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Mavy kept his eyes fixed on the contractor's face, but he knew the location of door and window with the unerring sense of the trapped wild thing. "If you can find the thief or who he is there's under-foreman's pay for you. A dollar a day more if money's any use to you. Will you take it on?" "No." The reply was prompt and uncompromising.
He did a few careless flips and tumbles down there to get out of the way of that pole, then he swings up by way of the trestle while you'd say 'Jack Robinson. He's gone down again," he added, measuring with his eye the dizzy height, "by way of Providence. Wouldn't you say he'd got the wrong job out here, even if he is an Indian?" "Was it Mavy?" asked Constable Williams.
"We call him Mavy, but he's a blooming sparrow, or a toy balloon." "An Indian who's been working on construction," Williams explained to his superior, "a strange, silent fellow. Always seemed a bit above the job. Peter Maverick was his name." Mahon started violently. His heart had made a bound that almost suffocated him.
The Police are so unreasonable when it comes to law." "That's why," he went on, after a thoughtful silence, "I'd like to steer them off the horse question. There's lots else for them to do. . . . Why didn't I think of Mavy before?" He went to the edge of the bank and whistled. Ten minutes later Conrad was with them. "Koppy got them repairs done yet?" "Pretty nearly," replied the foreman.
He was lifted from his feet, his head still in chancery and his mouth closed. He could hear the meeting breaking up, the crunching passage of the silent bohunks returning to the camp. Suddenly he was dropped, and a shadow faded noiselessly into the other shadows of night. "Mavy!" he called in a low voice. "Mavy!" Only two dull taps came back to him from the shadows.
"Koppy's underforeman, ain't he?" The halfbreed spat with disgust, and Torrance chuckled sympathetically. "If I did that every time I felt like it about Koppy, I'd be as dry as a camp-meeting in three days. You're not afraid of him, are you?" Mavy grinned. "Because Koppy's going to be some busy for the next few weeks hanging out under that trestle, and we'll need another underforeman perhaps."
He smote his knee with a loud smack. "By hickory! Why didn't I think of the Indian before?" "Peter Maverick?" "Sure. The only Indian we got. He did me a good turn to-day on that trestle. Never saw an Indian couldn't follow a trail, if there was whisky or a horse at the end of it . . . and I never saw a likelier one than Mavy. Might be worth my while to get in ahead of the Mounted Police.
"You did well to strike quickly," he muttered to Torrance. "A bullet would be the proper thing, but we've no direct proof; the Police would ask questions. He'll be round in a minute." Torrance was examining the severed rope. "Where did you find this, Mavy?" The halfbreed pointed aloft. "Lower end o' the support the pulley was fastened to. Thar's more."
"But Conrad only got down there; I saw him." Torrance squinted sternly at the halfbreed. Mavy nodded. "I come by the trestle." "The h you did!" The halfbreed shrugged his shoulders. The contractor examined him with renewed interest. "How'd you like to be an underforeman?" Again the wide, sloping shoulders shrugged. "Say, you don't mean you'd turn down an extra dollar a day?"
"If I could," he whispered, "I'd make you foreman this instant, and round up all the bohunks out of jail. But that ain't what I want you for. Are you a real Indian?" "Naw," drawled Mavy. "I'm a Chinee, with a bit o' Pole thrown in." Torrance showed he could appreciate humour like that. "I mean, can you follow a trail?" The halfbreed's eyes danced.
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