ravine toward the south. As Slow passed the half-breed he swore under his breath; his face was white.

For a few moments Blue Pete watched them go. But he scarcely saw them. His thoughts were on the pointed Stetson he had seen across the ravine beyond the tent. He wondered who it was, but he knew the Inspector was unlikely to send anyone but Sergeant Mahon into the Hills.

Suddenly he remembered. If he had been seen, they would know he was with the bank robbers, for the bank guns would be recognized, as Terry had said. The Inspector would think worse of him than ever—a confirmed criminal at heart.

He bent beneath the shock of it. For he knew that if his Mounted Police work was ended he would not trust himself. The lure of the old exciting life would be too strong to resist.

For several moments he stood, miserable, uncertain what to do, yet aware that something must be done, and without delay.

He turned to Jim’s horse that stood looking at him inquiringly. As he approached it, it hobbled away. But it could not move quickly, and he soon overtook it. He caught it by the nose and led it back to where saddle and bridle were concealed.

Half-way he stopped. He looked the broncho over and found a brand with which he was unfamiliar, and he remembered that the bank robbers helped themselves to more than bank funds. If he should stumble on a Mounted Policeman, riding a stolen broncho! Things looked black enough without that.

At any rate, what he had to do now could be done more safely and expeditiously without a broncho. Afterwards? That could look after itself.

Absent-mindedly he released the hobbles and set the broncho free. It was senseless to leave it there to die when the feed was gone. Then he ran along the ravine.

After a time he stopped to listen. He could hear nothing. Terry and Slow would be far away now, and he climbed the slope to the west, hurried across a height and through another ravine. Far away to the north, on the eastern slope of that ravine, was the tent.

Reaching the western height, he turned north and followed the ravine until he came within sight of the bush from behind which he had for so many days watched the life about the tent. He crept up to it and lay down.

Scarcely had he settled into the old spot, with no time even to glance toward the tent, when a slight sound off toward his right sent him flat against the ground. After a few moments he slid out and took cover behind a large tree. There he raised his head and looked about.

Movement among the trees to the west caught his eye immediately. It was but a flash, then it was gone; and for a time there was nothing more.

Then he saw Terry.

Terry was creeping through the trees, rifle in hand, and even at that distance something was visible in his face that made Blue Pete glance fearfully in the direction the bank robber was going.

Another hundred yards and he would reach the top of the bank from which he would look down on the tent!

Blue Pete slid back behind the bush and turned his attention to the ravine. Mahon had just emerged from the tent. In his hand were the two bank revolvers; he was sliding them into his pocket. Langley came close behind him, his hands full of papers. The pair bent over the papers.

The half-breed looked to the west. Terry was there, still creeping forward, hurrying now, as if he knew he must act swiftly. Nothing now, Blue Pete knew, would be permitted to interfere with his plan, the last act that was to send him into a new life, free to make friends, free of the goading ache of the years.

Terry now would shoot to kill!

For a brief moment it entered the half-breed’s head to shout a warning to Mahon and Langley, but something kept his lips closed. He edged along beside the bush, drawing his .45. Terry had already reached the bank and was lying down, his rifle thrust before him.

Blue Pete did not hesitate. He raised the .45, jerked the trigger back with his thumb and let it go. It was a long shot, but he knew the range to an inch. The bullet whistled so close to the Sergeant that he jumped and threw himself forward into the tent.

Instantly the half-breed swung his gun about; and the second bullet nipped into the tree close to Terry’s ear, sending him rolling out of sight, without taking time to look in the direction from which it came.

Down about the tent action had been instantaneous. Mahon had disappeared into the tent; Langley had darted out of sight round it, the papers scattering from his hands as he disappeared.

Through the slit Terry had cut during his duel with Jim Mahon dived into the thicket of small trees that covered the ravine behind the tent. In a surprisingly short time he appeared at the top of the slope, creeping from tree to tree, his gun ready.

Blue Pete ran, keeping the bush between them.

From away to the south-west came the pound of racing bronchos. Terry and Slow were in headlong flight.

Blue Pete waited for a few moments behind a large tree. He could hear Mahon rushing away on foot after the bronchos, a natural but useless initial impulse. Langley was not far behind.

The half-breed dropped over the edge of the ravine and ran to the tent. He gathered the papers in his hands, and tingled to the sight of the two bank revolvers lying just inside the open tent flap. They must have tumbled from Mahon’s pocket as he fled before his bullet.

Blue Pete picked them up, grinning.

He hurried through the torn back wall of the tent into the trees and up the eastern slope of the ravine. The grin remained on his dark face.

It was a blazing hot afternoon, with that dehydrating, skin-stiffening heat that comes to the Canadian West in the semi-arid areas. In the unsteady chair in his office Inspector Barker dozed at intervals, cursing the heat. For almost a week the thermometer had risen during the afternoons past the hundred mark. He had dared to discard his tunic and open the front of his shirt. On such a day there was little risk of callers.

He dozed, but there was little rest in it, for he could not really sleep. He was too troubled for that. Nothing more had been heard of the bank robbers, and no news was bad news. No one had any idea where they were, and guessing only added to the confusion and uncertainty.

Besides, where was Mahon?

The Sergeant had been gone now for several days, and no word of any kind had come from him. The one unfortunate certainty about it was that he had failed to find Blue Pete. And as the days passed the Inspector wanted more and more to talk to the half-breed, to see him before him, to be assured that he was not in trouble. It was men of his sort, lawless men with a craving for excitement, who gave the Mounted Police most trouble—and to control them was their most difficult task.

In this case there was ample ground for uneasiness, with that desertion of his friend Mahon by night, that strange note to Mira, and the subsequent disappearance. And more and more the Inspector was convinced that he was going to need the half-breed, a feeling he made no attempt to justify.

The bank robberies? Even if the robbers did attack a Medicine Hat bank, just where would the half-breed fit into the incident? If local and Mounted Police throughout the West were unable to stop or capture the robbers, what part could Blue Pete play in it? The robbers had shown that they knew how to keep out of danger, whether in cities or towns, or even in such a small village as Brooks. Identification was going to be difficult, since the descriptions given the police by bank managers and clerks had been even more varied than usual. It was always the same where many witnesses were concerned in a startling event.

It looked as if the robbers would have to be captured in the act.

They had seemed to pass up Medicine Hat for some reason, but the Inspector had a feeling, though it might have arisen from pride. Imagine selecting a small bank like that in Brooks, with two large banks in the Hat!

Just the same—he smiled as he thought of it—if they did come they would face something they had never encountered before, something for which they could not be prepared.

At the same time—disturbing how easily the smile vanished—it would be terrible if a robbery succeeded in spite of his precautions, with all the warning he had had.

Even there in his own private office he had taken precautions, and his eyes swung round to the gun hanging on a nail beside the door. He never wore a gun unless on duty out on the prairie, and to have to take time to extract one from the drawer in his desk was not to be thought of. Every second would be valuable. That gun there on the nail he could grab as he ran.

He was startled from his thoughts by the ringing of the telephone. Lazily but somewhat impatiently he put the instrument to his ear.

“Inspector Barker,” he said.

It was Sergeant Mahon, speaking from the Police hut at Turner’s Crossing. “I’m on my way in, sir,” he said. “I’ll be there shortly after dark.”

That was all, but something in the cryptic message brought a flash of excitement to the Inspector’s eyes. Something had happened that would not wait till morning.

“I’ll be here,” he replied.

That, of course, was why Mahon had telephoned, to talk to him right away.

He sank back recklessly in the decrepit chair, and it almost threw him. But he braced his legs in time and grasped the edge of the desk, before settling back—to conjecture.

