“Of course not. I’d know better’n to try that with you. No hard feelings even if you quit us.” It was a characteristic of the New Englander that while he was a forceful figure in this man’s country, he rarely quarreled with any one.
“That so? Well, you listen here. I been layin’ off that new pardner of yours because he’s yore kin. Not anymore. Different now. He’s liable to have a heluva time an’ don’t you forget it for a minute.”
The fur-trader chewed his cud imperturbably. When he spoke it Was still without a trace of acrimony.
“Guess you’ll think better of that maybe, West. Guess you’re a little hot under the collar, ain’t you? Don’t hardly pay to hold grudges, does it? There was Rhinegoldt now. Kept nursin’ his wrongs an’ finally landed in the pen. Bad medicine, looks like to me.”
West was no imbecile. He understood the threat underneath the suave words of the storekeeper. Rhinegoldt had gone to the penitentiary because C.N. Morse had willed it so. The inference was that another lawbreaker might go for the same reason. The trail boss knew that this was no idle threat. Morse could put him behind the bars any time he chose. The evidence was in his hands.
The bully glared at him. “You try that, C.N. Jus’ try it once. There’ll be a sudden death in the Morse family if you do. Mebbe two. Me, I’d gun you both for a copper cent. Don’t fool yourself a minute.”
“Kinda foolish talk, West. Don’t buy you anything. Guess you better go home an’ cool off, hadn’t you? I’ll have your time made up to-day, unless you want your check right now.”
The broken teeth of the desperado clicked as his jaw clamped. He looked from the smiling, steady-eyed trader to the brown-faced youth who watched the scene with such cool, alert attention. He fought with a wild, furious impulse in himself to go through with his threat, to clean up and head out into the wilds. But some saving sense of prudence held his hand. C.N. Morse was too big game for him.
“To hell with the check,” he snarled, and swinging on his heel jingled out of the office.
The nephew spoke first. “You got rid of him on purpose.”
“Looked that way to you, did it?” the uncle asked in his usual indirect way.
“Why?”
“Guess you’d say it was because he won’t fit into the new policy of the firm. Guess you’d say he’d always be gettin’ us into trouble with his overbearin’ and crooked ways.”
“That’s true. He would.”
“Maybe it would be a good idee to watch him mighty close. They say he’s a bad hombre. Might be unlucky for any one he got the drop on.”
Tom knew he was being warned. “I’ll look out for him,” he promised.
The older man changed the subject smilingly. “Here’s where C.N. Morse& Company turns over a leaf, son. No more business gambles. Legitimate trade only. That the idee you’re figurin’ on makin’ me live up to?”
“Suits me if it does you,” Tom answered cheerfully, “But where do I come in? What’s my job in the firm? You’ll notice I haven’t said ‘Thanks’ yet.”
“You?” C.N. gave him a sly, dry smile. “Oh, all you have to do is to handle our business north of the line—buy, sell, trade, build up friendly relations with the Indians and trappers, keep friendly with the police, and a few little things like that.”
Tom grinned.
“Won’t have a thing to do, will I?”
CHAPTER XII
TOM DUCKS TROUBLE
To Tom Morse, sitting within the railed space that served for an office in the company store at Faraway, came a light-stepping youth in trim boots, scarlet jacket, and forage cap set at a jaunty angle.
“’Lo, Uncle Sam,” he said, saluting gayly.
“’Lo, Johnnie Canuck. Where you been for a year and heaven knows how many months?”
“Up Peace River, after Pierre Poulette, fellow who killed Buckskin Jerry.”
Tom took in Beresford’s lean body, a gauntness of the boyish face, hollows under the eyes that had not been there when first they had met. There had come to him whispers of the long trek into the frozen Lone Lands made by the officer and his Indian guide. He could guess the dark and dismal winter spent by the two alone, without books, without the comforts of life, far from any other human being. It must have been an experience to try the soul. But it had not shaken the Canadian’s blithe joy in living.
“Get him?” the Montanan asked.
The answer he could guess. The North-West Mounted always brought back those they were sent for. Already the Force was building up the tradition that made them for a generation rulers of half a continent.
