ably
secure concealment.

The fates smiled on us in the matter of food very shortly. I'm not
enamored of a straight meat diet as a rule, but that evening I was in no
mood to carp at anything half-way eatable. While we were on our
stomachs gratefully stowing away a draught of the cool water, I heard a
buffalo bull lift his voice in challenge to another far down the canyon.
We tied our horses out of sight in the timber and stole in the direction
of the sound. A glorious bull-fight was taking place when we got within
shooting-distance, the cows and calves forming a noisy circle about the
combatants, each shaggy brown brute bawling with all the strength of
bovine lungs; in that pandemonium of bellowing and trampling I doubt if
the report of Mac's carbine could have been heard two hundred yards
away. The shot served to break up the fight and scatter the herd,
however, and we returned to the cottonwoods with the hind-quarter of a
fat calf.

Hungry as we were, we could hardly bolt raw meat, so, taking it for
granted that no one was likely to ride up on us, we built a fire in the
grove, being careful to feed it with dry twigs that would make little
smoke. Over this we toasted bits of meat on the end of a splinter, and
presently our hunger was appeased. Then we blotted out the fire, and,
stretching ourselves on the ground, had recourse to the solace of
tobacco.

The longer we laid there the more curious did I become as to what line
of action MacRae purposed to follow. He lay on his back, silent, staring
straight up at the bit of sky that showed through the branches above,
and I'd just reached the point of asking, when he sat up and forestalled
my questions.

"This is going to be risky business, Sarge," he began. "But so far as I
can see, there is only one way that we can hope to get the thing
straightened out. If we can get hold of Hicks or Bevans, any one of the
four, in fact, I think we can _make_ him tell us all we need to know.
It's the only chance for you and Lyn to get your money back, and for me
to square myself."

"I shouldn't think," I put in resentfully, "that you'd want to square
yourself, after the dirty way you've been treated. I'd as soon take to
herding sheep, or washing dirty clothes like a Chinaman, as be a member
of the Mounted Police if what I've seen in the last ten days is a fair
sample of what a man can expect."

"Fiddlesticks!" Mac impatiently exclaimed. "You don't know what you're
talking about.