That very night, straight from eaves-dropping at the bohunks' meeting, he had crept back to Torrance's stable and found it locked. The padlock in itself was nothing, but it implied suspicion—possibly entangling precautions. And so he had slunk away.
A night's reflection had warned him how fortunate was the instinct that held his hand. As Mira lay sleeping heavily beside him on their bed of spruce, he had lived again the happy days of his unofficial Police duties with Sergeant Mahon—on the prairie, at the barracks and the Police post, but more vividly than all, in the fastnesses of the Cypress Hills. He saw once more the kindly eye, felt the friendly hand, heard the soft voice of the one man above his class who had treated him as equal and friend. He saw again the old tobacco pouch spilled on Inspector Barker's desk in the barracks at Medicine Hat.
He knew why Mahon had come north.
"I can't see him fail, Mira," he groaned. "He's did fer if he does.
We got to stay an' see him through."
"Perhaps he's after the horse-thief too."
Blue Pete started. Then his head sank in one arm. "We can't help him thar, Mira. We can't be caught—yet. . . . An' the Sergeant wudn't want to get us—yet."
"It'll be all over soon, Pete," she said more brightly. "Mr. Torrance has promised us the horses when he goes."
"God fergive me fer keepin' yuh waitin', Mira!" he breathed, trying to read in her face the forgiveness that meant more to him.
But she had turned away, and he did not see the tear on her lashes.