“Got him.” Thus briefly the red-coat dismissed an experience that had taken toll of his vitality greater than five years of civilized existence. “Been back a week. Inspector Crouch sent me here to have a look-see.”
“At what? He ain’t suspectin’ any one at Faraway of stretchin’, bendin’, or bustin’ the laws.”
Tom cocked a merry eye at his visitor. Rumor had it that Faraway was a cesspool of iniquity. It was far from the border. When sheriffs of Montana became too active, there was usually an influx of population at the post, of rough, hard-eyed men who crossed the line and pushed north to safety.
“Seems to be. You’re not by any chance lookin’ for trouble?”
“Duckin’ it,” answered Tom promptly.
The officer smiled genially. “It’s knocking at your door.” His knuckles rapped on the desk.
“If I ever bumped into a Santa Claus of joy—”
“Oh, thanks!” Beresford murmured.
“—you certainly ain’t him. Onload your grief.”
“The theme of my discourse is aborigines, their dispositions, animadversions, and propensities,” explained the constable. “According to the latest scientific hypotheses, the metempsychosis—”
Tom threw up his hands. “Help! Help! I never studied geology none. Don’t know this hypotenuse you’re pow-wowin’ about any more’n my paint hawss does. Come again in one syllables.”
“Noticed any trouble among the Crees lately—that is, any more than usual?”
The junior partner of C.N. Morse & Company considered. “Why, yes, seems to me I have—heap much swagger and noise, plenty rag-chewin’ and tomahawk swingin’.”
“Why?”
“Whiskey, likely.”
“Where do they get it?”
Tom looked at the soldier quizzically. “Your guess is good as mine,” he drawled.
“I’m guessing West and Whaley.”
Morse made no comment. Bully West had thrown in his fortune with Dug Whaley, a gambler who had drifted from one mining camp to another and been washed by the tide of circumstance into the Northwest. Ostensibly they supplied blankets, guns, food, and other necessities to the tribes, but there was a strong suspicion that they made their profit in whiskey smuggled across the plains.
“But to guess it and to prove it are different propositions. How am I going to hang it on them? I can’t make a bally fool of myself by prodding around in their bales and boxes. If I didn’t find anything—and it’d be a long shot against me—West and his gang would stick their tongues in their cheeks and N.W.M.P. stock would shoot down. No, I’ve got to make sure, jump ’em, and tie ’em up by finding the goods on the wagons.”
“Fat chance,” speculated Tom.
“That’s where you come in.”
“Oh, I come in there, do I? I begin to hear Old Man Trouble knockin’ at my door like you promised. Break it kinda easy. Am I to go up an’ ask Bully West where he keeps his fire-water cached? Or what?”
“Yes. Only don’t mention to him that you’re asking. Your firm and his trade back and forth, don’t they?”
“Forth, but not back. When they’ve got to have some goods—if it’s neck or nothing with them—they buy from us. We don’t buy from them. You couldn’t exactly call us neighborly.”
Beresford explained. “West’s just freighted in a cargo of goods. I can guarantee that if he brought any liquor with
him—and I’ve good reason to think he did—it hasn’t been unloaded yet. To-morrow the wagons will scatter. I can’t follow all of ’em. If I cinch Mr. West, it’s got to be to-night.”
“I see. You want me to give you my blessin’. I’ll come through with a fine big large one. Go to it, constable. Hogtie West with proof. Soak him good. Send him up for ’steen years. You got my sympathy an’ approval, one for the grief you’re liable to bump into, the other for your good intentions.”
The officer’s grin had a touch of the proverbial Cheshire cat’s malice. “Glad you approve. But you keep that sympathy for yourself. I’m asking you to pull the chestnut out of the fire for me. You’d better look out or you’ll burn your paw.”
“Just remember I ain’t promisin’ a thing. I’m a respectable business man now, and, as I said, duckin’ trouble.”
“Find out for me in which wagon the liquor is. That’s all I ask.”
“How can I find out? I’m no mind reader.”
