“It beats the devil,” I declared. “Ever since those two thugs tackled me on the St. Louis water front I seem to have been going from bad to worse; stepping from one hot stone to another still hotter.”
“I’ve done it myself,” he said laconically. “But they will have to catch their hare before they can cook it; and it takes more than accusation to make a man a thief.”
With this he relapsed into silence. There was a sort of finality in his way of speaking that headed me off from asking more questions. I busied myself digesting what he had told me. Occasionally, as we rode, he drawled a remark; a few words about the country we traversed, or our mounts, or a bull-train he hoped to overtake. Between whiles I speculated on what mysterious link connected him with the girl who had come to the guardhouse in MacLeod. The rancor of her speech had fixed itself irrevocably on my memory. What lay behind their bitter stabbing at each other I could not say. Nor was it anything that should have concerned me. I had my own besetments. I knew not whither I was going, nor why—except to escape trial for a crime I had not committed. There were many points upon which I desired light, things that puzzled me. All in all, as I put aside the disturbing influences of flight I did, as Barreau had said, fairly bristle with interrogations.
Once in the night we halted on a small creek for the best part of an hour, letting our horses graze. Only then did I become aware that Barreau rode without a saddle.
“No man ever quitted a Mounted Police guardhouse without help from the outside,” he replied, when I spoke of this. “And the man who took a chance on letting me have two horses had only one saddle to spare. I can ride easier on a blanket than you. It is only for another hour or two at most. See—we are just come to the trail.”
I could distinguish no trail at first. He followed it easily, and after a time I began to get glimpses of deep-worn ruts. Barreau struck a faster pace. Two hours of silent riding brought us into the bed of a fair-sized creek, and when he had turned a bend or two of its course, a light blinked ahead. In another minute we brought up against a group of wagons. Barreau rode straight to the tent, through the canvas walls of which glowed the light. There he dismounted and tied his horse, whispering to me to follow suit. Then I followed him into the tent.
A man lay stretched on a camp-cot at one end, the blankets drawn over his head. Him Barreau shook rudely out of his slumber, and when he sat up with a growl of protest I found myself face to face with Montell, the portly fur merchant who had come up-river on the Moon.
[CHAPTER IX—MR. MONTELL]
“Oho, it’s you George,” Montell purred—that sounds exaggerated, but I cannot otherwise describe his manner of speaking. He made an odd figure sitting up in bed, with his fat, purple face surmounting a flannel shirt, and a red, knitted cap on his head.
“So you made it, eh? Who’s this with you, George?”