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SERGEANT SILK

A New Series of Popular Books for Boys and Girls

THE   WARWICK   REWARDS.

Price 2s. each.

TITLES   FOR   BOYS.

TITLES   FOR   GIRLS.

SERGEANT SILK

THE PRAIRIE SCOUT

BY

ROBERT LEIGHTON

AUTHOR OF "THE CLEVEREST CHAP IN THE SCHOOL," "THE BRAVEST BOY IN THE CAMP," ETC.

JARROLDS

PUBLISHERS (LONDON) LTD.

CONTENTS

SERGEANT SILK

CHAPTER I

Sergeant Silk smiled at his companion's boyish enthusiasm for the open-air life of the plains. Percy had been sent out to Western Canada to learn farming, but there was no doubt that he was learning a lot that had no direct connection with agriculture. Owing largely to his friendship with Sergeant Silk, of the North-West Mounted Police, he was learning to be manly and self-reliant, and he was beginning to know so much scout-craft that his remark concerning the quickening of his powers of observation was quite justified.

"That is so," the sergeant acknowledged. "The prairie teaches you a lot. It's like being on the sea, where everything that isn't water or sky attracts your attention. I'm bound to say that your own eyesight is improving wonderfully by practice. You don't miss a great deal. What do you make of the stranger that we're coming up to?"

Percy glanced at the red-coated soldier policeman in sharp surprise.

"Stranger?" he repeated inquiringly. "I haven't noticed one. Where?"

Silk returned the boy's glance with a curious lift of the eyebrows.

"Why, I supposed it was your spotting him that prompted your remark about eyesight," he said lightly. And he pointed towards a clump of bushes some little distance in advance of them across the fresh green prairie grass. "He's sitting hunched up alongside of that patch of cactus scrub in front of us, with his head in his hands, as if he had something tremendously serious to think about. Ah, he's moving now. He hears us. What's he mooching around here for, I wonder?"

"You appear to know him?" said Percy.

Sergeant Silk nodded.

"I know him, yes. It's a chap named Charlie Fortescue."

Percy saw the stranger plainly now, a slightly built, rather good-looking young fellow, dressed as an ordinary plainsman, standing upright and looking expectantly towards the two riders who were approaching him. He waited until they came to a halt in front of him.

Sergeant Silk dropped his bridle rein over the horn of his saddle and slowly regarded the man from the toes of his boots to the crown of his wide felt hat.

"Something gone wrong, Charlie?" he casually inquired. "Where's your pony? What are you doing hanging around here, like a destitute tramp?"

Charlie shrugged his shoulders.

"That's sure what I am, Sergeant," he answered with an awkward attempt at a smile, "a destitute tramp."

"Eh?" exclaimed Silk. He evidently did not believe him. "D'you mind explaining? I don't understand—unless you mean that you've had a disagreement with old man Crisp?"

"You've hit the mark, first shot," said Charlie. "But it's something more than a mere disagreement. I've quitted the ranch. I'm not going back—ever."

"That's bad," reflected Sergeant Silk, taking out his pipe to indicate that he had leisure enough to listen to the explanation that he had invited. "Real bad, it is. You were such friends, he and you. He was shaping to take you into partnership, and—well, there's that pretty daughter of his. I've heard you were likely to marry her. Surely you haven't broken off with Dora, as well as her father?"

"I'm afraid so," Charlie gloomily answered. "I couldn't expect her to marry a man whom her father has accused of committing a crime."

"A crime?" Sergeant Silk looked at him in perplexity. "A crime?" he repeated. "That's the way of the wind, is it? Tell me about it."

Charlie Fortescue nibbled nervously at an end of his moustache.

"The worst of it is," he presently began to explain, "I haven't been able to prove my innocence. Appearances are against me."

He raised his dark eyes appealingly to the red-coated soldier policeman, and his face brightened as with a new hope. Percy Rapson was conscious that it was the face of a man of good class. It was almost aristocratic in its refinement of feature. And the tone of his voice was that of an educated Englishman as he added—

"Perhaps you can help me, Silk. You're a member of the North-West Mounted Police and accustomed to dealing with crimes. Perhaps you can try to get at the root of this one?"

