A Prairie Courtship

"But how's he going to see him, when Jake's up the track?"

"It strikes me there ought to be a black plug hat and a brown duck jacket somewhere in this settlement," drawled Thorne. "I'll leave you to find them."

A light broke in upon his companions, and they laughed; but one of them pointed out that Thorne might find himself unpleasantly situated if Corporal Slaney overtook him. Thorne, however, smiled at this.

"I've been driving easy the last few days, and it's hardly likely the police have a horse that could run Volador down," he said. "Besides, if he should press me too hard, I could lose my man somehow in the big bluff on the mountain."

They agreed with this, and proceeded to elaborate a workable scheme. Suddenly Baxter turned to Thorne, as though a thought had just struck him.

"Why do you want to do it?" he asked. "Jake Winthrop wasn't a partner of yours."

Thorne broke into a whimsical smile. Now that he endeavored to analyze his reasons calmly, he was conscious that none of them appeared sufficient to warrant any action at all on his part. He was only certain that he disliked Nevis, and that an anxious girl had not long ago looked at him with an appeal in her eyes.

"Since you ask me the question, I don't quite know," he confessed.

Baxter laughed, and turned to his comrade.

"He's a daisy, sure. Anyway, I'll look round for a hat and jacket like the one I burned. You get him a saddle, Murray."

Thorne left them presently and drove away toward a ravine some miles from the settlement, and soon after he started Baxter saddled a horse and rode out to an outlying farm. In the meanwhile Corporal Slaney sauntered into the general room of the hotel, where Murray and several others were then sitting smoking. There was a box of crackers, a soda-water fountain, and a bottle of some highly colored syrup on one table, but that was all the refreshment the place provided.

Seating himself in a corner, the corporal sat unobtrusively listening to the conversation, which Murray presently turned into a particular channel for his especial benefit. It was a hot evening, and he sat astride a bench, clad only in blue shirt and trousers, with a glass of soda-water in front of him and a pipe in his hand. A big tin lamp burned unsteadily above him, for all the doors and windows were open, and a hot smell of dust and baked earth flowed into the room. The walls were formed of badly rent boards, and there was as usual no covering on the roughly laid floor.

"As I've often said," he observed, "the police will never get another man like old Sergeant Mackintyre. He ran his man down right away every time."

Slaney pricked his ears, and another of them broke in:

"Mackintyre would have had Jake Winthrop jailed quite a while ago. The boys aren't up to trailing now."

"Seems to me they didn't want Winthrop much," drawled Murray. "They went prowling round the homesteads, worrying folks who didn't know anything about him, while he hit the trail for the frontier."

A third man turned to Slaney.

"Didn't you send two of the boys off Dakota way, Corporal?"

"We did," answered Slaney shortly. "That's about all I'm open to tell you."

"Two troopers couldn't cover a great deal of prairie," remarked another. "Guess he might have slipped through between them; that is, if he's not hanging round here somewhere waiting for a chance to break away."

Murray saw the gleam in the corporal's eyes, and he broke in again.

"Now," he said, "when you think of it, that's quite likely, after all. There's three or four big bluffs a man could hide in, and if he was stuck for a horse he wouldn't care to try the open. If he lay by a while he might fix it up with somebody to bring him one. Of course, he might have got away up the track, but they'd wire on to watch the stations. Didn't you do that, Corporal?"

"We did," Slaney answered.

Murray turned to the others.

"Then, one would allow that Winthrop couldn't have cleared by train. If he'd done that, they'd sure have got him." He paused, and, hearing a beat of hoofs, added thoughtfully, "It looks mighty like he was still in the neighborhood."

Something in Slaney's expression suggested that he shared this opinion; but the drumming of hoofs was growing louder, and a man strolled toward the doorway.

"It's Baxter," he announced.

A few minutes later Baxter came in, flushed and dusty, and helped himself at the soda-water fountain before he turned to the others with a cracker in his hand.

"It's powerful warm, boys, and I've had a ride for nothing," he informed them. "Been over to Lorton's place and he wasn't in."

"He's at Cricklewood's," said Murray. "If you'd waited a little you would have met him on the trail."

"I didn't, anyway," was Baxter's indifferent reply; "I only met a stranger."

Corporal Slaney had no reason to suspect that the brief conversation which had followed Baxter's arrival had been carefully prearranged for his benefit.

