Sergeant Silk the Prairie Scout Part 23

"I have told you that he left no clue that was worth following up," he answered. "The ground was frozen hard, and he made no track. In a lonesome place like that, where there was no one to see him come or go, it was easy for him to disappear."

It was Percy Rapson who made the next remark.

"I should have thought he'd at least have left his finger marks on some of those papers," he said, and he glanced in the direction of Eben Sharrow, who, having at last cleaned out his pipe, was slowly loading it with tobacco. "That was a case in which finger-prints might have been useful."

Sergeant Silk's eyebrows gathered for an instant in a frown of vexation at this reference to finger-prints.

"Quite so," he said. "If one had had any suspicion against any particular person and could have examined his hand, it would have been a means of proving or disproving his connection with the crime."

Percy Rapson's eyes were still lingering curiously upon Eben Sharrow, who now bent forward to get a light from the fire. As he held the light to his pipe, Sharrow looked across at Sergeant Silk.

"Seems ter me," he said, rising to his feet, "as I kinder recollect hearin' as that skunk you're talkin' about--him as you never could find trace of--was eaten by a pack of timber wolves. 'Tain't any wonder you couldn't arrest him."

Silk dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his foot.

"Exactly," he nodded. "Such a rumour got abroad. But it was only a rumour, circulated by the express rider, who carried on what was saved of the mails. On the morning after the crime, as he rode out with me from Coyote Landing, he came upon a patch of blood-stained gra.s.s, torn about by the feet of many wolves. It certainly seemed as if the robber had, as you say, been eaten up by the hungry pack, for near by there were also found some fragments of the envelope of a registered letter.

But it was curious that the wolves hadn't left even a b.u.t.ton or a boot or some shreds of clothing that would show that their victim had been human; whereas, as it happened, I had myself shot a wolf on that very same spot, and I needn't remind you of the habit that hungry wolves have of devouring their own kind. As for the fragments of paper--the bits of torn envelope--there was sure evidence that they had been hidden where they were found a good two hours before the wolves came along at the heels of my mare."

"So?" Sharrow coughed, as if the smoke of his pipe had gone the wrong way. He turned from the fire and strode down the slope of the river bank.

Sergeant Silk, watching the direction in which he went, stood up, and touched young Rapson on the shoulder.

"If you're hankering to see the firing of that charge of dynamite they were fixing, Percy," he said casually, "we may as well get along as soon as we've been to the stables to give our mounts a feed. It'll be a sight worth seeing when that jam pulls, I can promise you, and it's likely to pull at any time."

Percy accompanied him to the water's edge, and they took up their position among the eager crowd of watchers.

The jam appeared to be upon the point of breaking without the further help of dynamite, and a new crew of drivers were at work clamping their peavies to the stubborn timbers and moving them one by one in the endeavour to get at the key logs, which had at last been found.

Already certain ominous groanings and grumblings were coming from the heart of the vast, tangled pile, and the great tree trunks were beginning to move of themselves before the pressure of the ma.s.s from behind.

Soon, when the obstructing key logs should yield, the whole bulk would plunge forward, to be swept along by the current like a wild stampede of giant animals suddenly let loose, tumbling over one another and fighting desperately for room in the onward rush.

Warning shouts from the onlookers told the lumber-jacks of their peril, and the men hastened to the banks, holding their peavies in front of them as balancing poles, and stepping smartly from log to log, keeping a secure foothold by means of the long spikes in the soles of their boots.

"See!" cried Percy Rapson excitedly, as the pile began to collapse.

"The whole thing's moving now!"

It seemed, indeed, that the entire jam had started, but the watchers presently realised that it was only a section that had broken off. This section drifted downward for a distance of a hundred feet or so, and then came to a sudden stop, plugged just as tightly as it had been before, and leaving an open s.p.a.ce of water, in which several loose tree trunks floated, just opposite to where Sergeant Silk and Percy Rapson stood with the watching crowd.

Suddenly Silk ran forward to the water's edge. He had seen that one of the lumber-men had fallen into the stream, and was clinging to one of the floating logs, struggling desperately to get a leg across it.

"Hey!" cried the sergeant at the top of his voice. "Make for the bank!

