Awaiting news, he had spent the whole night awake, and fully dressed. It was a matter of a moment to fling on cap, gauntlets and revolver and hurry over to the orderly-room, where Forshaw was keeping watch, a matter of a minute or two to order out Donaldson's four-horse team and the two constables, Dunsmuir and Kellett, who were standing by.
The railway from Broncho approached the Piegan Crossing by such a circuitous route that it was quicker to proceed to the scene of action across country. Except for Donny's team and the Superintendent's own horse, which was played out with the hard work of the past few weeks, the only horses in barracks were crocks. Every sound animal was out with the hunting patrols. Hector wanted to take Forshaw and the two constables with him because he knew Cranbrook was short-handed. The only way to do so was for the whole party to drive with Donaldson the thirty miles to the spot where Whitewash Bill was lurking.
In less than twenty minutes after the receipt of the despatch they were on the trail.
The trumpeter sounded 'Reveille' as they rattled out of the barrack-gate—just as his long-silent predecessor had sounded it when, as a buck constable, Hector left Fort Macleod with Sergeant-Major Whittaker to make his first arrest twenty long years before. Was this a sign that the present arrest would be his last?
As the sun rose, they came full upon an immense herd of drifting cattle. It was the time of the spring round-up and the punchers all over the Broncho district were hard at work. The herders, statuesque on their ponies against the cool glow of the morning, crooned a cowboys' lullaby while the trap slowly made its way through the herd. They touched their hats to the Superintendent. In a little gully, beside the chuck-wagon, the cook was boiling coffee.
Hector's mind went back to the day when, in company with the old 'originals' of the Force, he had cleaved his way through as immense a herd, a herd of the vanished buffalo.
What changes he had seen! Twenty years in the North-West, growing with it and watching it grow, developing with it and helping it to develop! A lifetime given to his country—and was he to be broken, now, by an upstart parasite battening on the blood and sweat of better men?
"Push on, Donaldson, push on!"
"Can't go any quicker till we're out o' this, sir," answered Donny sturdily.
But get there—get there—get there—before it's too late!