. "You can put up
at one of the troop-messes for a few days. I'll send a despatch to Whoop
Up and MacLeod, and we'll see what turns up. Also I think I shall send a
detail to bring in those bodies. The identification must be made
complete. No doubt it will be a trial for Miss Rowan, but I think she
would feel better to have her father buried here. By the way, you knew
the Rowans in the States, I believe."

"Was trail-boss three seasons for Hank Rowan and his partner," I
returned briefly. I didn't much like his offhand way of asking; not that
it wasn't a perfectly legitimate query. But I couldn't get rid of the
notion that he would hand me out the same dose he had given MacRae if
only he had the power.

"Ah," he remarked. "Then perhaps you would like to go out and help bring
in those bodies. It will save taking the Pend d' Oreille riders from
their regular patrol, and we are having considerable trouble with
whisky-runners these days."

I agreed to go, and that terminated the conversation. I didn't mind
going; in fact some sort of action appealed to me just then. I had no
idea of going back to Benton right away, and sitting around Fort Walsh
waiting for something to turn up was not my taste. It never struck me
till I was outside the office that Lessard had passed up the gold
episode altogether; he hadn't said whether he would send any one to
prognosticate around Writing-Stone or not. I wondered if he took any
stock in Rutter's story, or thought it merely one of the queer turns a
man's brain will sometimes take when he is dying. It had sounded
off-color to me, at first; but I knew old Hans pretty well, and he
always seemed to me a hard-headed, matter of fact sort of man, not at
all the flighty kind of pilgrim that gets mixed in his mental processes
when things go wrong. Besides, if there wasn't some powerful incentive,
why that double killing, to say nothing of the incredible devilishness
that accompanied it.

Once out of the official atmosphere, I hesitated over my next move.
Lessard's high-handed squelching of MacRae had thrown everything out of
focus. We'd planned to report at headquarters, see Lyn, if she were at
Walsh, and then with Pend d' Oreille as a base of operations go on a
still hunt for whatever the Writing-Stone might conceal. That scheme was
knocked galley-west and crooked, for even when MacRae's term expired
he'd get a long period of duty at the Fort; he'd lost his rank, and as a
private his coming and