Silk dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his foot.
"Exactly," he nodded. "Such a rumour got abroad. But it was only a rumour, circulated by the express rider, who carried on what was saved of the mails. On the morning after the crime, as he rode out with me from Coyote Landing, he came upon a patch of blood-stained grass, torn about by the feet of many wolves. It certainly seemed as if the robber had, as you say, been eaten up by the hungry pack, for near by there were also found some fragments of the envelope of a registered letter. But it was curious that the wolves hadn't left even a button or a boot or some shreds of clothing that would show that their victim had been human; whereas, as it happened, I had myself shot a wolf on that very same spot, and I needn't remind you of the habit that hungry wolves have of devouring their own kind. As for the fragments of paper—the bits of torn envelope—there was sure evidence that they had been hidden where they were found a good two hours before the wolves came along at the heels of my mare."
"So?" Sharrow coughed, as if the smoke of his pipe had gone the wrong way. He turned from the fire and strode down the slope of the river bank.
Sergeant Silk, watching the direction in which he went, stood up, and touched young Rapson on the shoulder.
"If you're hankering to see the firing of that charge of dynamite they were fixing, Percy," he said casually, "we may as well get along as soon as we've been to the stables to give our mounts a feed. It'll be a sight worth seeing when that jam pulls, I can promise you, and it's likely to pull at any time."
Percy accompanied him to the water's edge, and they took up their position among the eager crowd of watchers.
The jam appeared to be upon the point of breaking without the further help of dynamite, and a new crew of drivers were at work clamping their peavies to the stubborn timbers and moving them one by one in the endeavour to get at the key logs, which had at last been found.
Already certain ominous groanings and grumblings were coming from the heart of the vast, tangled pile, and the great tree trunks were beginning to move of themselves before the pressure of the mass from behind.
Soon, when the obstructing key logs should yield, the whole bulk would plunge forward, to be swept along by the current like a wild stampede of giant animals suddenly let loose, tumbling over one another and fighting desperately for room in the onward rush.
Warning shouts from the onlookers told the lumber-jacks of their peril, and the men hastened to the banks, holding their peavies in front of them as balancing poles, and stepping smartly from log to log, keeping a secure foothold by means of the long spikes in the soles of their boots.