Here the signs read clear. Poor little Cock-eye Beauclerc had been surprised in bed, and tied up after a sharp tussle. His monocle lay smashed, a pathetic relic. His basket of good, old family plate had been emptied, and the young robbers had gone off south by east at a lope. Afterward the captive Beauclerc had cut loose from the rope which lashed him to his bed, had crossed to the stable, left his lantern burning, and taken his buckboard with a lame old mare, heading for Medicine Hat. He would get help from our detachment there. We cooked a meal, fed our horses, left a note for Cock-eye, and hit the trail again directed for home. So long as our hairies thought they were going home they would give us of their best. So long as we did not alarm our little jail-birds they would head for Lane's. Birds of that feather flocked to Lane by instinct. Our job was to get there first.
All day we rode on the floor of an invisible ocean, looking up at the keels of the cloud-fleet on its surface, in belts of sudden light and racing shadow. Then as the sun shone level, we cut the trail from Slide-out to Writing-on-Stone, having covered in all some ninety miles with only six to go.
"By the Great Horn Spoon!" roared bull-faced McBugjuice, "look at that, eh, what!"
Buckie and I dismounted to kneel in the trail and read sign.
"A white man," said Dandy in his best official manner, stating all that was really obvious at a mile. "Afoot," said he; "that's strange. Heading for Lane's too. Who can it be, afoot! Long boots," he crawled past me, jostling for room, "police heels. Load on the off shoulder—dead weary, too. Here's the right foot—"
"Damn that Brat," said I, for in the deeply indented right track there was no sign of the toes. Here was my wretched brother, a hundred miles from duty, limping across the plains with an open wound. The blasted Brat needed a feeding teat and a bib. I swore I would tear his hide off, and stretch the dirty pelt for a drum-head. So we rode on with His Obesity, the sergeant detective, burbling in the rear.
From the moment we turned eastward away from home our three horses said they were seriously unwell, dead lame, with symptoms of giving up the ghost; and ninety miles at a happy gait is nothing compared with six at an exhausted crawl. So we were bone-weary and sick of life when we made Lane's at dusk. There were no signs of our jailbirds as we trailed down into the Milk River coulée. They had not yet arrived.
But my Brat would be at the house, and arrested for deserting unless I warned him. I whipped out my gun and rolled it while Black Prince, Buckie and the sergeant threw hysterics.
"Don't shoot!" cried Buckie, when my gun was emptied, "we want them thieves!"
"Dam' cheek, shootin' no ordahs. Damme!" roared the sergeant when I had sheathed my gun.