What had happened? What had Mahon to tell? Anything of importance over the telephone was, of course, impossible, with those nosey girls in the telephone exchange. Long ago he had learned to risk nothing there. All his previous suspicions and fears returned—multiplied. Somehow, somewhere Blue Pete was concerned, and to be left to conjecture about it was almost terrifying.

So long as it was nothing bad. He liked the half-breed, liked him so much that he often wondered; for he had never liked a half-breed before. He had had much trouble with them; usually they were a bad lot, at least an unreliable lot, with the bad traits of both bloods in their veins. But toward Blue Pete he had something of the feeling of a father toward a wayward but lovable son. And even now, in the midst of his worry, he knew that he would hate to have to do without him. There was so much he could do that was impossible to the Mounted Police.

He sighed and shook his head. Now, if Sergeant Mahon should report something bad!

He threw the thought from him, fighting it grimly.

In the fight he forgot his supper, and when his wife inquired over the telephone, he cut her off with a sharpness that was all she required to understand. He would get something at the hotel; she wasn’t to wait for him.

He did not leave the office—went without anything to eat.

And at eleven o’clock, when Mahon rode into the yard behind the barracks he was at the back door to receive him.

Murchison, too, had remained, and he raised the bar across the gate and let the two weary riders through. The Inspector stood beneath the light over the back door, studying Mahon’s face anxiously as he climbed the steps.

He turned and led along the hall. “Come into the office, both of you.”

Happening to glance behind him, he caught the look on the Sergeant’s face and changed his orders:

“No, Langley, I’ll see the Sergeant first. Wait in the hall. The Sergeant and I have some things to cover right away, things that happened while you were away. If you wish you may go home. I’ll talk to you in the morning. It’s pretty late now, and you’re dog-tired, both of you. I can see that.”

He pushed Mahon before him into the office and closed the door.

“You found him?” he burst out, before either was seated.

Mahon frowned but made no reply for a moment. “I—I think so, sir.” There was tragedy in his tone.

The Inspector faced him, frowning. “You think so? Damn it, man, don’t you know? What’s all the mystery about?”

Mahon sighed. “I wish there was more mystery, sir. That’s what troubles me.”

The Inspector dropped into his chair and flung his arms across the desk. “Is it as serious as that?” Suddenly he did not want to know. So often he had wanted not to know; that was why he avoided too many inquiries when the half-breed returned from a task well done. How it was done was usually not fit for an Inspector of Mounted Police to know.

He drew a heavy sigh. “You might as well let me have it—the worst. Is he at his old rustling again?”

“No, sir, not that.”

“Well, give it to me, every black word of it. You look as if you’ve seen a tragedy. . . . Perhaps you’ve lost a friend.”

“May I start at the beginning, sir?”

“That’s what I want,” replied the Inspector impatiently. “And don’t miss a thing because he was your friend. Give me the shocking details.”

Mahon started at the beginning. He told of the fruitless, discouraging days of wandering through the Hills, of fleeting glimpses of tracks left by Whiskers that led nowhere and told nothing but that the half-breed had been there—which they already knew from the note he had left Mira. As he continued, he managed to convey to his listener some of the accumulating excitement as they neared their goal.

The Inspector did not interrupt. He waited, almost breathlessly, for the crisis that he did not want to hear, yet must hear. At last he broke in:

“He was there. Yes, we know that. But what of those other tracks—whose were they?”

“I’m coming to that, sir. We found Whiskers. . . . No, she found us; she came to us . . . and she was plainly worried. She was without saddle or bridle——”

“Then he must have left her for the night. If she came to you—strayed from where he had left her—she must have been worried. Then he couldn’t be far away.”

“He wasn’t, sir. I think I saw him. He was running away from us.”

The Inspector jerked upright in his chair. “Running—from you?”

“Yes, sir. . . . And we never saw him again.”

“But—but—— Hang it, man, there must be more than that.”

“There was—a tent, sir. It was a good tent, and it was set up in a ravine where it was little likely to be seen.”

“But he never uses a tent; he’d scorn such a comfort. He has his caves there anyway.”

Mahon drew a long breath. “It wasn’t his tent, sir. There were others there. He was living with them. There were three camp chairs, and the tent had been there for several days, for there had been many fires, and the ground was well tramped.”

The Inspector’s brow was lined. “I don’t understand. Has he found new friends? Are you sure it was he you saw?”

“I wish I wasn’t, sir.”

“But I don’t understand that either. Why should you wish that? Why are you so worked up over it? He may have come on some of his old cronies from the Badlands. . . . But I’d rather not have that; no one from that part of the world could do him any good. But why did he run?”

He did not wait for the answer Mahon hesitated to make. “But he wouldn’t have any idea it was you, perhaps, if he ran without looking back. He wouldn’t know who it was, and perhaps he didn’t want to be disturbed. It mightn’t mean a thing.” He struggled to convince himself. But the look on Mahon’s face clouded his own. “But running away—that meant something more than I’m thinking of. It means he was—he was in something that would not bear the light of day.”

He jerked angrily forward. “Hang it, man, haven’t you any idea what was wrong? Haven’t you any explanation? There was the tent. Didn’t it tell you anything? Didn’t you see the others he was with?”

Mahon shook his head. “I saw no others, but we heard them running away—riding away later.”

“Then what’s your idea? You’ve something in your mind, and it’s unpleasant. What did you gather from it?”

Mahon hung his head. “I had the evidence, sir. I lost it.”

“Lost it? How?”

“Getting away from the bullets aimed at me. Langley and I had to bolt for it. I ran as fast as I dare to get around to where the shots had come from, but I found nothing. All I heard was horses racing away through the trees. Our own bronchos weren’t handy enough to take up the chase immediately. Besides, I wanted to examine that tent; the rest could wait.” He stopped and swallowed.

“Yes, yes!”

“We did follow for a few minutes. . . . When we returned to the tent the evidence I had was gone. Someone had been there in those few minutes and cleaned things away.”

“They’d been watching you all the time, eh?”

“I suppose so. Anyway, it was all gone.”

“But the evidence—what was it?”

“Two guns, sir, the guns they keep in banks!”

Inspector Barker jumped to his feet and leaned across the corner of the desk. “The bank robbers!”

Mahon only nodded.

Slowly the Inspector sank back into his chair, his eyes wide and troubled. “And—and Blue Pete was there . . . one of them!”

Mahon shook his head decidedly. “No, sir, not one of them. We know he couldn’t have been concerned in the robberies.”

“What about Brooks?”

“He’d have been recognized there, sir. Besides, Blue Pete would never do a thing like that, never.”

The Inspector’s thoughts had raced away. “Then they’re still here, here within easy reach of us, only a few hours’ ride from Medicine Hat. It’s as I thought—they haven’t gone further west, as everyone tried to think. I didn’t. Well, they haven’t fooled us.”

“I thought of that, sir.”

“But . . . but there’s Blue Pete.” The Inspector groaned. “Why was he there? Were they using him for information? Would he do that?”

“I’m quite certain, sir, that Blue Pete isn’t mixed up in it at any part.”

A scornful smile worked its way into the Inspector’s face. “For Heaven’s sake, Mahon, be reasonable, have an open mind. You know we have to in our business. But you wouldn’t believe evil of your half-breed friend if you caught him committing a crime. You saw this in the Hills. Here are the facts: Those were the robbers; and Blue Pete was living with them in that tent. And he ran when you and Langley came on the scene. Ask yourself why . . . or have you some foolish explanation that would clear him?”

