Dick Kent with the Mounted Police

by M. M. Oblinger

Toma stooped into the opening of the tepee and disappeared. Holding his breath, Dick watched. Toma was gone some time, then in the flickering light he appeared again. Would Sandy follow? Dick’s heart beat painfully.

Then he could not suppress a low cry of exultation as Sandy’s bare head came out next and the two slipped into the deep shadows of another tepee. For minutes they did not move, then they suddenly dashed for the patch of brush that had covered Toma’s entrance into the camp. Dick’s finger tightened on the trigger.

There was a commotion among one of the groups about the campfires. A shout sounded, then a rifle shot. The Indians began to run; they had seen Toma and Sandy!

Dick took quick aim and fired. The crack of his rifle in the silent forest startled the camp. Dick shot again, hurrying to another position as Toma had advised. He could see that Toma and Sandy had reached cover, and that the guide was firing on his pursuers.

The whole camp was in a turmoil now; Indians and whites hurrying hither and thither, shooting at the flashes of Dick’s rifle. He could not hear what they were shouting to each other, but he divined they thought he was quite a number of men, so fast was he firing and from so many positions.

“I’ll hurry along toward Toma and Sandy,” Dick muttered to himself, “they’ll know where I am by the sound of my rifle.”

Twenty yards further on Toma and Sandy reached him.

“Thank God you’re safe at last!” Dick embraced Sandy, while Toma kept up rifle fire on the Indians and whites, who were now charging after them.

With a parting salvo at their pursuers, the three made off into the night toward Fort Dunwoody. All night they hurried on, hungry and tired, yet determined to elude Govereau if they dropped in their tracks.

“Him Govereau with Indians,” Toma revealed to Dick. “No see um Many-Scar Jackson. I hear um talk much. Bear Henderson, him make north country big nation all his own. Give Indians back their land. Humph! Bear Henderson crazy—him thief, outlaw. That Govereau bad fella too; keep um police from come up from south.”