“What do you propose?”
“Pass him a free hand, sir. Give Fyles a free hand and he’ll punch it well home.”
Croisette eyed the letter that had been returned to him.
“Ye-es,” he admitted, thoughtfully.
“I was wrong sending a boy like Sinclair to a tough show like Buffalo Coulee,” Sturt grumbled. “You reckoned at the time, sir, it was a job for a ‘non-com’ of experience. It makes me feel mean. I misjudged.”
“That’s all right, Sergeant-major. Don’t take too much blame to yourself. We don’t know a thing yet, except that Constable Sinclair is missing.”
“I’m thinking of the bunch down there in that rotten prairie township, sir. That’s what makes me sore. There’s an ugly outfit of half-breeds, and there’s that flood of bad liquor always leaking across the border, which the United States Prohibition folk are all the time complaining of. It’s made there. Some of the worst rotgut that ever burned a human belly. There’s dollars to burn down there, too. And when toughs have dollars to burn, why, just anything can happen. Yes. This looks like work for Stanley Fyles. If there’s a thing hidden up in that place he’ll nose it.”
“Do you make that anonymous letter the work of a man—or a woman?”
The officer’s challenge startled his subordinate. Sturt’s face was a study in astonishment. His jaws stilled, and his small eyes widened.
“I hadn’t thought, sir,” he said. “I just took it to be a man’s letter. And a pretty mean man at that.”