"He's our new mounted police officer, Sergeant Russell Seymour," she said, her voice hushed. "Don't you know the uniform when you see it?"
Seymour did recognize that particular uniform far better than she possibly could have imagined, but he refrained from admitting it.
Reaching down, the sergeant raised the girl to her feet; but he did not set her right on the mistake in identity. The case looked double-barrelled to him inasmuch as it gave him an inside line on the holdup of the express company's stage and a lead toward at least one element of the heterogeneous camp which was opposed to the coming of the Dominion's law-bringers. He meant to handle both angles with the utmost effect and the fact that they existed must for a time remain his secret.
"Looks like murder," he said, his eyes leaving the stolen uniform and focusing on the wound, the clean hole of a steel bullet in the right temple.
"It is murder—from ambush," the girl declared, her voice sharp with conviction.
But Seymour was not so sure. Without disturbing a convulsive death grip, he examined the revolver held in an outflung hand. It had been discharged once.
"'Twasn't a complete ambush, anyway," he reasoned. "He had some hint of what was coming. Couldn't have drawn his gun after that bullet hit him. The way my ears read the reports, he fired just after the rifle spoke—probably a spasmodic pull on the trigger with no aim or hit. You know, Mounties are not supposed to fire first. The rule has killed a number of them."
"He was so brave—absolutely fearless," she murmured.
Seymour might have gone further in reconstructing the crime, but he checked observation on the subject lest she suspect his training.
"You knew him well, Miss——Miss——" he asked, partially to divert her mind from his professional deductions.