CHAPTER XXII.—THE SURGEON TURNS DETECTIVE.
Case dodged deeper into a rocky depression as he spoke, and Alex was not slow in following him. Three men, all carrying guns, were approaching from the south, now in full view as they mounted an elevation, now lost to sight as they dipped into a canyon. The boys watched them furtively.
“I wonder if they saw us?” queried Alex shifting about so as to look over a stunted shrub growing on the edge of their hiding-place.
“I think not,” Case reasoned, “for they are headed farther to the east. Looks like they were going up the slope in search of game.”
“I just believe they are the train robbers!” Alex exclaimed, in a moment. “You know, we were talking, a short time ago, about what a cute little place this would be for a fugitive to hide in.”
“And they may be hunters, or officers in quest of the robbers,” Case amended. “Anyway, there’s their camp, to the left of that crag, and we’ll work over that way as they get farther off. If they did see us, and are hoping to capture us, the safest thing for us to do is to double back, like rabbits. Come along!”
Keeping under cover of ridges, sneaking through depressions in the broken surface, the boys moved toward the spot indicated by Case. In a few moments they saw that the three men were bearing farther away to the north and east. This fact relieved their minds of the suspense which the sight of the advancing men had occasioned, and they made more open progress.
Directly they came to the camp itself, and were delighted to see that it was shut out of view from the direction taken by the men by a rocky ledge.
It was a primitive camp, with boughs dragged up from below serving as beds. The number of empty food tins scattered about indicated that it had been in use number of days.
A great coat, ragged and soiled, yet still valuable in that exposed position because of its thickness and evident warmth, lay on a rock near the embers of a dying fire. After glancing carefully around to see that they were still out of sight of the men, Alex picked the garment up and began a search through the pockets, still whole and mostly empty.
“Have you any idea they left their cards in there?” grinned Case.
“Never can tell,” replied the other. “Sometimes people leave things in pockets. Anyway there may be a tailor’s label on the coat which will tell us where it came from.”
He drew out a paper as he spoke and tossed it to one side with the remark that they were saving up fire-lighters.
“Now, don’t throw that newspaper away,” Case protested. “Hand it here! It may show the town they visited last. Calgary, date, eh?”
“How old is it?” asked Alex at once interested. “When was it printed, I mean. That may tell us something.”
“A week ago,” was the reply. “They must have secured it at Donald or Beaver, for that matter. It will be new to us, anyhow, whatever date it is. Not much of a newspaper, after all, though.”
“Just don’t be in a hurry!” Alex suggested, as Case laid the newspaper down on the ground. “There is a marked item in it.”
“Oh, just a few pencil marks,” Case admitted. “Nothing to them.”
“It tells about the train robbers hiding in the mountains,” Alex explained, reading over the headlines. “And here’s another item under it. Listen to this, will you?”
“‘Chicago, April 1,’” the boy read aloud. “‘An unprovoked murder was committed on Wells street late last night. Charles Stiven, employed as barkeeper at a South Side saloon, was attacked by Richard Miller, of the importing firm of Durand Miller, and shot to death. The injured man did not die on the street where the shooting took place, but later expired at St. Joseph’s hospital, after making a statement which is likely to hang Richard Miller if he is caught. Miller escaped after the shooting and had not been captured at the hour of going to press. No reason is given for the brutal attack.’”
“Rather old news, that,” Case remarked. “Why, we were in Chicago when that affair took place. Anything more about it?”
“Just a short description of Miller,” was the reply. “It says he is unusually tall, with—”
The boy stopped and looked up at Case with a question mark in each excited eye. Then he arose and held the paper out so Case could read the paragraph where his finger was placed. The boy did so wonderingly.
“Unusually tall, with long arms,’” the boy read, following Alex’s slowly moving finger. “Now, what do you think of that, young fellow?”
“That’s the man that was on the train,” Alex declared. “That’s the man Gran talked with in the cedars! That’s the man who took Gran off in our rowboat! No wonder the lad doesn’t want to say a word about his adventures on the mountains. What can it all mean?”
“I’m going right back and show this to him!” Case cried. “I’m going to know all about this. Gran’s got to come through on this, as the police officers say. Don’t you think that’s what we ought to do?” he asked as the other looked grave and doubtful.
“We’ve trusted him so far,” Alex replied, “and I see no reason why we should not continue to do so. Besides, the boy is ill, and must not be excited. But, look here, that man is undoubtedly still around here somewhere. Why he sent the boy over the mountains alone is more than I can say, but a man who will commit an unprovoked murder is equal to almost anything! We’d better get back to the Rambler. He may try to get the boy away again. We’ll look after this Mr. Richard Miller, all right!”
“You just bet we will!” was the answer, and the boys, forgetting, for the moment, the men whose camp they had invaded, crept out of the tumbled rocks and, once out of range of the three men on the hills, hastened toward the Rambler. Half way to the river, Alex paused.
“I wonder if the men we saw aren’t officers, looking after this Miller person?” he asked. “They’ve got the description of him, you know.”
“No they haven’t!” chuckled Case. “I brought it away with me.”
“That was a foolish thing to do,” Alex protested. “Now they will know that their camp has, been visited. I reckon we’d better get the Rambler under way just as soon as we get to it. If we don’t they’ll find us and make trouble.”
Case agreed with this view of the matter, and, as they stood on the east bank of the Columbia, waiting for Clay to run across and get them, they decided to tell him all about it and to advise an immediate departure for Upper Arrow lake, where Gran would, they thought, be safe.
Clay was not a little excited at the recital. He agreed with the boys that they ought to leave at once, and preparations for departure were accordingly begun. Gran looked on indolently at first, but finally called Clay to his side and asked:
“Are you going to leave this section of country now?”