Sergeant Silk struck a match and held the flame to the bowl of his pipe.

"Why, cert'nly," he said. "It is in my line. I shall be glad if I can clear you of suspicion. What are the circumstances? You may say whatever you like before my chum here—the Honourable Percy Rapson, late of Eton College, now of Rattlesnake Ranch."

He dismounted, and Percy followed his example. The three of them stood close together.

"You were right about my wishing to marry Dora Crisp," Fortescue resumed. "We've been engaged for a long time. We were to have been married next month. I had been saving up, on the quiet. But I never told Sam or Dora anything about it. I was keeping it for a surprise, see? I didn't want to say anything until I had saved off my own bat a sum equal to the pile that Sam had put aside to give her as her dowry.

"One day last week the old man sent me to Banff to look at a new reaping machine attachment he thought of buying, and he asked me also to call at the bank and cash a cheque for him. I drew the money—it was two hundred pounds in gold—and delivered it to him safely.

"'It's for Dora,' he told me, when, having carefully counted it, he swept it into a chamois leather bag and tied the bag round with a wisp of red tape. Then, signing to me to go with him, he went into the harness-room, and I watched him as he cunningly hid the bag of gold in a ventilation hole in the wall; high up, where it couldn't be seen or easily reached. 'It'll be safe there, Charlie,' he said with satisfaction. 'We'll let it stop there until the wedding morning. There's only you and me who know where it is. It's sure safe up there.'"

Sergeant Silk shook his head.

"I shouldn't have thought so," he said. "When was it missed?"

"It was last night that it was stolen," Fortescue explained. "Stolen! and I—I was accused of being the thief; though I'd never touched it, never even looked at it."

"And your own savings," pursued Silk. "Were they stolen, too?"

"No. That's where the whole complication came in," returned Charlie. "You see, Sam didn't know that I had any money of my own. He believed that I'd sent all that I saved home to my mother in England, and that I was really hard up, as I'd half pretended to be. And this morning, when he rushed into the house, wildly declaring that he'd been robbed, it was his belief that I was in want of money that made him so sure that I, and I alone, was the thief. No one else knew where the gold had been hidden. Who else could have taken it? He had heard me go downstairs in the middle of the night, and it was useless my protesting I'd only gone down to discover why the horses were restless in the stable, and why one of the dogs had barked.

"The more I protested, the more annoyed he grew. He was just mad with rage against me. He wouldn't listen to me when I asked him if it was likely that I, his future son-in-law, should steal money that was intended for my own sweetheart—money that was to go to the making of my own home. Nothing I could say would convince him. And at last he went so far as to demand that I should let him search my room and boxes, see?"

Charlie was anxiously watching Sergeant Silk's face as he spoke. But it betrayed no sign either of belief or of doubt.

"It wasn't until that moment that I realised how awkward was my situation," he went on. "I must have looked some guilty. I was certainly flustered. And very naturally; because, you see, my own money, my savings, which I kept upstairs in my trunk, happened also to be in English gold; and what was more suspicious and difficult to explain, it was the same in amount as the sum that had been stolen—two hundred pounds exactly; two hundred sovereigns. And I was supposed to be as poor as a church rat."

Sergeant Silk was puffing vigorously at his pipe, but he paused to say, very quietly—

"That was awkward, real awkward for you, Charlie. But, of course, you let him search your room? You didn't hide anything? You explained how you happened to have money of your own?"

"I hid nothing," declared Charlie. "But his finding and counting the money seemed to be the final proof of my guilt, and I wasn't able to show how any one else could be guilty."

"That's the important point," urged Silk. "You've got to prove that somebody else than yourself—one of the ranch hands, one of the farm servants, or even some stranger, had discovered where that money was hidden and could have stolen it. You say the horses were restless; you say a dog barked. Did that mean nothing? Say, you'd better leave this affair in my hands. I'll ride along to the ranch right now and have a jaw with Sam Crisp. Are you coming back with me?"

Charlie Fortescue's face went very red under its sunburn. He shook his head resolutely.

