Presently the policeman gathered up his reins and came on, casting his eyes about him. While still some distance away, Stamford recognised Corporal Faircloth, his favourite in the local Force.
Their friendship was closer than the ordinary, especially in the West. A couple of months earlier, within a week of Stamford's arrival, the tenderfoot had yielded to the tug of the clear prairie evening and launched himself thoughtlessly on the great stretches of soft moonlight that looked so brilliant from the town, but altered every guide where landmarks were few. So effectively did he tear himself from the rude haunts of men that when he thought of bed he had not the least idea in which direction to seek it. It was an early lesson in the supreme helplessness of being lost on the prairie.
A dim light in the eastern sky was tinging the moonlight when a Mounted Policeman came on him seated hopelessly beside the Trail. Corporal Faircloth was riding in through the night from Medicine Lodge. From that meeting had sprung a friendship that helped to fill a want that now and then oppressed the editor in the unconventional and thoughtless friendships of the prairie. What a bearing the new companionship would have on his future never entered his head.
Now the Corporal rode slowly along the side of the stockades, staring into the four filled yards, and jogged across the track to leave his horse with the others. Returning on foot, he stopped a moment to greet the two spectators before mounting the gangways.
For a few minutes he stood on the fence, moving from gangway to gangway, making way for the cowboys in their work, but always keeping the operations under his eye. The brand-inspector studied him with covert envy, as the Corporal climbed along the outside of a gangway and placed himself close to one of the car doors. At intervals he strained forward to examine a passing steer, and for an obviously unsatisfied two minutes he lay at length on the roof, head extended over the gangway.
All the time Mary Aikens' eyes followed him as they had her husband a few minutes before.
Suddenly he dropped to the ground and hurried to the stockade fence. For what seemed hours to Stamford's rioting imagination he peered through the heavy rails, restrained excitement in every move. A couple of cowboys moved away, conversing in whispers.
With equally sudden purpose the Policeman climbed the fence, at the same time shouting to West, who, having found a post from which he had not been ousted for five minutes, obeyed reluctantly.
At that moment two rifle shots snapped from the shrub-filled coulee.
Corporal Faircloth straightened up on the fence, and dropped limply outside the pens.