CHAPTER IX
A PRAIRIE STUDY
So Redmond came home, and we buried him the following night by torchlight on a desolate ridge of the prairie. It was his daughter who ordered this; and if some of those who held aloft the flaming tow guessed his secret they kept it for the sake of the girl who stood with a stony, tearless face beside the open grave. He had doubtless yielded to strong compulsion when driven into a corner from which, for one of his nature, there was no escape, and now that he was dead, I had transferred my score against him to the debit of the usurer. As we rode home after the funeral I said something of the kind to Steel, who agreed with me.
"If you concluded to try it, Thorn and Jo and I, taking our affidavits as to what we saw that night, might make out a case for you; but I don't know that we could fix it on Lane, and it strikes me as mean to drag a dead man into the fuss for nothing," he said. "Redmond has gone to a place where he can't testify, but he has left his daughter, and she already has about all she can stand."
"Strikes me that way, too; and Lane's too smart to be corraled," added Thorn.
"We'll get even somehow without Redmond, and to that end you two will have to run Gaspard's Trail," I said. "I'm going down to Montreal with Carolan's cattle."
A project had for some little time been shaping itself in my mind. I had a small reversionary interest in some English property, and though it would be long before a penny of it could accrue to me, it seemed just possible to raise a little money on it. Considering Western rates of interest, nobody in Winnipeg would trouble with such an investment, but I had a distant and prosperous kinsman in Montreal who might find some speculator willing. Montreal was, however, at least two thousand miles away, and traveling expensive; but the Carolan brothers had promptly accepted my offer to take charge of their cattle destined for Europe, which implied free passes both ways. It was not the mode of traveling one would have expected a prosperous rancher to adopt, but I needed every available dollar for the approaching struggle, and was well content when, after the untamed stock had nearly wrecked the railroad depot, we got them on board the cars.
The only time I ever saw Sergeant Mackay thoroughly disconcerted was that morning. We came up out of the empty prairie riding on the flanks of the herd. The beasts had suffered from the scarcity of water and were in an uncertain temper, while, as luck would have it, just as they surged close-packed between the bare frame houses, Mackay and a trooper came riding down the unpaved street of the little prairie town. There was no opening either to right or to left, and the more prudent storekeepers put up their shutters.
"Look as if they owned the universe, them police," said the man who cantered up beside me. "Sure, it would take the starch out of them if anything did start the cattle."
Mackay pulled up his horse and looked dubiously at the mass of tossing horns rolling towards him. "'Tis not in accordance with regulations to turn a big draft loose on a peaceful town. Why did ye not split them up?" he said. "Ye could be held responsible if there's damage done."