“Yes, sir.”
As Fyles turned back to the inner room and picked up the telephone, ignoring the still waiting agent, the corporal hurried away.
In a moment the telephone bell rang out and the officer was speaking.
“Yes, sir, Fyles. Yes, at the Town Station. I’m coming up to barracks right away. It’s most important. I must see you. The whisky-runners have – doubled on us.”
CHAPTER V
BOUND FOR THE SOUTHERN TRAIL
Three uniformed men rode hard across the tawny plains. They rode abreast. Their horses were a-lather; their lean sides tuckered, but their gait remained unslackening. It was a gait they would keep as long as daylight lasted.
Sergeant McBain’s horse kept its nose just ahead of the others. It was as though the big, rawboned animal appreciated its rider’s rank.
Quite abruptly the non-commissioned officer raised an arm and pointed.
“Yon’s the Cypress Hills, boys,” he cried. “See, they’re getting up out of the heat haze on the skyline. We’re heading too far south.”
He spoke without for a moment withdrawing the steady gaze of his hard blue eyes.
One of the troopers answered him.
“Sure, sergeant,” he agreed. “We need to head away to the left.”
The horses swung off the line, beating the sun-scorched grass with their iron-shod hoofs with a vigor that felt good to the riders.
The bronzed faces of the men were eager. Their widely gazing eyes were alert and watchful. They were trailing a hot scent, a pastime as well as a work that was their life. They needed no greater incentive to put forth the best efforts of bodily and mental energies.
The uniform of these riders of the western plains was unassuming. Their brown canvas tunics, their prairie hats, their black, hard serge breeches, with broad, yellow stripes down the thighs, possessed a businesslike appearance not to be found in a modern soldier’s uniform. These things were for sheer hard service.
The life of these men was made up of hard service. It was demanded of them by the Government; it was also demanded of them by the conditions of the country. Lawlessness prevailed on these fair, sunlit plains; lawlessness of man, lawlessness of Nature. Between the two they were left with scarce a breathing space for those comforts which only found existence in dreams that were all too brief and transitory.
Nominally, these men were military police, yet their methods were far enough removed from all matters martial. Theirs it was to obey orders, but all similarity ended there. Each man was left free to think and act for himself. Brief orders, with little detail, were hurled at him. For the rest his superiors demanded one result – achievement. A crime was committed; a criminal was at large; information of a contemplated breach of the peace was to hand. Then go – and see to it. Investigate and arrest. The individual must plan and carry out, whatever the odds. Success would meet with cool approval; failure would be promptly rewarded with the utmost rigor of the penal code governing the force. The work might take days, weeks, months. It mattered not. Nor did it matter the expense, provided success crowned the effort. But with failure resulting – ah, there must be no failure. The prestige of the force could not stand failure, for its seven hundred men were required to dominate and cleanse a territory in which half a dozen European countries could be comfortably lost.
Presently Sergeant McBain spoke again. His steady eyes were still fixed upon the horizon.
“Say, that’s her,” he said. “There she is. Coming right up like a mop head. That’s the pine at Rocky Springs. Further away to the left still, boys.”
He turned his horse, and the race against time was continued. Somewhere ahead, on the southern trail, a gang of whisky smugglers were plying their trade. Inspector Fyles had said, “Go, and – round them up.”
The odds were all against these men, yet no one considered the matter. Each, with eyes and brain alert, was ready to do all of which human effort was capable.
Now that definite direction over those wastes of grass had been finally located, the sergeant, a rough, hard-faced Scot, relaxed his vigilance. His mind drifted to the purpose in hand, and a dry humor lit his eyes.
“Eh, man, but it’s a shameful waste, spilling good spirit,” he said, addressing no one in particular. “Governments are always prodigal – except with pay.”
One of the troopers sniggered.
“Guess we could spill some of it, sergeant,” he declared meaningly.
“Spill it!” The sergeant grinned. “That isn’t the word, boy. Spill don’t describe the warm trickle of good liquor down a man’s throat. Say, I mind – ”
The other trooper broke in.
“Fyles ’ud spill champagne,” he cried in disgust. “A man like that needs seeing to.”
The sergeant shook his head.
“Fyles would spill anything or anybody that required spilling, so he gets his nose to windward of the game. He’s right, too, in this God-forgotten land. If we didn’t spill, we’d be right down and out, and our lives wouldn’t be worth a second’s purchase. No, boys, it breaks our hearts to spill – but we got to do it – or be spilt ourselves.”
The man shook his reins and bustled the great sorrel under him. The animal’s response was a lengthening of stride which left his companions hard put to it to keep pace.
The brief talk was closed. It had been a moment of relaxed tension. Now, once more, every eye was fixed on the shimmering skyline. They were eagerly looking out for the southern trail.
Half an hour later its yellow, sandy surface lay beneath their feet, an open book for the reading.
All three leaped from the saddle and began a close examination of it, while their sweating horses promptly regaled themselves with the ripe, tufty grass at the trail side.
Sergeant McBain narrowly scrutinized the wheel tracks, estimating the speed at which the last vehicle to pass had been traveling. The blurred hoofmarks of the horses warned him they had been driven hard.
“We’re behind ’em, boys,” he declared promptly, “an’ their gait says they’re taking no chances.”
Further down the trail one of the troopers answered him:
“There’s four saddle horses with ’em,” he said thoughtfully. “Two shod, and two shod on the forefeet only. Guess, with the teamster, that makes five men. Prairie toughs, I’d guess.”
The sergeant concurred, while they continued their examination.
Then the third man exclaimed sharply —
“Here!” he cried, picking something up at the side of the trail.
The others joined him at once.
He was quietly tearing open a half-burned cigarette, the tobacco inside of which was still moist.
“Prairie toughs don’t smoke made cigarettes around here. It’s a Caporal. Get it? That’s bought in a town.”
“Ay,” said McBain quickly. “Rocky Springs, I’d say. It’s the Rocky Springs gang, sure as hell. It’s the foulest hole of crime in the northwest. Come on, boys. We need to get busy.”
Two minutes later a moving cloud of dust marked their progress down the trail in the direction of Rocky Springs. Presently, however, the dust subsided. The astute riders of the plains were giving no chances away; they had left the tell-tale trail and rode on over the grass at its edge.
The westering sun was low on the horizon. The air was still. Not a cloud was visible anywhere in the sky. The world was silent. The drowsing birds, even, had finished their evensong.
Low bush-grown hills lined the trail where it entered