Swim ash.o.r.e, quick! That back section's moving!"

Even as he shouted there was an ominously loud crunching, rumbling sound of grinding timbers, and the back section of the jam began to break away.

Every one near saw and understood the man's terrible peril. He was caught between the two sections, and one of them was moving steadily towards him to crush him out of life.

"Who is it?" questioned Bob Wilson. "How'd he git thar'?"

"Fell in," answered Andy O'Reilly. "It's Eben Sharrow, and, say, he can't swim a stroke. Guess he's sure done for."

"Sure," nodded Wilson. "Ain't got a ghost of a chance. Best not look.

Come away!"

He caught at Percy Rapson's sleeve to draw him from the sight. But Percy stood firm with his eyes staring wildly at Sergeant Silk.

"Silk! Silk! Come back!" the boy shouted. "You can't do it!"

Whether he heard or not, Silk did not heed the cry. He had thrown off his hat and belt and had plunged into the narrowing stretch of water.

With a swift, strong side stroke he was swimming out to the man's rescue.

Narrower and narrower grew the stretch of broken water between the closing walls of giant logs; but quicker still did the s.p.a.ce lessen between the swimming red-coated policeman and the man he sought to rescue from a certain terrible death.

When he reached him at last the voices of the river men broke into a cheer.

But Percy Rapson was too agitated to open his lips. With his body bent forward and his eyes staring wide, he watched and watched.

He saw Sergeant Silk catch hold of the man's right leg and raise it upward out of the water, flinging it over the thick, floating log, then push him bodily upward until he lay flat along the spar. Leaving him so, Silk then worked his way hand over hand to the log's far end, and hoisted himself upon it as he might have mounted his horse.

Already the oncoming stack of timber, driving the waves in front of it, was forcing the log forward, and the gap was hardly more than a score of feet in width.

The watchers held their breath, antic.i.p.ating the moment of contact when the colliding walls should topple over and the two men be caught and crushed out of existence.

Eben Sharrow rose to his feet, and, aided by his spiked boots, walked along the unsteady baulk of timber and seized hold of Silk's uplifted hand, raising him cautiously until they stood side by side. The lumber-man was then seen to be pointing here and there to the face of the jam that they were approaching.

"That's right; that's right," muttered Bob Wilson. "They c'n do it just thar', I reckon. Eben knows. They're sure safe now, if they jump quick."

For many moments of thrilling suspense the two men were hidden from sight between the dark brown walls of groaning, splintering logs. But presently Sergeant Silk's red tunic appeared like a flash of vivid light as he leapt from point to point, scaling the perilous face of the writhing pile of logs, followed by the man he had saved.

Silk's face was grim and pale, and he was breathing deeply when he strode along the bank in his dripping clothes, and he only nodded when Percy Rapson ran up to him with his hat and belt.

Half-an-hour later he was seated on a log in front of the fire, wrapped in his blanket and overcoat and sipping from a bowl of hot pemmican soup, while he watched Percy holding his steaming tunic to the warmth.

On his knees lay his watch, his tobacco pouch, his pocket-book, and other possessions which he had taken from the pouches of his saturated clothes.

"Yes," he was saying. "That's the worst of getting into the water. It makes you so wet, and turns everything so messy. My 'bacca's all spoilt.

Watch is stopped, too. First time it has stopped ticking for a couple of years."

"It would have been heaps worse if you yourself had stopped," declared Percy, without looking round. "You ran a frightful risk. And all for the sake of a worthless lumber-jack."

"No man's life is worthless, Percy," Silk said reprovingly, putting aside the soup bowl and taking up his pocket-book and opening it.

"Snakes!" he exclaimed. "The people who sold me this pocket-book swore it was waterproof, and it's nothing of the kind! The papers are all wet."

"I hope that sketch of the canoe isn't spoilt," said Percy. "I should like you to give it me as a memento. May I have it?"

He glanced round now, and saw that Silk had spread out the drawing upon his knee, together with a fragment of white paper, which looked like the corner torn from an envelope, upon which there was a dull red stain.

"May you have it?" Silk smiled, folding the sketch and handing it to him. "Why, cert'nly. You're welcome to it. It has served its purpose."