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It ran: "Get after Lessard and see if he won't send an escort with you to Writing-Stone. If he does, and you find anything, I needn't warn you to be careful. I don't think he believed our yarn, at all. If he refuses to act, stay here till I get out. This money will hold you for a while. It's all I could rustle. If you need more, maybe Bat can stake you he will if he can." That was all.
Half an hour later, with the sacks of gold securely lashed on the aparejos of the pack-horse, we climbed out of Writing-Stone bottom and swung away over the silent tablelands. With Writing-on-the-Stone scarcely three miles behind, the long-abandoned burrow of a badger betrayed us into the hands of the enemy. The sidelong, covetous glance that passed between them bespoke what was in their minds.
Since I'd been on the spot when Rutter died, and knew the Writing-Stone country so well, he thought I would stand a better show of finding their cache than any one else he could send out. He wanted to recover that stuff for Miss Rowan, if it were possible.
I didn't know the Writing-Stone country, and a man had no business wandering up and down those somber ridges alone, away from the big freight-trails, unless he was anxious to be among the "reported missing" which he sure would be if a bunch of non-treaty Indians ever got within gunshot of him.
"How do you know where to look?" he suddenly demanded. "Writing-Stone ridge is ten miles long. What chance would you have of finding anything in a territory of that extent?" His cold eyes rested on me in a disagreeable way. "I thought Rutter died before giving you the exact location."
"Then you must know beyond a doubt that there was some truth in Rutter's story," I declared. "Hank Rowan was my friend. I'd go out of my way any time to help his daughter. Will you send four or five of your men with me to the Writing-Stone to look for that stuff?" I asked him point-blank. He looked me up and down curiously, and did not answer for a minute.
Stony Crossing I could see, even without Mac's guiding finger. The Whoop Up trail, a brown streak against the vivid upland green, dipped down the hillside to our right, down to the sage-grown flat, and into the river by the great boulders that gave the ford its name. The blue ridge up the river I gave scant heed to; the Writing-Stone was only a name to me, for I'd never seen the place.
It was a rather depressed stock-hand, name of Flood, who blew cigarette smoke out over the brow of Writing-Stone that evening. Mac finished smoking and ground the stub into the earth with his heel. For another minute or two he sat there without speaking, absently flipping pebbles over the bank. "I reckon we might as well poke along the top to camp," he said at last, getting to his feet.
When we were fairly under way in the direction of Writing-Stone, Hicks and Gregory the breed scout lagged fifty or sixty yards behind, and MacRae turned in his saddle and gave me a queer sort of look. "I wasn't joking last night when I told Goodell that this was something of a forlorn hope," he said. "Are you ready to take a chance on getting your throat cut or being shot in the back, Sarge?"
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.
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