"Not I," Dan assured him, adding, as the soldier policeman leapt into his saddle: "Aren't you coming into the house to have some breakfast?"
Silk shook his head.
"I am on duty," he answered. "I am off to Pincher's Creek. That is where Adolf Simon and Pierre Roche usually hang out."
"Then it's one of them that you suspect?" said Dan.
"I did not say so," smiled Silk, touching his pony's side with his spurred heel.
He rode through the stifling heat of the summer noon across the parched prairie and among the winding valleys of the foothills, arriving at Pincher's Creek in the early evening, covered with dust, but with his well-cared-for broncho as free from fatigue as he was himself.
No one guessed what he had come for. The ranchers and cowboys supposed that his purpose was only to make one of his periodical patrol visits to inquire into any complaints that they might have to make, and to see that the settlers' homesteads were guarded against fire, as the law required them to be.
Silk made the tour of the far-stretching corn-fields, where the men were at work harvesting the ripe grain, and when the labours in the fields were over and he had taken supper with the ranch-master's family, he strolled down to the bunkhouse, where most of the hands fed and slept. He entered very casually, and was greeted as a friend.
At first he gave his attentions to the white men, but presently he approached a group of Indians and half-breeds. Amongst the latter he had seen Adolf Simon, one of the men against whom his suspicions were directed. Adolf was now seated at the end of a bench, rolling a cigarette, while he chattered volubly in Canadian French to his companions.
"Say, Adolf, are you making that fag for me?" Silk inquired.