“They certainly had their inning,” he observed as he finished his fairly decent surgical work and rose to his feet, “but I’ve an idea they’re due for a little surprise before long when the tables may be turned. I came up here to hunt big game and if it happens to run on two legs, why, what’s the odds? A lot depends on how the colonel of the Mounties happens to figure when he learns what’s been going on around here—how these scoundrels are snapping their fingers and saying to the devil with the Mounties, whose glory has departed. I’m wondering just how it comes the Hawk and his crowd have been able to stave off arrest this long and if the reputation of your famous Northwest Police force has indeed been eclipsed.”
“Don’t you b’lieve that for a second, Jack!” cried the aroused Perk, jealous concerning the fame of the organization of which he used to be a proud member, “chances are they’ve been after this bunch right along an’ even now may be settin’ plans to net the hull gang—how ’bout that, Uncle Jimmy?”
“There have been a number of fierce fights within the past year between Colonel Ascot’s troopers and the Hawk’s gang—indeed, two of the Mounties have lost the number of their mess and three others had to be sent to the hospital at Winnipeg, seriously wounded in the encounters. This Hawk is said to be the toughest nut ever doing business in all this great region. He seems to bear a charmed life and bullets fail to bring him down. The chances are, when you reach the post, it will be to find that some sort of expedition is off on a seemingly warm trail for whenever the Hawk plans to make one of his brilliant raids he always fixes things so that the troopers will at the same hour be many miles away, heading for some threatened post and out of communication.”
Jack seemed very well satisfied with what he had gleaned—having been dispatched these many hundreds of miles just to apprehend this bandit, it pleased him to know what a thorn in the flesh Leonard Culpepper was proving to be in the lives of the guardians of the Northwest Territory.
Perk too, was grinning as if his thoughts might be rather pleasant.
“Huh! if that skunk could be picked up an’ carried back to the States where he belongs,” he went on to say with a chuckle, “I kinder guess Colonel Ascot he’d sleep some sounder. Wall, let’s hope it’ll come to pass afore many more days slip by.”
Apparently neither Old Jimmy nor yet the ancient skin-gatherer Birdseye noticed how Perk, a new-comer, seemed to know something they had never before heard, about the Hawk having drifted up from across the border but then in all the excitement taking place within the last few hours such a slip could pass unnoticed.
XXIII
THE NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE POST
It was now high time they were once more afloat.
Jack was well content to be on the wing since apparently nothing more was to be picked up at the devastated trading post. He and Perk should be heading for the station of the Mounties, so as to inform their commander with regard to what had happened at Frazer’s, further south.