“You bet I’ll tell Bailey!” muttered Peters. “I reckon this’ll cook your goose with Goddard, even if you do get to Roscommon in time to have the sheriff head off the bronks! What can a fellow make of a man like him, acting thataway?”
With difficulty, Peters removed his coat and shoved up the shirt and sweater sleeves. The wound was in the forearm, and was bleeding profusely. With a bandanna handkerchief he bound up the injury tightly, knotting the handkerchief corners with his fingers and his teeth; then, getting into his coat again, he began considering his next move.
It was twelve miles by river to Roscommon, and eighteen miles back to the ranch. Even if it was now useless for him to get to the town, in order to carry the news of the horse stealing to the sheriff, returning to Morton’s would have been a fierce pull on his strength, and he dared not attempt it. He would make his way to Roscommon. If he could reach the settlement before Markham left it, he would lodge a complaint against the treacherous scoundrel, and have him held in the town jail. Peters was burning for revenge. Yes, that is what he would do.
He got up, feeling a little dizzy and faint, and started down the river. His feet struck against Markham’s skis, and another idea came to him. Perhaps he could tinker up the splintered ski and use the runners. After the accident that had lost him the jump at Devil’s Lake, Peters had bought a little fine wire for the mending of his own broken runner. That wire was still in his trousers pocket, and it might be that he could use it in fixing Markham’s splintered ski.
Picking up both runners, and holding the damaged one between his knees, he struck a match and made a careful examination. The stout ash had been cracked under the binding mechanism. A few wraps of fine wire might yet make the runner serve. With his jack-knife, Peters dug a shallow groove across the ski’s bottom, and in this he imbedded the half dozen coils of wire that he wove over and over and made fast on the upper surface.
For himself, he had never fancied that Bilgeri binding. Although light, and well made, it was not nearly so strong or dependable as the Lilienfield binding, with which Peters’ own skis were equipped.
Peters’ work had been done at a tremendous disadvantage. He could work with one hand only, and in lieu of his other hand he made shift to use his teeth. The moon, although brilliant, left much to be desired in the matter of light for such fine and exacting labor, and sense of touch had to help him where that of sight failed. In the main, however, he did very well, all things considered, and when he had secured his feet in the bindings he arose on the ash runners with a feeling of exultation in his breast. Where was the stick? His search for it carried him to the overhang, and there he found, not only the ski stick, but two strips of gunny sacking, each heavily knotted in the middle.
Those strips of sacking rather puzzled Peters. Markham had brought them as an aid in getting up the steep eastern slope of the butte. But why had he prepared himself with them if his object was to waylay Peters and secure the skates?
“Markham always figures a matter out both ways,” Peters reflected. “He brought the gun to help corral the skates, but, if I happened to beat him to the butte, then he’d have to keep right on over the rise. If he couldn’t do one thing, then he was ready to do the other. What’s more, he splintered that ski a-purpose, and he didn’t do it until he knew I was behind him at the overhang. He didn’t want me to have a chance to use the ski, that’s all. It never occurred to him that I’d have something along to use in patchin’ up the runner. That’s once, anyhow, that a saphead fooled him.”
Peters shuffled his way to a point beyond the overhang, then paused to tie the strips of cloth around the skis, knot side down. This maneuver would help to keep him from sliding backward.