ndown, for the Mounted Police rode picked horses, the best money could
buy. But it was a long jaunt to Benton, and the rest of us were inclined
to an easier pace, that we might husband the full strength of our
grass-fed mounts for any emergency that should arise on the way.

With the coming of night a pall of clouds blew out of the west,
blanketing the stars and shutting off their hazy light completely, and
when the sky was banked full from horizon to horizon, the dark enveloped
us like a black sea-mist. Once or twice we startled a little bunch of
buffalo, and listened to the thud of their hoofs as they fled through
the sultry, velvet gloom; but for the most our ride was attended by no
sounds save the night song of frogs in the upland sloughs and the hollow
clank of steel bits keeping time to the creak of saddle-leather.

Halfway down the long slope MacRae and I, riding in the lead, pulled up
to make a cigarette on the brink of a straight-walled coulee that we
could sense but not see. As I waited for Mac to strike a match my eyes
roved about, seeking to pierce the unnatural blackness that wrapped
itself about us, and while my gaze was for an instant fixed on the
night-enshrouded canyon, a red tongue of flame flashed out for a moment
in the inky shadow below. MacRae saw it also, and held the match
unstruck.

"Must be somebody camped down there," I hazarded.

"A camp-fire would hardly flash and die out like that, Sarge," he
answered thoughtfully. "At least, not an ordinary one. There are some
folk in this country, you know, who manifest a very retiring disposition
at times. That looks to me like a blind fire or a signal. Let's wait a
minute."

We sat there on our horses, grouped close together, a minute that
lengthened to five; then MacRae broke off in the middle of a sentence as
the flare leaped up, flickered an instant, and was blotted out again. I
could have sworn I heard a cry, and one of my men spoke in a tone that
assured me my imagination had not been playing a trick.

"Hear that?" he asked eagerly. "Somebody hollered down there."

"I don't much like that," MacRae said, in a low tone. "I have a hunch
that something crooked is going on, and I reckon I'll go down and see
what that fire means. You fellows better go a little farther and wait
for me."

"Not on your life," I protested. "You might run into most any kind of
formation. We'll go in a bunch, if we go at all."

"Might be Injuns," Bruce Haggin put in.