“Slight? Believe me, I mean none. I would be an awful cad if I did. But—well, you know as well as I do that, good soul as Mandy is, she is in many ways impossible.”
“Do I?” Again the joyous laugh pealed out. “Well, well, come back and see.” And waving her hand she stood to watch them down the trail.
“Jolly little girl,” said the Inspector, as they turned from the railway tote road down the coulee into the Kootenay trail. “But who is this other?”
“Oh,” said Cameron impatiently, “I feel like a beastly cad. She's the daughter of the farmer where I spent a summer in Ontario, a good simple-hearted girl, but awfully—well—crude, you know. And yet—” Cameron's speech faded into silence, for his memory played a trick upon him, and again he was standing in the orchard on that sunny autumn day looking into a pair of wonderful eyes, and, remembering the eyes, he forgot his speech.
“Ah, yes,” said the Inspector. “I understand.”
“No, you don't,” said Cameron almost rudely. “You would have to see her first. By Jove!” He broke into a laugh. “It is a joke with a vengeance,” and relapsed into silence that lasted for some miles.
That night they slept in the old lumber camp, and the afternoon of the second day found them skirting the Crow's Nest.
“We've had no luck this trip,” growled the Inspector, for now they were facing toward home.
“Listen!” said Cameron, pulling up his horse sharply. Down the pass the faraway beat of a drum was heard. It was the steady throb of the tom-tom rising and falling with rhythmic regularity.
“Sun-dance,” said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he generally allowed himself. “Piegans.”