Some one sniggered offensively. Barney had evidently reached Whoop-Up and was in hiding.
"Your horse came in a while ago, constable," Madden said civilly.
"It's in the corral back of the store."
"Did it come in without a rider?" Beresford asked.
The question was unnecessary. The horse would have gone to Fort Macleod and not have come to Whoop-Up unless a rider had guided it here. But sometimes one found out things from unwilling witnesses if one asked questions.
"Didn't notice. I was in the store myself."
"Thought perhaps you hadn't noticed," the officer said. "None of you other gentlemen noticed either, did you?"
The "other gentlemen" held a dogged, sulky silence. A girl cantered through the gate of the stockade and up to the store. At sight of Morse her eyes passed swiftly to Beresford. His answered smilingly what she had asked. It was all over in a flash, but it told the man from Montana who the informer was that had betrayed to the police the place of the whiskey cache.
To the best of her limited chance, Jessie McRae was paying an installment on the debt she owed Bully West and Tom Morse.