Mahon hesitated. “I’ve thought so much about it, sir, every hour since. I’ve scarcely rested or slept. I’ve been wondering about those shots, those bullets that made us get out of sight. I think I know the sound of his .45, and only one bullet came in our direction. It was that sent us jumping. I found the bullet in a tree at the top of the bank—the second bullet, I mean. It was from that spot that I heard someone running.”

The Inspector could not follow, and he said so impatiently. “The first bullet, sir,” Mahon explained, “it was meant only to warn us, to frighten us, to make us take cover from some other danger. That’s how I look at it now. If it was fired by Blue Pete—as I think it was, by the sound—it was not intended to injure us. We know how he can shoot. He warned us to take cover . . . to take cover from something threatening us from the top of the bank where I found the second bullet. Someone was there, threatening us.”

“It’s too complicated for me,” sneered the Inspector. “But,” he added, after a moment, “you were there, and you’re no fool about these things as a rule. I can’t say you’re wrong, though you’d try everything to protect that half-breed. By the way, did you try to trace those fellows later?”

“Yes, sir. We got our horses and went after them. But they had too big a start, and the trail was difficult to follow, because there’d been others riding there. I gave up. I thought I should come to report.”

“Under the circumstances I suppose that was the best thing to do. You did your best. The value in all this is the warning that the robbers are still with us.” He thought for a few moments. “By the way, what about Whiskers?”

“I looked for her, sir, but I could not find her.”

The Inspector smiled coldly. “Of course. Blue Pete had picked her up while you were busy elsewhere.” He squirmed. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about without Blue Pete and this mess.”

Blue Pete, clutching the papers and the two bank guns, scurried up the opposite slope. He was well pleased with himself. No one had been hurt, Terry had been stopped in the act of doing something that would have haunted him, and he was safe. And the Mounted Police would have evidence against no one.

Even if, later, Terry and Slow were captured, the fact that they ran when strangers broke in on them in an isolated spot like the Hills, would prove nothing against them; and the only suspicion would be that they had contemplated some form of rustling, the crime always connected with the Hills.

Slow might talk, but he dare not confess, and he knew nothing of Terry’s story.

He did not run far. He knew Sergeant Mahon would return to recover what had been dropped in their flight, and he wished to be at hand to see if anything else was discovered within the tent. He felt almost certain that Terry, too, when he felt himself safe, would work his way back for the same purpose. He would have recognized the Mounted Police, and nothing now must be permitted to interfere.

Mahon and Langley returned, approaching the tent cautiously. Mahon, too, must have suspected that the recent occupants might return and, while he searched, Langley was left to keep watch.

The disappearance of the papers seemed to puzzle him most, for he and his companion searched about the tent for some time and discussed it in low tones. Then he commenced to search for the guns. Where he had dropped them he was plainly uncertain, for he followed the course of his flight around the tent and through the trees.

He was still searching when darkness fell over the forest, and after a few moments of low conversation the pair disappeared up the slope.

Blue Pete smiled. He knew what they would do. They were not likely to leave the scene entirely; they would conceal themselves where they could keep an eye on the locality. He would not be caught by any trick like that.

And then it struck him that Terry might walk into the trap. That he must prevent; and he remained on watch, more and more relieved as the hours passed without further incident. Throughout the night he remained. From the silence he knew that Mahon was somewhere near, for the Hills were never like that when humans were absent. He himself could deceive even the wild animals.

It was well that he was cautious, for he almost walked into Langley. The Mounted Policeman lay asleep in a thicket, and almost as the half-breed backed out of sight he awoke, commenced to yawn, seemed to remember where he was and jerked upright, to stare about through the trees.

Blue Pete crept away. But he did not go far, and in a few minutes the Sergeant came, and the two conversed for a few moments, then walked away, mounted their horses and set off in the direction Terry and Slow had taken the previous day.

They left Blue Pete with no plan in mind. There was still a chance that Terry might return, and he waited, keeping the tent in sight.

Hours later he heard bronchos working through the trees, and the two Mounted Policemen came in sight. He knew where they had been; they had tried to follow the trail the escaping bank robbers had left. Of course they had failed, and Mahon was plainly angry with himself. Langley watched him in silence, keeping slightly to the rear.

They rode down to the tent and dismounted. And once more they searched but with no success. Mounting then, his head shaking, the Sergeant led along the ravine. He found where the bronchos of the robbers had been kept, and for a time he carefully examined the ground, before setting off southward.

Well behind the half-breed followed. And suddenly it struck him that it was in that direction that he had left Whiskers. The pinto would not be there now, of course, but Mahon would read enough to identify it.

The two men rode into the ravine.

But Mahon did not even dismount, though he pointed out the tell-tale tracks as he conversed with his companion. Something about that, too, worried the half-breed.

Up to that time Blue Pete had tried to convince himself that he had not been seen. Now Mahon knew he had been there, and for several days!

From the height above he watched—and worried, and perspiration broke out on his forehead and ran into his eyes. He wiped it away with an impatient hand and swore under his breath. He had been careless again. So often he was careless, trusting too much to the luck that had always been with him, that had seen him through so many perils. But none seemed greater than the present one now. Always when it was too late he knew what he should have done. Mira warned so often of that.

Thinking it over as he watched, he wondered why Mahon showed no surprise. Could it be that his friend had all the time known he was there?

After a time the two rode away toward the west.

Blue Pete did not follow. There was something final about Mahon’s manner, so that it was plain that he did not plan to return.

Almost without thinking, Blue Pete started back toward the tent. There still lingered in his mind the thought that Terry might return. For the moment, therefore, he could think of nothing to do but wait. He lay down in his old lookout.

It swept over him as he lay that now he was in real trouble. With Mahon knowing he had been there, what explanation could he make of his companions without telling Terry’s story? That he would never do, even if he had not promised. Terry had been frank; he had trusted him. Besides, Inspector Barker would not believe him.

At intervals he found himself hoping that Mahon did not know, trying to think it possible. None of the Mounties could read a trail, at least not like he could. The Sergeant might read nothing more than that bronchos had been there; he might fail to recognize the small indentations left by the pinto. For a few moments he thought of returning to the ravine to see what tracks Whiskers had left, but he fought the thought away. Better to be uncertain than to relinquish all hope.

All along he had made a muddle of things. There was that sneaking away in the darkness after he and Mahon had heard that undeceiving howl from the Hills. And the note he had left Mira! No need for either to have occurred. He could have waited until the morning before leaving Mahon, and Mira was accustomed to him disappearing into the Hills.

But, yes, there had been in his mind some vague thought that the search he was undertaking might be dangerous, and he wanted Mira to know something of what had happened should he not return. But suppose she had told Mahon of the note! That would account for the Sergeant’s presence in the Hills.

He shrugged it off. Mira would never speak to the Mounted Police of a note like that, left in the dead of night, and crowded with suggestion. He could trust her for that, no matter how worried she was. At the time he suggested she would search for him herself, if he had not returned.

The hours passed, but Terry did not appear. The Hills were surely deserted. Blue Pete groaned. He could not lie there doing nothing, just waiting for something to happen. Certain things must not happen.

He realized with a pang of tearing helplessness that Terry would not return now.

He did not know what to do. Never had he felt so helpless, and at a time when something must be done.

It shocked him to remember that now he had no broncho. What could he do, however pressing it was? His feet would have to carry him for the rest of the day and much longer before he could reach a ranch. If only he had kept Whiskers—where Mahon could not find her!

For the first time in the Hills he felt lonesome. The empty tent, the lifeless chairs, the dead fire—they were more than he could stand. Somewhere life was going its way—and something in that life waited for him to do, something that must be done quickly.

He remembered Jim’s horse, and he rose and hurried to the ravine where he had removed the hobbles. The broncho was not there. He tried to follow its trail, but darkness intervened.

