Silk checked his mare's pace and stared at his young friend in a puzzled manner.
"Do you mean that swell mobsman with the diamond ring?" he questioned. "The chap who was playing three-card monte? Was that Nick-By-Night?"
"That's the chap, sure," Rapson informed him. "He'd done me out of two pounds by that sharper's trick of his, and I'd followed him and his gang of confederates into the saloon to try to get my money back. You remember what happened?"
"I am not likely to forget," answered the sergeant, "since apart from the wound, which was not worth mention, it was the one occasion in my experience on which I have known the excitement of pitting my common-sense against the skill of a professional swindler."
Percy recalled the exciting incident to his own memory now as he followed the red-coated officer down the trail. He pictured to himself the noisy saloon, thronged with racing men, cowboys, ranchers, idlers from the town and the outlying homesteads, with a sprinkling of Indians and half-breeds.
He saw a tall, lithe, blue-eyed man, dressed as a rancher, in corduroys, blue shirt, and wide felt hat, slowly threading his way, as though without definite aim, among the little tables at which men sat drinking, smoking, gambling. Percy did not recognise him at first in his disguise, never before having seen him out of his smart uniform of the Mounted Police; but presently he overheard a half-breed muttering—
"Parbleu! yes; it ees Sergean' Seelk! He shape for mek de arrest of Monsieur Cutlaire. What?"
Rapson watched the sergeant saunter up to the table at which the card-sharper now sat with a couple of companions as flashily dressed as himself.
"Say, stranger, what kind of a lay-out d'you call this?" Silk inquired in a slow, drawling voice, without removing the cigarette from his lips.
The sleek, clean-shaven, flashily dressed man with the diamond ring looked up at him without suspicion, evidently supposing that he was what he appeared to be—a careless, good-natured, easy-going rancher out for a holiday; a likely victim to be gulled and fleeced.