The limitations of his official horizon were stifling, a mere mile or two in radius. And within that circle were only a handful he could call friends, and a camp of bohunks. He hated the shadows of the forest, where life was scarcer than in the Hills, where even keen wits were wasted.
Here the guns of his former enemies were supplanted by knives and knuckle-dusters and clubs; and the men who wielded them were cowardly, slinking foreigners whose very appearance was repugnant. Sneaky, underground, despicable crime it was, running the gamut from petty annoyance to senseless murder. None of the open-handed, bold and reasoned intelligence of the prairie criminal. It revolted him. Senseless, insensate, formless, erratic, it only disgusted him with its sheer and unprofitable lawlessness. On the prairie crime meant double duty for him—to discover, then to catch the criminal; here there was no escape—once the criminal was discovered.
This offscouring of Europe was little more individual to him than a Chinaman; Mahon was doubtful that he could pick out a second time more than a few of the bohunks. With faces dull and brainless, voices drab and lifeless, they merged into a mass of slime.
For the first time since he had donned the uniform Mahon began to question his capacity for it. Knowing the history of the wide effort demanded of the Mounted Police, he began to wonder if he could throw himself into it with credit to the Force.
The only attractive feature of his new life was the friendship of the bluff, cantankerous, but kind-hearted contractor, his sunny daughter, the manly foreman, and the talkative Murphy. Of Tressa he had so many glowing things to write in his letters to his wife that Helen threatened to rush north in self-defence. Thereupon he crammed one letter from start to finish with Tressa Torrance's praises, and defied Helen to fulfil her threat.
In the course of his work the solitary part that intrigued him was the mystery of the Indian. He felt that there was more there than he knew of; he had more than a suspicion that Torrance was concealing from him essential facts. But there seemed no call for official action. Thus far the Indian was friendly; it was his nature to be silent and mysterious.
Failing use for his horse, Mahon spent much time in the forest. And after a time, the very shadows, and the secrecy breathed by the trees seemed to hint at revelations just round the corner. Down in the camp half a thousand bohunks, with brutal murder in their hearts, would, under Police eye, climb to their bunks as innocent in appearance as kittens. There in the woods, freed from observation, the bohunk was more apt to discard his mask of stupidity. Somewhere there his plans were laid, orders given and received.
What the Sergeant picked up little by little in the woods, small as it was and unsatisfying to his youthful impatience, sufficed to sustain his hopes. The constant meeting after work-hours with slinking bohunks who always avoided him, convinced him that something within the law was afoot, and repeated glimpses of distant groups which dribbled away when he came within sight induced him to alter his methods. More covertly he hunted, though it tried him sorely, and snatches of conversation untangled from the froth of their utterances did much to simplify his task and give more definition to his search.
Somehow his mind never quite freed itself of the haunting memory of his discoveries that early day down the slope of the river bank. Though the tracks were dim, he was satisfied that horses had passed that way at no distant date. Suspicious at first, doubtful as the marks advanced toward the river (largely on account of certain past memories roused by peculiarities he seemed to recognise), he had later decided that what he saw was no figment of an imagination rendered more lively by the revival of the story of Blue Pete. Certainty was added by the suspicion that efforts had been made by a master-hand to hide the tracks.
Where that led he could not even guess, though at that stage his mind kept reverting to the Indian.