“Drift over casually and offer to buy goods. Poke around a bit. Keep cases on ’em. Notice the wagons they steer you away from.”
Tom thought it over and shook his head. “No, I don’t reckon I will.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Don’t look to me hardly like playin’ the game. I’m ferninst West every turn of the road. He’s crooked as a dog’s hind laig. But it wouldn’t be right square for me to spy on him. Different with you. That’s what you’re paid for. You’re out to run him down any way you can. He knows that. It’s a game of hide an’ go seek between you an’ him. Best man wins.”
The red-coat assented at once. “Right you are, I’ll get some one else.” He rose to go. “See you later maybe.”
Tom nodded. “Sorry I can’t oblige, but you see how it is.”
“Quite. I oughtn’t to have asked you.”
Beresford strode briskly out of the store.
Through the window Morse saw him a moment later in whispered conversation with Onistah. They were standing back of an outlying shed, in such a position that they could not be seen from the road.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CONSTABLE BORES THROUGH DIFFICULTIES
The early Northern dusk was falling when Beresford dropped into the store again. Except for two half-breeds and the clerk dickering at the far end of the building over half a dozen silver fox furs Morse had the place to himself.
Yet the officer took the precaution to lower his voice. “I want an auger and a wooden plug the same size. Get ’em to me without anybody knowing it.”
The manager of the C.N. Morse & Company Northern Stores presently shoved across the counter to him a gunny-sack with a feed of oats. “Want it charged to the Force, I reckon?”
“Yes.”
“Say, constable, I wancha to look at these moccasins I’m orderin’ for the Inspector. Is this what he wants? Or isn’t it?”
Tom led the way into his office. He handed the shoe to Beresford. “What’s doin’?” he asked swiftly, between sentences.
The soldier inspected the footwear. “About right, I’d say. Thought you’d find what you were looking for. A fellow usually does when he goes at it real earnest.”
The eyes in the brown face were twinkling merrily.
“Findin’ the goods is one thing. Gettin’ ’em’s quite another,” Tom suggested.
The voice of one of the trappers rose in protest. “By gar, it iss what you call dirt cheap. I make you a present. V’la!”
“Got to bore through difficulties,” Beresford said. “Then you’re liable to bump into disappointment. But you can’t ever tell till you try.”
His friend began to catch the drift of the officer’s purpose. He was looking for a liquor shipment, and he had bought an auger to bore through difficulties.
Tom’s eyes glowed. “Come over to the storeroom an’ take a look at my stock. Want you to see I’m gonna have these moccasins made from good material.”
They kept step across the corral, gay, light-hearted sons of the frontier, both hard as nails, packed muscles rippling like those of forest panthers. Their years added would not total more than twoscore and five, but life had taken hold of them young and trained them to its purposes, had shot them through and through with hardihood and endurance and the cool prevision that forestalls disaster.
“I’m in on this,” the Montanan said.
“Meaning?”
“That I buy chips, take a hand, sit in, deal cards.”
The level gaze of the police officer studied him speculatively. “Now why this change of heart?”
“You get me wrong. I’m with you to a finish in puttin’ West and Whaley out of business. They’re a hell-raisin’ outfit, an’ this country’ll be well rid of ’em. Only thing is I wanta play my cards above the table. I couldn’t spy on these men. Leastways, it didn’t look quite square to me. But this is a bronc of another color. Lead me to that trouble you was promisin’ a while ago.”
Beresford led him to it, by way of a rain-washed gully, up which they trod their devious path slowly and without noise. From the gully they snaked through the dry grass to a small ditch that had been built to drain the camping-ground during spring freshets. This wound into the midst of the wagon train encampment.
The plainsmen crept along the dry ditch with laborious care. They advanced no single inch without first taking care to move aside any twig the snapping of which might betray them.
From the beginning of the adventure until its climax no word was spoken. Beresford led, the trader followed at his heels.
The voices of men drifted to them from a camp-fire in the shelter of the wagons. There were, Tom guessed, about four of them. Their words came clear through the velvet night. They talked the casual elemental topics common to their kind.