His thoughts returned in the darkness to Terry. What was his new friend doing?

An answer shot into his mind and he bounded to his feet and looked wildly about. He knew what Terry would do, knew it now too late. That was what had been nagging at him for attention all through the day.

He hurried back to the tent, hoping against hope. He had to find Terry, to talk to him, to reason once more with him. At all cost that must be done. But now he could do nothing without a mount, nothing. One whole day he had wasted.

In desperation he set off on the run through the trees. He might work his way out of the Hills and stumble on some mounted cowboy who would lend him his broncho. He would take it anyway. But progress in the darkness was slow.

He remembered the signal, and at intervals he stopped and sent the howl into the darkness, listening breathlessly for a reply. None came—until from far away to the south. With tingles racing beneath his scalp he heard it. Then he groaned. That was a real wolf, no poor imitation such as he longed to hear.

He ran on. He stumbled into trees and scraped the skin from his nose, tripped over roots and rocks, fell and hurt his hand. He did not feel it. He panted, not from strain but from anxiety. He muttered through his teeth as he stumbled along, surprised how helpless he felt in the darkness. Panic swept over him. He would not be in time, and it meant life or death for someone he liked.

In time he realized his condition and stopped running. Panic, he knew, would get him nowhere. He must think it out. Staggering along like that had only confused him, so that he recognized now the disturbing fact that for a time he had run toward the south.

A fallen tree barred his way, and he seated himself on it to take time to collect his wits. He commenced to whistle, striving to steady his nerves. There was, for instance, the whistle Whiskers understood—three short whistles and she would come.

He whistled—three short whistles.

And from the darkness came a surprising answer—a low whinny of unmistakable eagerness and delight!

His hand went to his forehead. Surely in his worry and helplessness he had gone mad. He rose and plodded grimly on toward the north, trying to regain control of himself.

The whinny was repeated, and from behind came the low patter of small hoofs.

He turned, staring blindly into the darkness, unbelieving. He held his breath.

A warm breath was in his face then, and Whiskers rubbed her nose in the familiar way against his shoulder, whinnying softly.

“Why—why, yuh—yuh bad ole gal! I told yuh to—— Wotchu doin’ here?” His hand rose to tangle in her mane and tug in the way the pinto loved. “I—I don’ b’lieve it,” he gasped. He was almost crying.

Whiskers nibbled at his ear, and he had to believe.

“Gor-swizzle, I musta gone loco—er you musta. Yuh didn’ do wot I told yuh to do, an’ that’s the fust time. Howju know yuh was needed? Yuh knew a durn sight more’n I did. Mira allus says so.”

His hand slipped back to feel automatically for the saddle. Of course there was no saddle or bridle.

He grinned. “Don’ matter none to us, does it, ole gal? You ’n’ me we bin goin’ that way lots o’ times when we ain’t had no time to fix up. We don’ need nothin’ like that. All we need’s yer legs, ole gal, but we need ’em bad. Yuh gotta use ’em fast, an’ thar won’t be no rest till we git thar. We got a long ways to go an’ mighty little time. Fust we gotta git outa this, an’ you know best how to do that. I’m near lost in the darkness. You got better eyes, but we gotta go slow till we’re clear o’ the trees, I bin near crazy.”

He climbed on her back. “Go on. Find the way out, an’ not to the 3-Bar-Y. We’re goin’ to the Hat, an’ fast. We’re needed thar, an’ durn soon. It must be near daylight out on the prairie. Git goin’, ole gal.”

Whiskers swung about, and Blue Pete laughed. “Shows yuh know the way awright. I knowed I was wrong, I was that skeered.”

He dismounted and walked beside her. She would have all the strain she could stand in the long, fast ride before them when they reached the prairie. . . .

It was broad daylight when they reached the northern edge of the Hills. There Blue Pete mounted, and they set off at a long open lope down the slope. A single glance he had thrown toward Medicine Hat from the height at the edge of the trees, then they were off.

Not a sign of life was in sight, not so much as a cow or a coyote, but he knew where two or three herds were feeding, and he kept away from them, edging off to the east. But he did not waste time by keeping to the coulees, as he would have done had he had the time. The instinct of the hunted had changed to the haste of the hunter.

The cowboys of the first herd were unaware of his passing, but the cows heard him and some of them raised their heads to listen. Then he was out of sight. Another herd had changed its feeding grounds only a couple of days before, and he was unprepared for it. He did not stop as he swept past, not even acknowledging the hail from the nearest cowboy.

The latter called to his companion: “Hey, I say! That’s Blue Pete. Wonder what’s up.”

The other dashed higher on the slope and looked. “Sure burnin’ the grass, eh? If he was goin’ the other way I’d risk a guess we’d see the Mounties after him. But he ain’t rustlin’, not goin’ in that direction.”

“Mebbe rustlers in the Hills,” suggested his companion, “an’ he’s goin’ fer help, gittin’ the Mounties. The 3-Bar-Y don’t like ’em any better’n we do.”

The other shook his head. “He’d stop an’ tell us. He ain’t got no saddle ner bridle neither. Come to think of it, if it was rustlers, he wouldn’t wait for no Mounties. He’d shoot it out with ’em himself—an’ I wouldn’t like to be one o’ them.” He looked at his watch. “He can’t keep on like that for long. If he does he’d be in the Hat by about ten, I’d say. Mighty stiff gait for thirty miles.”

They watched, wondering. There would be news soon, and all they could do was wait.

The telephone on Inspector Barker’s desk rang. It was early morning. He had had a restless night and had come down earlier than usual. He wanted to talk to the two bank managers, though he knew he could not see them before ten o’clock. Besides, his wife had complained. He had reached home after midnight, and she knew he hadn’t slept well. In addition she had burned the toast.

It left him bad-tempered, and he snatched the instrument up and growled his name.

It was from Murchison, speaking from Turner’s Crossing. “I’ve just come in, sir,” he said. “Blue Pete passed here a few moments ago, going like blazes. I called to him but he paid no attention.”

“Going which way?” inquired the Inspector, his head humming with excitement.

“Toward town, sir.”

“You’re sure it was Blue Pete?”

“Positive, sir. He was on Whiskers.”

The Inspector glanced at the clock. It was just eight o’clock. Automatically he figured it out: if the half-breed kept on at that pace he should reach town shortly after ten. It depended on how fresh the pinto was, how far she had come like that.

He rang off and slowly hung up. Something was in the air, something serious. Blue Pete never rode like that unless it was serious, and he never passed the Police hut at Turner’s Crossing without stopping, except for some good reason.

Worry piled on worry. This was something more to add to the story Mahon had given him only a few hours before. He rose and paced the floor. Two hours and more to wait. But he couldn’t wait that long. He must do something. He would speak to the bank managers in their homes.

He reseated himself and picked up the telephone.

As he rang the bell, Mahon passed the window toward the front door. The Inspector dropped the telephone and in three long strides reached his office door. Mahon had entered the hall.

“Come in, Sergeant.”

The Inspector closed the door behind them and slowly walked back to his chair, while Mahon stood silently watching and wondering. For a few seconds the older man stared into his subordinate’s face, his eyes blank.

“Well,” he exploded, dropping into the chair, “we’ve found him.”

The Sergeant seated himself, limp and shaking, his face paling a little. “You mean—Blue Pete, sir?”

“Of course. Who else?”

“Where is he, sir?”

The Inspector looked at the clock. “I should say he’s half a dozen miles this side of Turner’s Crossing, and making like wildfire this way.” He saw Mahon’s bewildered look and laughed shortly. “Murchison just phoned from Turner’s Crossing. Blue Pete had just passed, riding fast.”

