"You will have your little joke, won't you, Mac?" he said. "The girl's got nothing to do with it."
"Hasn't she?" MacFarlane mocked. "Oh, no—not at all!"
On the trail Hector headed southward, thinking of many things.
His interview with Sub-Inspector Lescheneaux, a wizened, bird-like French-Canadian commanding Hector's troop, when asking for leave, had been a droll but pleasing affair, ending very flatteringly.
"No leave ov h'absence since we first cam' out 'ere," the worthy little man had ruminated; "one ov bes' N.C.O.s in dis de-vision, oui; 'as don' more to stamp out d'illicit wheesk-ey traffic den any oder sergeant I know; desires leave ov h'absence for one for'd'night; vraiment, 'e deserve it, too. Eef Inspect-eur Denton 'as no objection, Sergeant, you go by all means. I t'ink, Sergeant-Major Whee-taker, we say dis request granted, eh? Good luck, Sergeant—bon voyage. Tiens!"
The Sergeant-Major, too, had made Hector happy.
"He's right—right, by God, he is! Since that day at 'Red-hot' Dan's, Adair, yes, and before that, I marked you for a winner. You've certainly earned your little rest—damn my buttons, yes!"
This was true, all of it. Hector had worked hard. He had acquired a reputation in the Force as one of the smartest hunters of whiskey-runners it possessed.
But there were flies in the ointment and snakes in the grass. He had not yet been able, for all his hard work, to put down the traffic in the district allotted to him. Most of the traders and runners had long since fallen into his hands. Yet there was still a great deal of trading the source of which he could not trace. Some underground current was pouring through the district carrying liquor to the Indians. During the past few months he had made a particularly stern effort to dam the flood. Success would temporarily reward him. Then, suddenly, without warning, the stream would bubble out in some new spot—in twenty spots at once. The mystery troubled him. The hold it had secured on him made itself obvious in the fact that, though he had fixedly resolved to forget it for a fortnight, it had him now.
But the glorious appeal of the morning soon drove it from his mind. It was full June, the sky was a light blue dome, golden at bottom, where the sun blazed, and flecked elsewhere with baby clouds drifting before the lazy wind. The long grass, clean, shining, went rippling to the edges of eternity. The larks piped in the hollows and the little gophers sat up to watch him as he passed. Hector was young, the day was young, and troubles fly light as thistledown over the heads of Youth when the time of the year is June.