"No," he objected. "I'm not going back. Sam Crisp believes me guilty. He has denounced me as a contemptible thief; and in Dora's hearing, too. I couldn't face Dora. I shall never look into her eyes or take her hand in mine again until her father owns that I'm guiltless. Go yourself, if you will. I've told you everything. I'm not going back. If I'm wanted, either to be arrested as a thief or apologised to as an honest man, you'll not have much difficulty in finding me."

Sergeant Silk mounted to the saddle.

"Very well," he agreed. "So long!"

CHAPTER II

"Seems to me things look rather rocky against Charlie," Percy observed. "The evidence is dead against him, and that yarn of his about saving up on the quiet isn't very convincing—especially when he wants you to believe that the money he'd collected was so exactly the same amount that Sam Crisp had saved. Two hundred pounds; neither more nor less. It's too much of a coincidence, too much like a story made up after the event. Assuming that Sam Crisp didn't rob himself, it's perfectly clear that Charlie took the money, since no one else knew where it was hidden."

"That remains to be seen, however," rejoined Silk. "I happen to have been inside of Crisp's harness-room. I happen to have noticed the hole in the wall that Charlie referred to; and it isn't the first time that it has been used as a hiding-place for articles of value, by others, as well as Sam Crisp himself. It was foolish of him to leave a bag of sovereigns there. He almost deserves to have lost it. He might as well have left it on the front doorstep."

"Then you don't seriously believe that Charlie Fortescue was the thief?" questioned Percy.

Sergeant Silk did not answer, but spurred his horse to a canter, which was continued until they came beyond a bluff of birches and in sight of Crisp's homestead, lying in the midst of its blossoming orchards and far-stretching fields of green wheat.

"That rain last night has done a heap of good to the old man's crops," he remarked as he drew to a halt at the ford before crossing the swollen creek.

He was looking down at the moist ground of the sloping bank, where there were the impressions of a man's boots.

"I suppose you're thinking that Charlie must have got a wetting, wading across here on foot?" said Percy.

"No. I was thinking of the man who crossed a few hours in advance of him on horseback," returned Silk. "He appears to have been in something of a hurry, by the look of those hoof-marks. Be careful in the middle of the stream. Follow my lead."

At the farther side of the creek he dismounted, giving his bridle to Percy to hold.

Percy watched him as he strode away in the direction of a clump of dwarf oaks, pausing now and again to examine the ground. He went in among the trees and was out of sight for several minutes, and when again he appeared he was walking along the cart track by the edge of Crisp's orchard. Percy joined him with their two horses.

"What's that you've got in your hand?" he inquired, as the sergeant raised his foot to the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle.

"Looks like some fellow's cloth cap," said Silk, holding the thing suspended between a finger and thumb. "I found it over there, hanging from a tree branch. I guess the owner lost it while he was making his way through the bush. He couldn't find it, anyhow, for all his searching and groping about the ground."

"Do you mean he was blind?" Percy exclaimed.

"Blind? No!" Silk smiled. "I mean he lost it—had it brushed off his head—when it was dark night. If it had been daylight, he'd have seen it dangling from the twig that caught it as he passed."

"And why have you brought it away with you?" Percy was curious to know. "It doesn't look worth restoring to its owner. I should have let it hang."

"I suppose you would," nodded Silk. "But although it's only a worn-out cloth cap, heavy with rain, I'm interested in it—very much interested. I've learnt a lot about its owner already."

"I don't see how," said Percy. "What do you know about him, anyhow?"

Sergeant Silk thrust the cap under his arm and took the rein in his fingers.

"Not more than you could have found out yourself," he answered. "I followed his trail and discovered that he'd left his pony hitched to a tree, back of the bluff there, while he went on foot through the orchard towards Crisp's homestead, coming back the same way. It was when he was returning that he lost his cap; and, not finding it, he mounted and rode away. He's a tall man. He has coarse red hair, and he has lost the forefinger of his left hand."

Percy stared at his companion in surprise.

"Did you discover all that in the few minutes you've been prowling over there in the bush?" he asked.

"Why, cert'nly," Silk intimated, touching his broncho's flank with his heel.

"How do you know he is tall?" Percy interrogated.

"Simply because the branch that swept off his cap was high—on a level with my own head."

"How about the colour of his hair?"