“He—didn’t—stop?”

“Never even answered Murchison’s shout. What do you make of it?”

Mahon shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, sir. . . . Coming . . . this way?”

“He could scarcely be going the other way, could he,” the Inspector snapped, “when we’ve been looking for him all this time? We’d know if he’d been in town, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

There was silence in the room for a time. Through both minds pictures flashed, and neither was happy about them.

“He has something to tell us, sir,” Mahon suggested. “That’s it.”

“He’s going to have something to tell us,” declared the Inspector grimly, “or I’ll know the reason why.” His lip curled—he was in a bad temper. “But perhaps he was merely giving Whiskers her morning exercise—and showing how easily he can keep out of our way.”

Mahon did not seem to hear. “He’s got something to tell us, sir, and it’s about that tent, about those bank robbers.”

“If he’s in such a hurry to tell us, why didn’t he stop and telephone it from the hut? It would save hours—and not kill that little pinto. If he’s ridden at that pace from the Hills, it’ll be hard on her.”

“It must be serious, sir,” said Mahon under his breath. He examined his watch. “If he should be here not long after ten, we’ll—we’ll know.”

The Inspector threw out his hands. “And we must wait two hours for it! That’s always the way with him—always keeping me on tenterhooks. He’s got something on his mind, of course. You and I already know that. Perhaps it’s even on his conscience. If you saw him there with the bank robbers I wouldn’t be surprised at anything.” He scowled across the desk. “Don’t be a fool if things aren’t what you hope. We must be open-minded—and merciless. Don’t forget what he once was.”

Mahon flushed and stiffened. “I’ll stake my job on his innocence, sir. I don’t care what things look like.”

The Inspector’s face broke into a smile, and he reached across the table and patted the hand that lay there. “Don’t do that. I need you. No matter what he does, it’s not your fault, and I’m not blaming you for anything. I ask you only to be reasonable—and for the moment—until we know the truth—to forget he’s your friend.”

“And after that,” Mahon replied firmly. “I still know, sir, he’s innocent.”

The Inspector sighed. “No matter what he has for us, I want to talk to him. I’ve had nothing dangerous for him to do for too long, and you and I both realize the danger in that. . . . Sometimes I feel like the man who had the bear by the tail. I’d hate to catch him breaking the law again. For one thing, we’d have to catch him, and we know how difficult that would be.” He shot a swift glance at Mahon. “That would be your job.”

“It will never be necessary, sir,” Mahon told him confidently.

The Inspector looked away through the window, straight up Main Street. The town was coming to life. Here and there a merchant swept the sidewalks before his store, or examined some new display in his windows. A couple of cowboys loped lazily down the street and disappeared into the yard behind the Royal Hotel.

For a long time they sat, speaking only at intervals, nervously waiting.

Suddenly the Inspector looked up. “It’s half-past nine. I must see the bank managers. Besides, we must see that everything is ready, in the banks and at Hutchy’s.”

“I hope, sir,” Mahon suggested diffidently, “you won’t mention Blue Pete to anyone.”

“Not likely—till we know. No, I’ll just give the managers a hint of what you discovered in the Hills. It’ll put them on guard to know the robbers are still around. We’ll wait for a few minutes, then come along with me. You can check on Hutchy’s; I’ll talk to the managers. Oh, by the way, someone must go to the Hills and bring in that tent. We might be able to trace it, and the chairs.”

He continued to watch the clock. At five minutes to ten he rose. From the hook beside the door he took his gun and thrust it into his pocket.

“You have yours?” he asked, turning to look his companion over. “Good!”

Together they left the barracks and, impatient as he was, the Inspector set a strolling pace up Main Street. At the corner of Fourth Avenue they turned and followed it to the corner of Toronto Street, where the two banks were located.

“You’d better take the one on that corner, to save time. Just give him the barest outline of what you discovered in the Hills, enough to frighten him a little. I’ll take this one. Tell the manager that I want him to be particularly careful for the next few days, always to have a gun handy—and the clerks, too.”

Mahon had started to cross the street when he was called back. “When you’re through there, go to the harness shop. Test the bell that rings in my office. Let’s see, it’s two rings for a warning. Make sure Hutchy understands, because it’s going to depend on him, sitting there in the window where both banks are in sight. Give it a single ring to test it . . . say, in fifteen minutes. I’ll be back in the office by that time.”

He laughed. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t forget—a single ring only. If you make a mistake and double it, it’ll scare me out of my boots.” He drew his watch. “No, better wait twenty minutes; that’ll be about 10.25. It’ll give me lots of time, and we’re in no hurry. The Chief would have the laugh on us if anything went wrong with that bell. He sniffs at it. He thinks his men are all the protection the banks need.”

They entered the banks. . . .

At twenty minutes after ten the Inspector was seated in his chair, doing nothing but waiting, waiting for Mahon to ring. Every few seconds he glanced at the clock and frowned. He commenced to perspire, and he threw his tunic open and removed the gun from his pocket and laid it on the desk before him.

Ten-twenty-three. . . . Ten-twenty-four. . . . Ten-twenty-five.

The bell rang.

It rang twice!

At ten o’clock two strangers approached Medicine Hat from the south. While still out beyond the Exhibition grounds, with the city out of sight down the cutbank, they separated, one riding on alone. He dropped down the cutbank at the top of Toronto Street, tied his broncho to a tree in front of the Methodist Church, next to one of the banks, and strolled on down the street to the post office.

No one noticed him. He wore inconspicuous Western clothes, walked with the languid gait of the cowboy, and appeared to pay no attention to anyone. Into the outside slit at the post office he dropped a large stamped envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. James Turbot, at a Toronto address.

He did not linger but sauntered on to the corner of South Railway Street, stood there for a few seconds, apparently watching a shunting engine in the railway yards.

He did not even see it. What he saw was Inspector Barker crossing the tracks from Main Street and entering the faded brown barracks. He smiled.

He glanced at his watch, then turned back up Toronto Street and continued slowly along to Fourth Avenue.

His recent companion came loping down the cutbank at the head of Toronto Street, reached Fourth Avenue almost at the same time, and turned along it to Main Street. Before the Men’s Club at that corner he tied his broncho.

As he returned along Fourth Avenue he saw his companion of a half hour before climb the steps of a bank and enter. His pace quickened, and a hand dropped to touch the hard handle of the gun in his trouser pocket, shifting it slightly as he entered the bank.

Terry had paused at the foot of the steps, and his eyes raised to a large brass bell over the doorway. He had seen several of those bells of late, even on the banks he had robbed, and they had not frightened him. The gun he felt in his pocket had seen to it that no one inside the bank touched a button that rang the bells. Bank clerks were easily controlled. It wasn’t their money, anyway.

But that bell over his head now looked different; it seemed to defy him, to threaten him, and he scowled back at it.

“Just this once,” he thought, “just this once, then you can ring all you like.”

He threw a swift glance at Slow, approaching along Fourth Avenue, and he stepped lightly up to the bank door and entered.

Inside the bank he glanced casually around, a mere stranger deciding what wicket to approach to do the business he had in mind. Not a customer had yet entered the bank, and the four employees in sight were busy arranging their work for the day. The door of the manager’s office was open, and it could be seen that the room was empty. Terry wondered, even hesitated.

He drew a sharp breath. After all, perhaps it was better that way. The managers, he had found, were more conscious of their responsibilities—like the one at Brooks. From clerks he had little to fear. At any rate, it was no time to turn back now.

He approached the teller’s wicket, taking his time, listening for the opening of the street door at his back. He withdrew his hand from his pocket. In it was a written note. In the other hand was a gun. Both he shoved through the wicket as the outer door opened.

