The wolf pack

by Ridgwell Cullum

THERE was nothing phenomenal, fantastic, or sensational in the methods of police work adopted by Sergeant Stanley Fyles.

He was one of those, who in moments of expansiveness, admitted that police work in the world of the Northwest had little of the jig-saw puzzle about it, but much of the bricklayer’s craft. He insisted on the necessity of choosing the bricks of evidence with the utmost discrimination and appreciation of values; the mortar of common sense, he believed, required real skill in application; then the officer must certainly have the nerve for feats of strenuous physical effort and a deadly eye for alignment in emergency.

Given these things, and an imagination kept well under control, the process of establishing a civilization, where only wilderness had existed since the world began, became a natural corollary.

But with all his clear-sightedness, and the calm pose of his logical mind, there was one necessity in Stanley Fyles’ calling that he quite failed to appreciate. Being a man of very distinct personality himself, he utterly failed to recognize how heavily that weighed in the balance of his success. It never for a moment occurred to him that his own individuality could be the asset which made the mention of his name a matter to inspire the gravest apprehension even in the most hardened among the outlaws of the hills and plains.

It was unquestionably so, however. And as the sergeant sat astride his favorite trooper, a rawboned, mud-brown broncho mare, with the double bobsleigh and team that was carrying his scanty outfit on its way to Buffalo Coulee behind him, with his watchful eyes peering out over the moonlit snow from between the folds of his storm collar, there could be little question as to the personality he radiated.

There was something Napoleonic in the manner of the little procession. Fyles rode clear ahead over the well-defined snow trail. He was a sturdy, dark, muffled figure.

There was no sound of hoof beats on the snow, and there was no jangle of sleigh bells to betray. It was a ghostly, significant procession. Fyles intended to descend upon Buffalo Coulee without herald of any sort. He had determined to reach the police quarters under cover of night, and, with the empty sleigh already on its way back to Calford, find himself an established fact in the life of the township by the time the morrow’s sun rose.

As yet his bricks of evidence were few, and so far their quality had not seriously impressed him. But he saw the advantage of his plan very clearly and was satisfied with it. No word had leaked out of his going, and so swift had been the reaction from Calford to the information received that he felt reasonably confident that the slumbers of Buffalo Coulee would remain undisturbed, and the town’s ordinary peace of mind would endure until sunup.

But like all men of simple wisdom Fyles’ optimism was carefully bounded. He knew only too well the value of leaving a wide margin for the unexpected in his calculations. He saw a more than usually interesting problem ahead of him, and he was approaching it with an open mind.

The night was profoundly still. It was one of those clear, perfect winter nights which should receive greater appreciation than is usually the case. Stanley Fyles owed it no grudge. Although the depths below zero were biting into the marrow of his bones, although at the moment the roar of a blazing wood stove suggested the most comforting thing in life to him, he could still appreciate the calm beauty of radiant moonlight on the snow, and the pall of black velvet, studded with a million gleaming jewels, which overhung the world to which his life was dedicated.