"Why, cert'nly. I went right at once, leaving Dave Stoddart in charge, with his gun handy to keep off the wolves. But the wolves gave him no trouble, as it happened. They didn't hang around trying to get at pickled cariboo hams when there was a chance of their downing a live horse and an equally live human."
"Say, I guess those wolves follered on your trail," interposed Bob Wilson, blowing audibly into his pot of hot tea.
"Guess they just did," smiled Sergeant Silk. "Some of them followed me all the way, right over the mountain trail, a matter of twelve rough, lonesome miles. Others of them kind of broke off. They got lamed or maimed. There was a good many pistol bullets flying around, see? My bandolier was pretty well empty by the time I came in sight of the station at Coyote Landing."
Percy Rapson touched him on the knee and invited him to give fuller details of that exciting chase over the moonlit mountains. Percy was always curiously interested in stories of wolves. But Sergeant Silk shook his head and kept to the main thread of his story.
"The shack was in darkness when I rode up to it," he went on. "But the door was wide open, and there was still a smoulder of fire in the stove. There was a smell of burnt paper. In the middle of the floor a bag of mails had been emptied, and some of the letters and news-sheets were charred, showing that the robber, whoever he was, had tried to set fire to the place, and so destroy the signs of what he had done.
"But he hadn't waited to complete his work. I guess he was anxious to quit with the registered letters that he had taken from the safe. And then there was the other thing that he must sure have wanted to shut out from his sight. It wasn't pretty. There were red stains everywhere, and beyond the pile of scattered papers lay poor little Will Bonner, with the broken telephone receiver still gripped in his lifeless fist, while his glassy, half-closed eyes seemed to be staring out at the moon."
Sergeant Silk paused once more to puff at his cigarette.
"Do you mean he was dead?" questioned Percy Rapson, looking aside into the sergeant's handsome face.
"Exactly," resumed Silk. "You see, he was a weak little man, and he hadn't been able to defend himself against a desperate thief, who didn't care what he did so long as he got the particular registered letter that he was after. And Will was a peaceable, timid little chap at all times. He might have defended himself all right if he'd only remembered the loaded revolver that he kept for such occasions in his desk; but I guess he clean forgot it when the emergency came, and I question if he'd ever pulled a trigger in all his innocent life."