None of the other clerks paid any attention.

But the one beyond the wicket read the note at a glance: “This is a hold-up. Do what you’re told and you won’t be hurt. Open the door behind you, leave the cage, and stand there with your hands up.”

The startled, terrified clerk did as he was told. His Adam’s apple fluttered up and down; his eyes never left that cold little black hole in the muzzle of the gun.

Terry stepped back. He covered the other clerks.

Slow had hurried past him, had leaped the counter and entered the teller’s cage. Into a cloth bag he crammed the bills in sight and pulled open a drawer in search of more.

“Come out here.” Terry’s sharp order brought the other three clerks scrambling out to him. “Lie down. Do what you’re told and you won’t be hurt. These guns are loaded, and we know how to use them.” He smiled. “But I suppose you know that.” The excitement had got into him, the simplicity of it, as always. And now the end was in sight. Another two minutes—that was all.

Slow had all the money in sight. “Get out there with the others,” he ordered, pushing the teller to the counter and over. He glanced back toward the vault and waited for Terry’s next order.

Terry approached the counter and held out his hand, and the filled bag was handed to him. “That will do. You’d better——”

A door at the back of the room opened, and the manager entered from his apartment above the bank. Warned by the Inspector, keyed up, he saw at a glance what was happening and stood where he was. It was too late to do more, for Terry had whirled with the sound of the opening door and had him covered.

Too late? Not quite. The manager’s body did not move, but a hand slid slowly back. Slow had leaped the counter and stood beside Terry. He, too, had the manager covered. Neither saw the moving hand that had only a few inches to rise to reach a tiny button in the wall beside the door.

As the large brass bell above the door outside clanged a warning, Slow leaped forward. “I’ll let him have it,” he shouted, beside himself with terror. He pressed the trigger.

Terry had acted swiftly. His arm shot out. It knocked the muzzle upward, and the bullet entered the top of the wall above the manager’s head.

Then the pair made for the door. Terry moving backward, covering the flight of his companion.

Sergeant Mahon had entered the harness shop.

Hutchinson, the proprietor, was in his chair before the window, working on a Western saddle whose reflected gleams spotted the store walls and ceiling, gleams that shot from silver studs about the apron. The old man did not raise his eyes. He had seen the Sergeant crossing the street. “Howdy, Sarge!”

“Hello, Hutchy. Collecting the town gossip as usual?”

The old man grinned. “There hasn’t been any for so long I’m wondering why we have to spend good money to pay for the Mounted Police. I think I’ll give up real work and join ’em for an easy life.”

“You’re far too old, Hutchy,” Mahon laughed. “And you’re too wise. They get us when we’re young and callow—don’t know any better.” He touched the saddle. “Still working on this saddle, I see.”

“This isn’t the same one.”

“Pretty elaborate, some of them, aren’t they?”

Hutchy grunted. “Not so bad, but I’ve made better, bunches of ’em. Precious stones have gone out of fashion. The crowd of punchers nowadays don’t love their saddles like they used to.” He leaned back and studied the saddle with the eye of an expert. “This one isn’t quite right. Wrong slant to the horn. Bet it was made in the East. . . . No, come to think of it, it was made in Montana.” He shook his head. “They’ve funny things over in Montana. I’ve seen lots of ’em. . . . Funny punchers, too. But I don’t need to tell you that.” He looked up and winked.

“Yes,” Mahon agreed, “we know something about them, and we usually wish they’d remained at home.”

“It might put you out of business, with nothing to do.”

“We might go to making saddles then, for the easy life,” said Mahon.

The old man sighed. “Things are changing—everything . . . even crime. Now we have bank robberies. Used to be stages. Perhaps robbing banks is even more exciting than rustling. More money, too.”

He pointed to a small button fixed to the side of the window-frame within reach of where he sat. “The Inspector must be getting lonesome for something to happen, and he doesn’t mind my sharing in the next thing that comes along. Even if nothing happens I get little thrills running up and down my spine when I look at that bell.” He carefully adjusted a new rope to the girth. “In fact if ever there came a chance to use it I’d be too excited to remember it’s there; that is, if a robber tried what it looks like the Inspector wants him to try. Yes, sir, Sarge, I really believe the Inspector’ll be disappointed when the robbers pass us up. They’re probably away past Calgary by now. They wouldn’t be fools enough to try anything here.”

He grinned. “It wouldn’t matter to me if they cleaned the banks out, though I’ve got a bit put aside in that one across the corner. Things are fixed so nobody loses. Isn’t that so?”

“I guess you’re right, Hutchy. Even if they got the money you have, there’s the nicest house in town belonging to you—thousands of good dollars spent on it.”

“Oh, that was the missus,” Hutchy told him. “She wasn’t going to let any of those ranchers on the Esplanade beat her out. I didn’t have any say in it.”

He stopped and rested his hands on his knees. “Between ourselves, I don’t see what good it would do if I saw a robbery and pressed that button that rings away off there in the barracks. The robbers would be miles away before any of you could get after them. But I didn’t object; I let the Inspector have his little fun, in memory of old times when things really happened. But why in blazes wasn’t the button put right in the banks, where it could be pressed long before I’d know a robbery was going on?”

“The banks already have their buttons,” Marion told him, “and their own bell. You can see it. The trouble is that the robbers make certain no one inside the bank touches a button. If you had a gun pressing in your tummy, Hutchy, you’d do what you were told. We’d sort of like to be in on any attempt at a robbery here in town, so we’ve given you a chance to help us out. We don’t want the local police to have all the fun.”

Hutchy made a grimace. “First thing you know I’ll press the damn thing, just to get up a little excitement. Let’s see, it was two rings, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. And for Heaven’s sake don’t make a mistake, or the Inspector will bite his name in your neck. The bell isn’t in your way. As a citizen——”

“Bosh! The Chief rolls that dope out for us.” He saw the twinkle in the Sergeant’s eye and shrugged. “You did that rather well, Sarge. Just the same, I don’t see where I’d be much use with the bell.”

“You’d be the first one to hear the bank bell or to see the excitement, any running or shouting. And we’re always ready to rush at the sound of the bell.”

“If there was shooting, too, I’d hear it,” muttered the old man. “But there’s been so little shooting in town for years I’d probably be too excited to remember the bell. Anyway, as I said, the robbers aren’t in this part of the country any more. They’ve gone on west. According to the papers——”

Into the room—out over the town—crashed the heavy clang of one of the bank bells. Immediately afterwards came the muffled sound of a shot behind closed doors.

Mahon leaped to the little button. But Hutchy was ahead of him. He pressed twice.

Mahon dashed through the door, drawing his gun as he ran.

The town was aroused, with men bursting from store doors along the street. To be sure the bells had inadvertently been rung before, but there was always hope.

Mahon raced across the corner and cleared the bank steps in a single leap.

At that moment the door burst open, caught him fairly in its swing, and sent him tumbling backwards.

As he fell, he saw a figure rush past and round the corner of the bank, leaping a fence there. He fired at it, but he was in no position to aim. He scrambled to his feet and started to follow.

At that moment a window inside the bank crashed to splinters.

As the small bell fixed to the wall of his office sounded its double alarm, Inspector Barker whirled toward it incredulously. For a moment he wondered if his taut nerves were deceiving him. He knew that all the time he had expected this, had waited for it, and for a moment he wondered if he had heard the bell at all.

Then he heard Langley outside in the hall and knew.

Forgetting his open tunic, an undress he had never before exposed to the public, he leaped from his chair, snatching his gun from the desk before him. His cap he automatically grabbed from a nail beside the door.