"Oh, well," returned the sergeant, "that's only an inference made from the fact that I found two or three red hairs clinging to the lining of his cap. It's likely that the rest of his hair is the same colour. But the only thing I'm certain about is that he has only three fingers on his left hand. You see, he'd been groping about, searching for his cap, leaving his traces on the ground made moist by the rain, and the impressions of his left hand in the mud always showed the absence of a finger."

"I see," nodded Percy. "And what does your discovery amount to? Do you connect this chap with the robbery of Sam Crisp's bag of gold?"

"Well," returned Silk, "it's a kind of proof that some one was prowling around the ranch in the middle of the night. Certainly he appears to have wanted to keep his visit a secret. But maybe Sam will explain. I see he's waiting to receive us."

The ranch master met them on the grassy clearing in front of his dwelling.

"Glad to see you, Sergeant," he began. "Say, if you'd happened along a few hours earlier you might have had the job of taking a thief red-handed."

"Indeed?" said Silk, assuming ignorance of his meaning.

Sam Crisp then proceeded to tell him of the theft of his bag of gold, showing that he had not the slightest doubt that Charlie Fortescue was the culprit.

"Did you wish to give him into custody?" the sergeant inquired.

"Dunno 'bout that," demurred Sam. "You see, having proved him guilty, I kinder took the law into my own hands and fired the ungrateful scoundrel off the premises. In a way, I'm satisfied. I've escaped having a thief and a liar for son-in-law. I've saved Dora from having a mean, low-down impostor for husband. And I've got possession of the stolen money that he'd hidden away in the bottom of his trunk. No, I'm well rid of him, and I don't reckon that his being in prison would do me any sort of good."

Sergeant Silk looked at him keenly.

"Doesn't it occur to you that he may be innocent?" he asked very quietly. "Could no one else have got into the harness-room?"

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!" protested Sam. "What's the good of supposing any such thing? The money was found in Charlie's box, and if he denied his guilt until he was blue in the face, I wouldn't believe him."

"So?" reflected Silk. "Well, just as a matter of form, I'll have a look round in the harness-room, before going on. Give my respects to Miss Dora."

Percy Rapson accompanied him to the now open doorway of the little room. On the threshold Silk paused, examined the blurred footmarks on the moist earthen floor, glanced at the ventilation hole high up in the wall just below the rafters, then shook his head.

"I'm afraid Sam is right," he muttered as he turned away. "Unless——" He touched Percy's elbow. "Come round to the back of this shanty," he said.

Percy watched him searching along the ground and saw him stand still, looking down at some curious marks on a bare patch of wet soil.

"Do you see? Do you understand?" Silk asked in an eager voice. "Some chap has been crawling round here on all fours. See the round marks of his knees—the sharp grooves made by the toes of his boots, and—and the impressions of his hands?"

"My hat!" cried Percy. "Why, the left hand has only three fingers!"

"Seems we're on his trail," smiled the sergeant. "D'you see that dirty old packing-case? Just lift it and put it against the wall. So, that's right. Now stand on it and see if you can reach up to where you see that loose slate. Ah!" he exclaimed as Percy obeyed him, "I see you're not tall enough. And neither is Charlie Fortescue. Let me show you."

He took Percy's place on the box, and, standing on his toes, reached to the slate, moved it, and thrust his hand in at the opening.

"Say, there wasn't any need for Sam Crisp to lock the door when his bag of gold could be reached from the outside," he declared. "The man who took it has left his mark on the wall, see, with his muddy hand. It doesn't matter to us how he found out that the money was there. He has stolen it and carried it off. And I guess I know where we shall find him. Come along! Let's hustle!"

Late in the afternoon of that same day Sergeant Silk and Percy Rapson rode into a logging camp among the mountains and put up their horses for the night. Work for the day was not yet over, and Percy was glad of the opportunity of watching the lumber-men who were busily felling and trimming the immense trees, and hauling the great logs along the skidways.

The forest glades were filled with the shrieking of steam saws, the panting of donkey-engines, and the thudding blows of axe and adze.

Percy was fascinated by the unfamiliar sight of a gigantic log coming jerkily up a steep incline, butting at boulders, colliding with trees, ploughing deep furrows in the earth and smashing and crashing through the thicket.