"Where did you meet that stranger?" he asked.

"About two miles east of the bluff."

"Did you speak to him?"

Baxter smiled.

"I didn't; he didn't give me a chance. He was going south as fast as his horse could lay hoofs to the ground."

"What was he like? Did you see him clearly?"

"Well," drawled Baxter, "it's only a half-moon, and the man wasn't very close, but I think he'd a black plug hat. As most of us wear gray ones, that kind of struck me. I've a notion that his overall jacket was brown."

He sat down as Slaney vanished through the open door. In a few moments there was a clatter of hoofs, and the men crowding about the entrance saw a mounted figure riding at a gallop down the unpaved street. Then Murray looked at his comrade with a grin.

"Must have had his horse saddled ready," he chuckled. "We've fixed the thing."

CHAPTER XI

AN ESCAPADE

The night was still and clear when Thorne rode out of the ravine, in the hollow of which he had left his wagon and one hobbled horse. Reaching the level, he drew bridle and sat still in his saddle for a minute or two looking about him. The dew was settling heavily on the short, wiry grass, which shone faintly in the elusive light, with patches of darker color where his horse's hoofs had passed. Ahead, the prairie rolled away, a vast dimly lighted plain, to the soft dusky grayness which obscured the horizon, and he knew that somewhere beyond the dip of the latter stood the mountain, a broken stretch of higher ground covered with birches and willows, where if Corporal Slaney held on so long he must endeavor to evade him.

Volador seemed fit and fresh, for which he was thankful, for it was nearly twenty miles to the mountain, and he was, after all, a little uncertain about the speed of the policeman's horse, though the appearance of the beast, which he had seen in the hotel stable, did not suggest any great powers in this respect. It was, however, not the one Slaney usually rode, which he fancied might, perhaps, be significant. At length he leaned down and patted Volador's neck.

"You'll have to go to-night, old boy," he said.

The beast responded to his voice and a shake of the bridle, and they set off southward at a trot. The moon already hung rather low in the western sky, and he calculated that in another couple of hours it would have dipped beneath the grassland's rim. By then he should reach the mountain, and the darkness would be in his favor if he had not already outdistanced his pursuer. It was in a singularly buoyant mood that he rode quietly on, and it was reluctantly that he checked the horse which once or twice attempted to gallop. After the last few months of prosaic and unremitting toil, the prospect of a mad night ride, and the zest of the hazard attached to it, proved strangely exhilarating to one of his temperament. He admitted that, as Winthrop was not a particular friend of his, there was no reason why he should have undertaken the thing at all; but he remembered the appeal in Lucy Calvert's eyes, and that and the lust of a frolic was sufficient for him. There are men of his kind who, in their hearts, at least, never grow old.

He had covered two or three miles when he saw a mounted man following the trail to the settlement, and he rode on across the trail with a wave of his hat. He did not feel inclined for conversation, and everything had already been arranged. The mounted figure presently sank out of sight again, and he pulled Volador up to a slow walk. He would give Baxter half an hour to reach the settlement and put Slaney on his trail, and there was no use in wasting his horse's strength in the meanwhile.

It was nearly an hour later, and he was riding slowly, a lonely, moving speck in the center of a great level waste whose boundaries steadily receded before him, when a faint drumming of hoofs came out of the silence. Then he pulled Volador up altogether, and sat still, listening, for a while, until he felt sure that his pursuer, who was apparently riding hard, would hear him. He did not wish the man to draw too close, but it would, on the other hand, serve no purpose if he rode south unless Slaney followed him. It seemed only reasonable to suppose that once the police decided that Winthrop had got safely away to Dakota they would abandon the search for him in western Canada.

Then something in the sound, which was rapidly growing louder, struck him as curious, and he listened more closely with a frown, for it was now becoming evident that instead of one pursuer he had two to deal with, which was certainly not what he had desired or expected. Touching Volador with his heels, he let him go, and for five or six minutes they fled south at a fast gallop with a thud of hoofs on sun-baked sod ringing far behind them. Then he pulled the horse up with a struggle, and listened again. He was at length certain that the police had heard him and were following as fast as possible. There was no cover until he reached the mountain; nothing but an open wilderness, unbroken by even a ravine or a clump of willows, and he must ride.