Out in the hall Langley was on his feet, his face flushed.

“Come on,” snapped the Inspector. “Bring your gun. It’s a bank!”

In his hurry Langley tumbled over his chair, and his gun fell from his hand. As he scrambled about to recover it, the Inspector was already in the street. And as Langley reached the door, his superior was across the tracks and running at full speed up Main Street.

Several on the street, who had come out at the sound of the bell, saw the Inspector, and they stood aside to let him pass. Some followed at a distance, but they wanted only to see.

Through his open window in the City Hall Chief Dolan had heard the bell and already stood on the corner of Main Street when Inspector Barker raced up the street. Moving fussily about but getting no nearer the bank, he left it to the oncoming Inspector to make the first significant move. After all, he told himself then, the Mounted Police were on duty within the town as well as himself and his men. At the moment he was in no mood to dispute that.

Slow had ducked round the west corner of the bank and had thrown himself over the fence. Thereafter he made good time through back yards on the way to where he had left his broncho tied before the Men’s Club. He recognized now how wise he had been. He was delayed for a few moments by a clothes line in one of the yards as he tore madly along. He felt better when he realized that he was not followed by the Mounted Policeman who had fired at him. Three fences he took in his stride, vaguely surprised at his own activity.

As he landed over one of the fences, however, he crashed into a loose pile of wood. Picking himself up, cursing now, a coil of wire thrown from a hardware store tangled with his legs, and he went down again.

Nevertheless he made good time, considering, and with a sharp breath of relief he burst out on Main Street and saw his broncho waiting for him.

Then across the street he saw the dark blue uniform of Chief Dolan, and from the corner of his eyes another uniform running toward him up Main Street. Jerking his gun up, he sent a bullet close to where the Chief had been, for the head of the local police had ducked out of sight when he saw he was observed.

The Inspector was still forty yards away, and Slow stopped long enough to do a foolish thing. He aimed toward Inspector Barker and pulled the trigger.

The latter had seen the running figure the moment Slow emerged on Main Street, and knew he must be one of the robbers. Then he saw the shot at the Chief. The one at himself he ignored; it was still too distant for accurate shooting, though he heard the bullet whistle past.

He didn’t so much as hesitate. As Slow grabbed the tied rein free and leaped into the saddle, the Inspector fired. The broncho leaped forward, reared, and fell backward, kicking violently for a moment, then lay still.

Slow crashed to the roadway, landing on his shoulder, and was knocked out. Before he came to, the Inspector was on him.

Chief Dolan came panting close behind, jingling a pair of handcuffs in his left hand, while his right held a gun.

“I nearly got the fellow,” he panted. “I thought of aiming at him, then I decided the broncho would do as well. Pretty good shot, wasn’t it?”

The Inspector stared. He had heard no other shot. “You fired at it?” He grunted contemptuously. “You must use a curved barrel on your gun to be able to shoot around a corner.”

The Chief flushed. “I did shoot at him.”

Inspector Barker had no time to argue. “Where are the men you said you’d keep on guard? But never mind. Look after this fellow now.”

He set off along Fourth Avenue. He wondered where Mahon was, what had happened to him. Then he saw him leap down the bank steps and dash off round the far corner of the bank into Toronto Street. He called, but Mahon failed to hear.

Langley had not stopped at the corner of Main and Fourth Avenue. He was half-way to Toronto Street when Mahon ran from the bank, and he followed to the corner and stood watching the chase, beckoning frantically to Inspector Barker.

The latter, puffing a little now, reached the corner. Up Toronto Street he could see Mahon hurrying along, looking into every yard as he passed. A local policeman was in sight, far up Toronto Street, running toward them.

Mahon evidently shouted at him, for the policeman stopped and disappeared through a gate.

“Cut back to Main Street,” Inspector Barker ordered to Langley. “Get Dolan to go along and work up the street. The fellow is in there somewhere, making in that direction. We’ll have him surrounded.”

The manager appeared at the doorway of the bank, a revolver held in a shaking hand.

“Anyone hurt in there?” the Inspector snapped.

“No, we’re all right, but they got a lot of money.”

“How many were there?”

“Two.”

“Only two? You’re sure?”

“That’s all there were in the bank. One escaped through the door here, the other jumped through the window.”

Only then did the Inspector notice the splinters of glass that lay over the sidewalk and inside the fence, and he set off after Mahon.

“Get him alive, if you can,” he shouted.

A shot rang out, muffled by the intruding houses. It brought Mahon to a sudden halt. Then he dived through a gate and disappeared, followed by the policeman.

Blue Pete drove Whiskers along, not sparing her; and the pinto, as if she understood, did not spare herself. Covering the ground with surprising speed even from the first, she nevertheless conserved her strength for the long run she knew lay ahead. She understood that it was no sudden sprint, not a mere hundred yards or a mile. Far before them rider and pinto could see a pair of riders now, nearing Medicine Hat.

Blue Pete saw them separate at the Exhibition Grounds, one going on alone. He felt better about it then and slowed down a little. No need now to push Whiskers to exhaustion. He could feel her tiring, and he reached forward to pat her neck, whispering encouragement.

“Easy, old gal. We ain’t so crowded fer time now, I reckon. We’ll git thar ’fore they kin do anythin’.”

He remembered then that he had no plan, that before him lay some sort of action that involved treachery to one friend or another, one of whom was certain to be an enemy afterwards. And he had so few friends. All he could work out from the confusion of it was that, come what may, he must intervene in time to stop the robbery. And he must do it without exposing Terry.

He groaned, and Whiskers, thinking him discouraged at her pace, buckled down to it once more.

“Gow, swizzle,” Blue Pete muttered, “I wish yuh cud talk, ole gal. I gotta talk to someun. . . . I wish Mira was here. She’d know wot to do, know it in a wink. I ain’ got the brains fer it nohow. Yuh done a good job this mornin’, ole gal, an’ I think yuh got us here in time . . . ef on’y I knew wot to do. Yuh done yer dangdest.” He sighed. “Now the rest’s up to me.”

It was a few minutes after ten when he reached the crest of the cutbank at the head of Toronto Street. Below him lay the town, and he could see straight down the street to the railway tracks that cut it off at the end. He could see the two banks down there. For a moment or two he pulled in.

Everything looked so peaceful.

Suddenly up the slope came the distant jangle of a bell, and a moment later across the street rushed Sergeant Mahon.

Whiskers, too, had heard and seen, and without a signal she set off at full speed down the cutbank. They heard the shot Mahon fired outside the bank, as he fell before Slow’s rush to escape.

At the corner of Seventh Avenue Blue Pete leaped from the pinto, leaving her loose. He had seen another pinto break, riderless, from before the Methodist Church, run up Toronto Street, and turn out of sight along Sixth Avenue. At the moment it meant nothing to him but a frightened broncho. He saw Mahon now running up the street toward him, and the local policeman hurrying to meet him. Both were looking into the yards as they passed.

The half-breed ran along Seventh Avenue for a few yards and jumped a fence, dodged round a house and over a second fence.

He saw Terry stagger into sight from round a house beyond another fence, an injured Terry, for he leaned weakly against the house for a moment. Then his knees gave way and he dropped.

Terry had heard the shot outside the bank and knew escape was cut off in that direction. With a flying leap he crashed through a window. A blind leap, for outside, beneath the window, was an ornamental iron fence. He landed on it sideways, and a brutal pain shot through his arm and side as he bounced back into the space between fence and bank building.

He staggered along inside the fence and climbed painfully into the open space before the Methodist Church. He was thinking of his pinto, but he saw now that escape there was denied him. For the broncho, frightened by the crash of glass so near, had broken loose and was off up Toronto Street.

