Sergeant Silk the Prairie Scout Part 21

Dan Medlicott watched Sergeant Silk striking a match and s.h.i.+elding it with his hand as he held it to his pipe and puffed the ragged smoke into the wintry air.

"Say, Sergeant," he said, "you were sure right when you said that any other trooper would have let Lean Bear escape last week. Any one would, knowing what he'd done for you that time."

Sergeant Silk's pipe glowed very bright.

"For me?" he smiled, looking up.

"Why, yes," returned Dan, standing in front of him. "There never was any Corporal Pretty John in the Force. You just gave yourself that fancy name to put me off the scent, and the yarn has been about yourself all the time."

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT JAM AT STONE PINE RAPIDS

Every one who saw it declared that it was the pluckiest thing that Sergeant Silk had ever done. He himself did not consider it an extraordinary thing to do. But, then, a man is seldom the best judge of his own bravery.

The incident occurred at the logging camp at Stone Pine Rapids, where some hundreds of men--lumber-jacks, hook-tenders, buckers, and snipers--were engaged in the work of driving an immense procession of forest logs down the stream.

The camp was at a sharp bend of the river, and the rafts had become hopelessly jammed. They had been jammed for the best part of a week, and crowds of river men had gathered from far and near to give help in the difficult task of dislodging the obstinate barrier of floating timber that filled and choked the narrow throat of the waterway.

There was a lot of drinking, gambling, and quarrelling going on, and Sergeant Silk had come along in the interests of law and order.

The mere presence of a member of the North-West Mounted Police, with his conspicuous red tunic and his bandolier of brightly-polished cartridges, had almost a magical effect in preserving peace. His duties were light, and he went about the thronged encampment as a friendly and welcome visitor rather than as a stern and dreaded representative of the law.

So little had he expected to be called upon to exercise his authority that he had brought young Percy Rapson as his companion--Percy Rapson, the aristocratic English boy, who had been sent out to Canada to learn farming on Rattlesnake Ranch, and who had now sought variety from his tuition in agriculture by accompanying his friend on an easy patrol to witness the wonders of a great logging camp at work.

On the second morning of their arrival at Stone Pine they had left their mounts in stable and strolled down to the waterside to see if the workers had yet located the key logs, which held the vast ma.s.s of floating timber locked in the bend of the river.

To Percy Rapson the sight had all the interest of novelty, and he lingered, watching, in the hope of seeing the jam break loose. The breast of the barrier of logs rose to a height of some thirty feet above the water's level, in a confused pile. The giant tree trunks, flung into a hopeless tangle, were becoming with every hour more tightly crushed by the mighty pressure of the crowded logs in the rear.

As far back as the eye could see the surface of the river was hidden under its brown pavement of drifting timber.

On the great jam itself men were at work with their peavies industriously picking at the huge logs, heaving and rolling them downward into the rapids beyond, where they might be caught and swept away by the current.

But the key logs, which held the main pile plugged in its position, had not yet been found, and even an occasional charge of dynamite had so far failed to stir the barrier.

Percy had been so absorbed in watching the preparation of a new charge of dynamite that he had not noticed that Sergeant Silk had left his side. He went in search of him, and found him seated astride one of the logs that were stranded on the river bank in front of the camp.

The boy went up to him, and, looking over his shoulder, saw, to his surprise, that the soldier policeman was engaged in making a crude pencil sketch of a Canadian canoe poised perilously on the brink of a cataract.

"My hat, Sergeant!" Percy exclaimed. "I never suspected you of havin'

any pretensions to bein' an artist!"

Silk held the slip of paper at arm's length in front of him, contemplating his handiwork.

"I don't pretend to be anything of the sort," he denied. He closed one eye and regarded the drawing critically. "There's something plumb wrong about that boat," he objected. "'Tisn't natural, somehow. Looks heaps more like a general's c.o.c.ked hat than a canoe!"

He turned half round to a man who stood near him against the log, busily tr.i.m.m.i.n.g an oil lamp.

"Say, Sharrow," he said, "you're a river man. You know a thing or two about river craft. Tell us what's wrong with this Indian canoe that I've been trying to draw."

Eben Sharrow took the drawing that was handed to him and held it in his very dirty fingers. He shook his head.

"I don't just know," he answered. "Seems ter me as it's all of it wrong--wrong from start to finish. Thar' ain't anythin' right about it.

I've seen kids in school doin' better pictures than that on their slates."

"Ah!" Sergeant Silk took the paper back. "I guessed you'd say something like that. I was always a lame hand at fancy work. Every man to his trade, eh? We can none of us do everything."

He folded the paper very slowly and precisely, as if it were of value.

His boy companion noticed that as he did so he was paying curious regard to the greasy black finger marks which Eben Sharrow had left upon the clean, white surface.

Sharrow presently took up his lamp and strode away in the direction of one of the camp fires, around which a group of lumber-men stood or sat drying their wet clothes.

Percy Rapson watched the man walking awkwardly up the slope in his spiked boots.

"Sergeant?" he said.

"Well?"

"Why did you show your sketch to that lumber-jack? I'm sure you don't care a bra.s.s farthing for his opinion. And why are you so precious careful of the drawing, folding it so neatly and stowing it away in your pocket-book, as if it were a bank-note? It isn't worth preservin'."

Sergeant Silk slipped down from his perch on the log.

"That's so," he said. "It isn't worth preserving. But you may have noticed that I never throw bits of paper away. They make any place look so untidy."

Percy was thoughtfully silent for a while, but at length, when Silk turned to stroll up towards the camp, he said abruptly--

"I think I can guess what you did it for. It was a jolly 'cute trick of yours."

"A trick?"

"Yes," pursued Percy. "You made that drawing and invited Sharrow's criticism of it simply and solely to get him to take hold of a piece of white paper and leave his dirty finger marks on it. I believe you want to identify him with some chap who left finger-prints somewhere else.

I've heard of that method of identification. It's said to be a dead sure way of telling one man from another."

"Yet I should say it is rather an uncertain method for any but experts to follow," the sergeant observed. "I shouldn't care to trust to it myself. Certainly I shouldn't venture to accuse any man of a serious crime on such flimsy evidence as a finger mark."

Rapson glanced at him curiously.

"That chap Ebenezer Sharrow doesn't look as if he could be guilty of committin' a serious crime," he ventured. "And yet I suppose you are here on his track."

"I did not say so," Silk returned sharply, reprovingly. "You appear to think that because I'm a policeman I must always be on some poor fellow's trail, hunting him down. Sharrow was personally a stranger to me until last night, when I met him for the first time in the bunkhouse."

"Then why did you go out of your way to get hold of his finger-print?"

Percy insisted. "You never do anything without a reason."

Sergeant Silk did not answer him. Perhaps they were too near to the men about the drying fire for him to enter into explanations without risk of being overheard. Perhaps he had reasons for not wis.h.i.+ng to explain.