Seymour had suspected his interrogator's identity; was ready with his "Glad to meet you, chief."
"And I've got authority to make you answer my questions," piped the deputy. "Where you from and what's your business?"
"From the Caribou country by way of the Old Sun trail," Seymour answered truthfully enough. "There's my outfit." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the pack horse which stood with prospector's equipment in broadside view. "That tells you what my business is."
"Be ready to prove it. What you know about this murder?"
The sergeant wished he knew just how the Duperow girl stood in this matter. Probably, for reasons of her own, she had gone on before any of the town party had arrived—possibly because she had heard them coming. If any of them had seen her, it seemed evident that she had not mentioned his participation in the discovery, or that he was beating the bush on the case. Yet, after all her seeming frankness and her keen personal interest in the victim, why had she "slid out." Since he could not answer that mental query, he decided on reticence in answering the deputy's spoken one.
"I don't know anything about it," he replied with no appreciable delay, although without accenting the "know," as he should have done in strict truth.
"Queer you should come ambling along with Seymour of the Royal Mounted lying in the road not yet cold," grumbled Hardley. "Yes sir-ee; it looks right queer to me. I think I'd better take you in on suspicion."
Seymour bore down on him with a most direct glance, the blue of his eyes almost black in their intensity—black as the ears of Kaw between which he was forced to look for exact focus. "And I think you'd better do nothing of the sort—on suspicion. I'm a Canadian citizen; I have and know my rights."
The sergeant, of course, was running a sheer bluff. The provincial officer might have placed him under arrest; but to suffer detention was not in Seymour's program, for relief from it probably would require the disclosing of his identity at a time when he felt he could work more to advantage under cover. In the brief moment of their roadside controversy, he had "sized" his man and believed him one who would yield to a stronger will without other than ocular demonstration.
But he did not have time to prove his estimate of Hardley. Aid, or interference—whichever way one looked at it—came from an unexpected quarter.