McBain produced a long, official envelope. The other tore it open hastily. He ran his eyes over its contents, and passed it back to the sergeant.
“Good,” he exclaimed. “There’s a cargo left Fort Allerton, on the American side, bound for Rocky Springs by trail. It’s a big cargo of rye whisky. We’ll have to get busy.”
CHAPTER XXII
MOVES IN THE GAME OF LOVE
Stanley Fyles’s extreme satisfaction was less enduring than might have been expected. Success, and the prospect of success, were matters calculated to affect him more nearly than anything else in his life. That was the man, as he always had been; that was the man, who, in so brief a time, had raised himself to the commissioned ranks of his profession. But, somehow, just now a slight undercurrent of thought and feeling had set in. It was scarcely perceptible at first, but growing rapidly, it quickly robbed the tide of his satisfaction of quite half its strength, and came near to reducing it to the condition of slack water.
McBain was in the quarters attending to the detail which fell to his lot. A messenger from Winter’s Crossing had come in announcing the arrival, at that camp, of the reinforcing patrol. This was the culminating point of Fyles’s satisfaction. From that moment the undercurrent set in.
The inspector had moved out of the bluff, which screened the temporary quarters from chance observation, and had taken up a position on the shoulder of the valley, where he sat himself upon a fallen fence post to consider the many details of the work he had in mind.
The sun was setting in a ruddy cauldron of summer cloud, and, already, the evening mists were rising from the heart of the superheated valley. The wonderful peace of the scene might well have been a sedative to the stream of rapid thought pouring through his busy brain.
But its soothing powers seemed to have lost virtue, and, as his almost unconscious gaze took in the beauties spread out before it, a curious look of unrest replaced the satisfaction in his keen eyes. His brows drew together in a peevish frown. A discontent set the corners of his tightly compressed lips drooping, and once or twice he stirred impatiently, as though his irritation of mind had communicated itself to his physical nerves.