The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for this I'll have to run you all in."
Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added: "Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."
"Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."
"Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.
When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to have troubled you."
As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.
"Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."
"Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against the police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when they're putting down crime."
"The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed man who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant in the force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence. Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."
The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."