Terry groaned—and ran on. He cut across the Church yard, climbed the fence beyond and ran round a house. Over fences, through yards, keeping out of sight behind the houses, he plunged, the pain of his injuries tearing at him. But in his one useful arm, his right, he still carried the filled bag.

He reached the Sixth Avenue and crossed into the yards beyond. Had he given them the slip? He did not think so, but he had come further than he had thought possible. He tried to move his left arm. It was dead, and he knew it was broken. He felt himself growing dizzy. He staggered up against a wall and closed his eyes. Then he heard the shouts of the police out on Toronto Street, and he knew it was hopeless.

Again he tried to move his arm, to get his gun. He would not be taken alive.

There was no gun! In the fall his useless hand had dropped it. With a groan his knees buckled beneath him, and he sank slowly to the ground.

“I can’t, I can’t,” he groaned. “They’ll know me now. Oh, my God! It was just this once more . . . and now too late. They’ll . . . know. Why don’t I die?”

Blue Pete saw him fall. He panted with the strain of not knowing what to do, yet knowing that something had to be done right away. A mist of tears clouded his eyes and he dashed them away. Outside on the street he could hear the policeman shouting that they had Terry now.

Blue Pete dropped to his knees. He raised his gun. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger.

Blindly then he leaped the fence and ran to the man lying on the ground. He could hear the gate before the house creak.

Terry opened his eyes and looked up. He smiled. “Thanks—friend!” He held out the bag, and Blue Pete automatically stuffed it inside his shirt.

“They won’t know nothin’,” Blue Pete whispered. “I got all the papers.”

Terry struggled to extend his one good hand, but it fell lifelessly away and his head sank slowly sideways to the ground.

Mahon came racing round the corner of the house. He saw Blue Pete. “Where is he?”

Blue Pete pointed.

“You—shot him?”

The half-breed nodded. “I knew wot he’d done, an’ I seen yuh was after him.”

“You—you——” Mahon’s lips closed abruptly, for the policeman had come round the corner.

Blue Pete was seated across the corner of the desk in Inspector Barker’s office. He was ill at ease.

The Inspector frowned at him. “I know I should give you a good dressing-down,” he growled. “I wanted to get that fellow alive. I wanted to know who he was. We haven’t yet been able to run that down—who he was or where he came from. This accomplice of his seems to know nothing about him. He says they just happened to pick up together for the jobs. His finger-prints tell us nothing. The one we caught is known.”

He groaned angrily. “There was a third. We don’t know what happened to him either, and this one we caught says he broke away from them some time ago. Then where are those papers—and the two guns? Sergeant Mahon found them—and lost them. Nobody seems to know anything about them. I never encountered a maze like this.

“And then, hang it, man, you made it impossible for us to solve the mystery.”

“I didn’ know nothin’ ’bout that.”

The Inspector looked him over with a frown. “You certainly broke in at an exciting moment. How come?”

“I heerd the bell, an’ I seen the Sergeant runnin’, an’ I heerd a shot.”

“But the bell would mean nothing to you; you’d never heard it before. Yet you knew it was a bank robbery.”

Blue Pete nodded.

The Inspector leaned back and placed the tips of his fingers together. “Of course you would. In fact you knew it was going to take place, knew all about it . . . because . . . because Mahon saw you run away from that tent.”

The half-breed’s startled eyes raised to the Inspector’s and dropped away. “I—I wasn’ shure.”

“Of course you weren’t. And you hoped for the best.” He smiled. “We knew you’d been living in that tent with the robbers. What have you to say to that?”

“I shot him, didn’ I?” growled the half-breed.

“Is that your answer?”

“Ain’t it ’nuff? Ain’t it all yuh need, Inspector?” Blue Pete’s eyes pleaded into the stern ones opposite, and the latter pair of eyes softened and turned away.

“There are always so many things you leave me to guess at, Pete, so many things that make you a care, a responsibility I often think I’ve no right to assume. . . . So many things I find it wise not to delve into, not even to guess at, for my own peace of mind. I know you knew the robbers—and you knew what they were doing. You lived with them and——”

“He had my .45. I cudn’ leave till I got that back. I seen too how he cud shoot, an’ I dassent be careless.”

“You can keep that yarn for someone else,” said the Inspector shortly. He sighed again. “At least, we’ve nothing against you, nothing, I mean, that demands official action. You couldn’t have been concerned in the robberies, and at the end——” He flung out his hands.

He frowned at the desk. “We think the one you shot—he was the leader—that he must have come from the United States, but they’ve no record there either of his finger-prints. . . . The third one—that bothers me a little. If he broke away——”

“He didn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“ ’Cause he’s dead.”

“Dead? How do you know?”

“I seen him shot. He was shot by—by the one I shot.”

“You mean they had a fight?”

“Shure. It was him shot the clerk at Brooks, an’—an’ this other one wudn’ stand for that. He’d told ’em not to do no shootin’ o’ nobody.”

The Inspector whistled with surprise. “He’d given orders for that? Hm-m! Yes, that supports what the manager here says. He says the leader knocked up this other fellow’s gun when he tried to shoot the manager.”

“Shure. He didn’ want nobody hurt.”

The Inspector eyed him keenly. “You seem to think a lot of him. Why?”

“ ’Cause . . . ’cause I know.”

“And of course you won’t tell.”

“Thar ain’t nothin’ fer me to tell,” muttered Blue Pete.

The Inspector drummed on the table for a few moments. “Oh, yes, I forgot. There’s another puzzle: We can’t find the bag of money he stole. We’ve looked everywhere, all along the course the fellow took. He hid it somewhere, but it seems to have vanished into thin air. It was quite a lot of money, too. . . . Even dead he seems to have beaten the bank.”

Blue Pete smiled for the first time in the interview.

Slips of blank paper lay on the table before Blue Pete, and he frowned down on them, shifting restlessly. Mira hovered near, sniffing angrily. She had tried to discover what had taken him to the Hills but had given up fruitless questioning.

He raised his head. “Kin yuh make out a coupla ’dresses fer me? I ain’t no good at it.” He shoved the slips toward her.

She looked down on them. “I thought perhaps you were practising writing, so you could write me something easier to read than that note you left me. What do you want me to do with these?”

“I got coupla parcels to send by mail.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Something you picked up in the Hills?”

“Suthin’ wot ain’t mine. I gotta send it whar it belongs.”

“What size parcels?”

“They won’t be big. Jes’ write the names on them slips. I’ll do the rest.”

“But you won’t tell me anything?”

He squirmed. “I can’t, Mira, honest I can’t. Yuh do’ needta think it’s wrong. It ’ud be wrong fer me to keep wot I got.”

She seated herself beside him. “What are the addresses?”

He drew a paper from his pocket and read an address. Another paper furnished the second address.

She wrote. He took the slips, went to the back of the kitchen and picked up two sheets of brown paper and left the house. She watched him disappear into the stable, and her head shook doubtfully.

In the stable he pushed aside a pile of straw and took from beneath it a bulging bag. From the bag a great pile of bills fell as he upended it. Carefully he counted the bills. He divided them evenly and wrapped them in the papers. He returned to the house and brought back a bottle of mucilage and stuck an addressed slip on each parcel. . . .

Days later Jim’s mother and Slew’s wife opened the parcels in Toronto. They scarcely wondered; they had been receiving such parcels off and on for weeks—though always before in handwriting they recognized.

THE END

Herbert Jenkins Western Novels

HERBERT JENKINS LTD., 3 Duke of York Street, London, S.W.1

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of Blue Pete Rides the Foothills, by Luke Allan (ps. of William Lacey Amy).]