“Of course,” was the guarded reply. “We want to get to the Pacific before snow flies, and we have a long way to go. Besides, we do not want to remain too long in one place.”
“But you wanted to hunt over on the plateau, this morning,” Gran urged. “And why did the boys come back from the mountain so soon? Is there anything wrong?”
“Why, of course not,” Clay answered. “Only we have the moving-on spirit to-day. We’ll drop down to Revelstoke and get a sight of the Canadian Pacific right-of-way before night, or, at least, before morning. That will connect us with civilization, at least,” he added, with a grin.
“I’m afraid the motion of the boat will hurt my leg,” Gran urged, not looking Clay in the eyes. “I want to get well as rapidly as possible, you know. Can’t you wait a few days—wait here?”
“I’ll talk with the boys,” Clay promised and went out. When he told them of the request Gran had made, their eyes stuck out “good and plenty,” as he afterwards expressed it. It was a puzzle to all of them.
“But why should he want to stay here?” Case asked, in amazement. “Why shouldn’t he want to get away from a valley which must have unpleasant recollections for him? He would have died in that hut if we hadn’t happened along! And the man we’ve been talking about brought him to it all by taking him away from us. It is the strangest thing I ever heard.”
“He went away with the man willingly,” Clay explained, “at least we saw him make no attempt to get away when we were close at hand, and might have helped him. Now, how do we know that he is not waiting in this valley to meet this man again? This Richard Miller, who is wanted in Chicago for the crime of murder. I suppose,” he added, thoughtfully, “that there can be no doubt about the description? The man described in the newspaper article is the man we saw on the train, the man who talked to Gran in the cedar canyon, the man who was rowing when Gran passed down stream and flung the note in the water?”
“Not a doubt of it,” Case asserted. “That is the man—Richard Miller, the man wanted in Chicago to answer to the crime of murder.”
“But, look here,” said Alex always ready to defend Gran, “stop and think a minute! If Gran went with this man willingly, why didn’t he stop long enough to tell us he was going? Why didn’t he tell the man to row up to the Rambler and let him explain? Why was it necessary for him to put what he had to say to us on paper, and then stop his writing in the middle of a sentence. I don’t believe he left us willingly.”
“One reason why the man—this Richard Miller—did not let him come up to the Rambler was that he had our rowboat—the boat which had been cut loose from her chain the night before. Say,” he continued, with a blush and a laugh, “I’m getting this mixed. It was the anchor that he cut away, and not the boat! At least, I think he did! He wouldn’t want to come to close quarters with us after doing that, would he?
“Well, he might as well have cut the boat loose,” Clay said, “for he stole it after it had drifted away. We saw him in it. That’s proof!”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?” asked Case, turning to Clay.
“Let’s stay here and see it out!” Alex interposed.
“That suits me!” Clay answered. “I haven’t lost confidence in Gran yet, and, besides, there’ll be excitement in it, if what you boys say about the men on the other side of the river is true—if they are really train robbers. I think it will be fun to see it out!”
And so it was agreed that they should follow the wishes of the boy and remain where they were for a time, although they all understood that the reason given by the lad—that the motion of the boat might affect his broken leg unfavorably—was not the true one. But another surprise awaited Clay when he went into the cabin to acquaint Gran of the decision which had been reached. The boy was half sitting up in his bunk with a flush on his cheeks which had not been there before.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, as Clay entered. “I am beginning to think that my leg ought to have the care of a surgeon. You boys are all anxious to be on your way, and so why not drop down to Revelstoke? I can endure the short journey, all right, and we can remain there a few days until the surgeon has had time to straighten me out.”
“We have all agreed to remain here,” Clay said, with a smile, “but we can go on just as well as not. We need a glimpse at a town.”
“I don’t want to keep you here,” Gran went on. “When I spoke about staying here I didn’t think I would need the attention of a surgeon, but I begin to feel that one ought to be consulted.”
When Clay went out to the others with this new proposition they were more puzzled than ever.
“Why did he change his mind so suddenly?” was the question Alex asked. “There’s something back of all this. Do you think he heard us talking about the train robbers?”
“He might,” answered Clay, and there the subject was dropped.
That night, without mishap on the way, they tied up at Revelstoke, which is a small town where the Canadian Pacific takes to the valley of the Columbia river again. They did not succeed in finding a surgeon that night, the one located there being away, neither did they spend any time about town, for they thought it best to remain on the boat with the injured boy.
The next morning Clay found the surgeon at his office and sent him down to the Rambler, himself remaining in a general store to purchase a few luxuries for the lad. While there he heard considerable talk about the chase after the train robbers, who were thought to be in that section.
“I’d like to be the one to catch them,” he heard a rough-looking man saying. “It would be worth $10,000 to me. I need the money!”
“If I could only point them out,” another cut in, “I would be satisfied. There’s a reward of $5,000 for just locating them.”
Clay left the store with the reward bee buzzing in his cap. They were not plentifully supplied with money, and a portion of that reward would be very acceptable. And the three men in the mountains! Perhaps they were the very men wanted by the officers.
While he walked about, thinking the matter over, the surgeon came into the one street of the place and stopped him, rather bruskly, he thought. Clay had an idea that it was his fee he wanted.
“Where did you pick up that boy?” the surgeon asked.
“He came into the country with us,” Clay answered, not very pleasantly, for he believed that the surgeon was interfering with something that was none of his business. He turned away, but the other followed.
“You mean that he came from Laggan with you,” he said.
“How do you know that?” demanded Clay, getting angry.
“Well,” sneered the surgeon, “this boy’s description is among those of the hold-up men. He, or some one looking remarkably like him, was seen on the pass, in the company of the men who are believed to have held up the Canadian Pacific train. I’m going now to notify an officer.”
Clay, for a moment, did not answer. What was there he could say?