"Pshaw! Sir Bryson!" muttered Jack.
"I'll get him to send Vassall down to the Crossing in a canoe with a letter to the police. I'll send my boy Angus and an Indian along. The steamboat will be up in a few days, and they can bring back the police on her. If she leaves the Crossing before they get there, the captain will turn back for the policemen. With luck they'll all be back in a week."
"A week!" thought Jack. "What would I be doing all that time? Biting my thumbs?"
By morning Jack had made his plan. He was only prevented from putting it into instant execution by his great desire to see Mary, though he would not acknowledge to himself that that was the reason he hung about the fort all morning. He waited until after the middle of the day, thinking that Cranston would surely ask him home to dinner, but the invitation was not forthcoming. Jack did not know it, but the trader for many years past had been obliged to give up dispensing hospitality at his own board. Mrs. Cranston seized on such occasions to assert her most savage and perverse self.
Meanwhile Jack showed himself assiduously in front of the trader's windows. The ladies of Sir Bryson's party did not appear all morning out of the warehouse where they were quartered, so Jack was at least spared Linda's surveillance. His pertinacity was in vain; Mary never once showed herself. By afternoon he had worked himself up to a towering, aggrieved anger. "She might at least have a word of welcome for a white man," he thought bitterly, choosing to forget her side of the case, that she had made plain to him. At last he gave up in a passion, and strode away from the fort.
Taking care that he was not observed by Cranston, Jack headed for the Indian village, which lay on the river-flat, a half mile west of the fort. Reaching it, he sought out the head man, and by degrees brought the talk around to the subject of horses. Presently a deal was in progress, and in an hour Jack found himself the owner of two fairish ponies, with a saddle for one and a pack-saddle for the other. Some of the Indians had been trading with Cranston, and by going from tepee to tepee and offering a premium on the company's prices, Jack was able to collect the grub he required, together with blankets and a Winchester and ammunition. He paid for all this with an order on Cranston, and with the order he sent back a note:
DEAR CRANSTON: I hope you won't lay this up against me. I feel as if you are the only friend I have, and I don't want to make you sore, but I've got to go. If I had to hang around the fort doing nothing for a week I'd go clean off my nut. You needn't bother your head about me. I know exactly what I'm going to do, and I'm not going to get murdered either. I'll bring you back your horses in a few days, also Garrod and Jean Paul, unless I have to bury them.
Tell Sir Bryson and his people.
Remember me to Mary.
JACK.