As they laid him down on the rough planks, his poor blind eyes turned to the sky he had worked under in every season with the glorious conscientiousness of the Mounted Police, a silent group of cowboys, hats in hand, crept across the tracks, bearing another body.
Back in the coulee they had come on him, one of themselves, Kid Loveridge, of the H-Lazy Z outfit, shot through the neck. Only one rifle had they found—for they carried rifles only on special work on the prairie—and it lay beside Kid's limp hand, an empty cartridge near.
Round the corner of the stockades Dakota Fraley dashed, pulling up as the second procession laid its burden beside the dead body of the Corporal. He leaned over and looked into the bloodless face of his comrade, seemingly dazed. Then he bit his lip and shifted his head, struggling to face down the grief and horror of it with the grimness fostered in the life he knew best.
"Who did it?" he demanded fiercely. "Who murdered the Kid?"
His revolver was clenched in his hand, pointing skyward. They only looked at him sadly and sympathetically.
"The Kid!" he whimpered, his lip trembling.
Brand-Inspector West spoke:
"Back in that coulee two rifle shots and one pistol shot. We've found only one empty rifle cartridge, a Winchester."
That was the problem that faced the Police when they arrived—Sergeant Prior and Constable Woolsey—riding like mad up the steep trail from Medicine Hat. Not five minutes behind them came Inspector Barker on a light engine, having commandeered it in the station yards as a quicker means of transportation, and as an ambulance for the Corporal, whose death Stamford had not telephoned.
For hours the Policemen ranged the hills, searching, searching. If they found any clue they said nothing of it, but the Inspector's face was ominously grave.