“After Bourke?” Carhart smiled. “You didn’t take that in, Gus?”
“Well—of course, I suspected.”
“You saw his badge?”
“Yes.”
“Bourke always has a lot of men about him from his own college.”
“You really think it, then?”
“It would be hard to say what I think. But I’ve been going on the assumption that he is one of Bourke’s engineers.”
They were approaching the headquarters tent. Young Van looked up and saw that “Arizona,” Carhart’s new saddle-horse, was hitched before it. They entered the tent, and the first thing the chief did was to get out two long blue-nosed revolvers and slip them into his holsters. A moment later, and Dimond, fitted out for a long ride, appeared at the entrance, saying, “All ready, Mr. Carhart!”
“Now, Gus,” said the chief, “I’m off for ‘mile 109.’ I want you to get about two hundred men together and send them after me to-night or to-morrow morning. I’ll tell Scribner, as I pass him, to have fifty more for you. Every man must have a rifle and plenty of ball cartridges. Send Byers”—this was the instrument man of the long nose—“and two or three others whom you think capable of commanding forty or fifty men each.”
“And Bourke?”