There was a moonlit open space to be crossed. The constable took it swiftly with long strides, reached a wagon, and dodged under it. His companion held to the cover of the ditch. He was not needed closer.
The officer lay flat on his back, set the point of the auger to the woodwork of the bed, and began to turn. Circles and half-circles of shavings flaked out and fell upon him. He worked steadily. Presently the resistance of the wood ceased. The bit had eaten its way through.
Beresford withdrew the tool and tried again, this time a few inches from the hole he had made. The pressure lessened as before, but in a second or two the steel took a fresh hold. The handle moved slowly and steadily.
A few drops of moisture dripped down, then a small stream. The constable held his hand under this and tasted the flow. It was rum.
Swiftly he withdrew the bit, fitted the plug into the hole, and pushed it home.
He crawled from under the wagon, skirted along the far side of it, ran to the next white-topped vehicle, and plumped out upon the campers with a short, sharp word of command.
“Up with your hands! Quick!”
For a moment the surprised quartette were too amazed to obey.
“What in Halifax—?”
“Shove ’em up!” came the crisp, peremptory order.
Eight hands wavered skyward.
“Is this a hold-up—or what?” one of the teamsters wanted to know sulkily.
“Call it whatever you like. You with the fur cap hitch up the mules to the second wagon. Don’t make a mistake and try for a getaway. You’ll be a dead smuggler.”
The man hesitated. Was this red-coat alone?
Tom strolled out of the ditch, a sawed-off shotgun under his arm. “I judge you bored through your difficulties, constable,” he said cheerfully.
“Through the bed of the wagon and the end of a rum keg. Stir your stumps, gentlemen of the whiskey-running brigade. We’re on the way to Fort Edmonton if it suits you.”
If it did not suit them, they made no audible protest of disagreement. Growls were their only comment when, under direction of Beresford, the Montanan stripped them of their weapons and kept guard on the fur-capped man—his name appeared to be Lemoine—while the latter
brought the mules to the wagon pointed out by the officer.
“Hook ’em,” ordered Morse curtly.
The French-Indian trapper hitched the team to the wagon. Presently it moved beyond the circle of firelight into the darkness. Morse sat beside the driver, the short-barreled weapon across his knees. Three men walked behind the wagon. A fourth, in the uniform of the North-West Mounted, brought up the rear on horseback.
CHAPTER XIV
SCARLET-COATS IN ACTION
When Bully West discovered that such part of the cargo of wet goods as was in wagon number two had disappeared and along with it the four mule-skinners, his mind jumped to an instant conclusion. That it happened to be the wrong one was natural enough to his sulky, suspicious mind.
“Goddlemighty, they’ve double-crossed us,” he swore to his partner, with an explosion of accompanying profanity. “Figure on cleanin’ up on the goods an’ cuttin’ back to the States. Tha’s what they aim to do. Before I can head ’em off. Me, I’ll show ’em they can’t play monkey tricks on Bully West.”
This explanation did not satisfy Whaley. The straight black line of the brows above the cold eyes met in frowning thought.
“I’ve got a hunch you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree,” he lisped with a shrug of shoulders.
Voice and gesture were surprising in that they were expressions of this personality totally unexpected. Both were almost womanlike in their delicacy. They suggested the purr and soft padding of a cat, an odd contradiction to the white, bloodless face with the inky brows. The eyes of “Poker” Whaley could throw fear into the most reckless bull-whacker on the border. They held fascinating and sinister possibilities of evil.
“Soon see. We’ll hit the trail right away after them,” Bully replied.
Whaley’s thin lip curled. He looked at West as though he read to the bottom of that shallow mind and meant to make the most of his knowledge.
“Yes,” he murmured, as though to himself. “Some one ought to stay with the rest of the outfit, but I reckon I’d better go along. Likely you couldn’t handle all of ’em if they showed fight.”
West’s answer was a roar of outraged vanity. “Me! Not round up them tame sheep. I’ll drive ’em back with their tongues hangin’ out. Understand?”
The Second Western Megapack Page 163
