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"We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire before mornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll come a-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uh dry grass an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard down in this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?" Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more.
"I'd have come here to-day if it had been snowing pitchforks and chain-lightning. I made up my mind I would. You saved my life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the moles if it wasn't for you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a storm seem to know their way by instinct.
I am going now to get my people." It was very late in the night. Most of the Snakes were in bed and asleep. All at once the camp was surrounded with warriors, shouting the war cry and shooting, stabbing, and knocking people on the head as fast as they came out of the lodges. That Piegan woman cried out: "Don't hurt me. I am a Piegan. Are any of my people here?"
"Whu-why not lul-let the shush-shpicion shlide," suggested one bright spirit, "an' cue-convict him right now an' lul-lynch him after shupper whu-when it's cool?" "No," vetoed Dolan, "it can't be done. He's gotta be indicted and held for the Grand Jury at Piegan City. I ain't allowed to try murder cases." "Tut-too bad," mourned the bright spirit, and refused to be comforted.
"Aside from the fact that most any white man would go out of his way to help a girl like Lyn Rowan, there's the certainty that the Canadian government will be pretty generous to anybody who helps round up that crooked bunch and restore the stolen money. Piegan snorted when I told him we were on the dodge that they were trying to nail us for holding up the paymaster.
We dropped on all fours, listened a moment, then crept forward. Without warning, we found ourselves foul of a picket-line, and the vague forms of grazing horses loomed close by. Piegan halted us with a touch, and we lay flat; then with our heads together he whispered softly: "We must be right on top uh them. It's a cinch their camp ain't far from their livestock. I wonder "
As we filled our plates and squatted under the canvas that sheltered the cook's Dutch-oven layout, a man under the hind end of the chuck-wagon propped himself on elbow and shouted greeting to us. In the semi-dark I couldn't see his face, but I recognized the voice. It was our friend of the whisky-keg episode, Piegan Smith. "Say, Flood, yuh ain't been t' Benton an' back already, have yuh?"
Saving life has its responsibilities, little gal." "You can't save life without running some risk yourself, not as a rule, can you?" she said, shrinking from his familiarity. "Not as a rule," he replied. "You took on a bit of risk with me, you and your Piegan pony." "Oh, I was young," she responded, leaning over the table, and drawing faces on a piece of paper before her.
"Down the creek say, by the great Jehosophat!" Piegan exclaimed. "D'yuh remember that racket in the water this mornin'? Yuh wait." He turned and ran down-stream. Almost instantly the smoke had swallowed him. MacRae stood staring for a second or two, then turned and scattered the fire broadcast on the sand with a movement of his foot.
I wonder what's up they seem to be in a dickens of a hurry." We got off and waited for them, wondering what the change of horses might portend. They swung down to us on a run, and it needed no second glance at the features of Piegan Smith to know that he brought with him a fresh supply of trouble.
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