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Gosse went back to the camp-fire, where the Whoop-Up men had carried their wounded leader. Except West, they were all glad to drop the battle. The big smuggler, lying on the ground with a bullet in his thigh, cursed them for a group of chicken-hearted quitters. His anger could not shake their decision. They knew when they had had enough.
"The locket I see at Whoop-Up, the one Pierre Roubideaux buy from old Makoye-kin's squaw." "A picture of a Blackfoot?" "No-o. Maybe French maybe from the 'Merican country. I do not know." Whaley took the pipe from his mouth and sat up, the chill eyes in his white face fixed and intent. "Go back to Whoop-Up, Lemoine. Buy that locket and that ring for me from Pierre Roubideaux.
The horse would have gone to Fort Macleod and not have come to Whoop-Up unless a rider had guided it here. But sometimes one found out things from unwilling witnesses if one asked questions. "Didn't notice. I was in the store myself." "Thought perhaps you hadn't noticed," the officer said. "None of you other gentlemen noticed either, did you?" The "other gentlemen" held a dogged, sulky silence.
Once, when he had pressed his mother with questions, she had smiled deeply and changed the subject. His feeling was, and had always been, that there was some mystery about the girl's birth. Stokimatis either knew what it was or had some hint of it. His testimony at least tended to support the wild hopes flaming in the girl's heart. Lemoine started south for Whoop-Up at break of day.
He suggested now, with an ingratiating whine in his voice, that he would like to see a man at Whoop-Up first. "Jes' a li'l' matter of business," he added by way of explanation. The constable guessed at his business. The man wanted to let his boss know what had taken place and to give him a chance to rescue him if he would. Beresford's duty was to find out who was back of this liquor running.
He subdued his desire to punish the young man and sullenly gave orders to hitch up the teams. It was mid-afternoon when the oxen jogged into Whoop-Up. The post was a stockade fort, built in a square about two hundred yards long, of cottonwood logs dovetailed together. The buildings on each side of the plaza faced inward. Loopholes had been cut in the bastions as a protection against Indians.
I'd like blame well to be moseyin' to Whoop-Up my own self," Gosse said uneasily. "You'll stay right here an' go through with this job, Harv," West told him flatly. "All you boys'll do just that. If any of you's got a different notion we'll settle that here an' now. How about it?" He straddled up and down in front of his men, menacing them with knotted fists and sulky eyes.
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