rader with supplies for Salt Lake.

Hawk, whose long visage and keen eyes gave him a particularly
stern air--and David Hawk was never very communicative or very
warm-mannered--asked the questions. The Frenchman was civil, but
denied having any men with him except those he had brought from
the Missouri River. However, he offered to line up his men for the
railroad party to look over. To this Hawk agreed, and, when the
word had been passed, the entire force of the trader were assembled
in front of the head wagon.

Scott rode slowly up the line scrutinizing each face, and, turning
again, rode down the line. Once he stopped and questioned a
suspicious-looking teamster wearing a hat that answered Bucks's
description, but the man's answers were satisfactory.

When Scott had finished his inspection the men started to disband.
Hawk stopped them. "Stay where you are," he called out curtly. Turning
to the Frenchman, he added: "We will have to search your wagons."

Again the trader made no objection, though some of his men did.

The three troopers were signalled in, and posted so there could be no
dodging from one wagon to another, and Hawk gave them orders, loud
enough for all to hear, to shoot on sight any one leaving the wagons.
And while he himself kept command of the whole situation, Scott
dismounted and accompanied by the trader began the search. The hunt
was tedious and the teamsters murmured at the delay to their camp
work. But the search went forward unrelentingly. Not a corner capable
of concealing a dog was overlooked by the painstaking Indian and not
until he had reached the last wagon was his hope exhausted.

This wagon stood at the extreme end of a wash-out in the side of the
canyon itself. It was filled with bales of coarse red blankets, but no
man was to be found among them.

Scott did find something, however, in a sort of a nest fashioned among
the bales near the middle of the wagon. What would have escaped an eye
less trained to look for trifles attracted his at once. It was a dingy
metal tag. Scott picked it up. It bore the name of a Medicine Bend
saloon and the heads of three horses, from the design of which the
saloon itself took a widely known and ill name. He laid his hand on
the blanket from which he had picked the tag. The wool was still
warm.

Scott only smiled to himself. Both ends of the little canyon were
guarded. From where he was searching the scout peered carefully out at
the canyon walls.