"Keep clear of that cable, mister," one of the men warned him. "It might break. You see, when it's hauling a ten-ton log at full steam, and the log fouls a rock, something's sure to give, and it's usually the cable. It wouldn't be nice for you to be hit by one of the flying ends."

Percy did not look round at the man; neither did he stand back, and the warning had hardly been repeated when there came an ominous, jarring, crunching noise, followed by a sound that was like the firing of a great gun. Something resembling a coiled snake whistled through the air towards him, and in the same instant he was seized from behind and flung bodily backward.

When he rose to his feet, unhurt, he saw what had happened. The man who had saved him—a tall, red-bearded man—had been struck on the back of the head by a flying end of the broken cable. Sergeant Silk was kneeling at his side. Percy saw him take hold of the dead man's left hand and noticed that the hand had no forefinger.

"It's Dick Ashton," murmured one of the men who had gathered round. "Poor Dick, he's done for, sure. And him only just come in for a fortune. Went to draw it from the bank only yesterday. Wonder if he got it, eh? He seemed some satisfied with himself when he rode into camp this morning, hatless and covered with mud."

Sergeant Silk unbuttoned Dick's vest and there fell out a chamois leather bag, which sent forth the unmistakable jingle of coins. As the sergeant took possession of it, he glanced upward at Percy Rapson.

"I think we have proved that Charlie Fortescue is innocent," he said. "Don't you?"

"Yes," Percy nodded. "But I wouldn't tell any of Dick's chums, here, anything about it, eh? You'll keep it quiet, won't you?"

"Why, cert'nly!" agreed Silk.

CHAPTER III

He was their hero, and they were proud to count him also as their friend. They admired him especially because he was such a splendid horseman; he could manage any horse you liked to offer him, and could subdue even the wildest of bucking bronchos. He was a sure shot, too, with rifle and revolver, and an extraordinarily fine swimmer. He excelled in all the outdoor exercises that appeal to most boys, and as for pluck and endurance, he was a constant marvel.

Most of all, they respected him for his knowledge of woodcraft and his skill in scouting. He knew all the secrets of the plains, he could tell you the name of every flower and tree and bird and beast, and for following up a trail, for seeing and hearing and smelling and drawing correct conclusions from every little sign that any one else would pass by unnoticed, he was quite as clever as any Indian.

Naturally, his work as a member of the Mounted Police and his duty of going on lonely patrol over prairie and mountain, gave him plenty of opportunity for exercising these powers, and somehow he had the luck of being always at hand when there was any danger to be faced, or when a man of fearless courage and ready resource was wanted to carry out some perilous adventure.

"I don't believe Silk knows the meaning of real danger," said Percy Rapson one day when he and Dan Medlicott were discussing one of the sergeant's exploits that they had just heard of. "I wonder what he's got up his sleeve to-day. You may bet he's got something. He always has when he's more than usually quiet, as he is now."

"You might ask him," urged Dan. "He's out there on the verandah."

"It would look too inquisitive," objected Percy.

"Well, if you don't, I will," Dan resolved. "I'll go right now, while he's alone."

Sergeant Silk had called in at the homestead on his way along the trail to the depot of the North-West Mounted Police at Canmore, and had been induced by Mrs. Medlicott to stay to supper and give his pony a needed rest.

The meal was over, and he was now on the point of going round to saddle the mare and resume his lonely journey, lingering only, as it appeared, to smoke a pipe. But since coming out into the verandah he had, as his young friends had noticed, suddenly become unaccountably morose.

He was standing with his shoulder against a post of the verandah when Dan went out to him.

"Say, Sergeant," said Dan, making a successful grab at a mosquito that buzzed about his head, "you're gloomy, all of a sudden, aren't you? Anything gone wrong?"

Silk turned his calm, blue eyes upon the boy beside him.

"Can't say that anything has gone particularly wrong, Dannie," he answered slowly. "At least, not with myself. I'm just a bit puzzled, that's all, trying to figure out a problem that occurred to me this afternoon as I rode along through the forest trail." He blew a cloud of tobacco smoke into the midst of the mosquitoes. "Dare say you could help me, some. Two heads are better than one, you know."

Dan Medlicott laughed his free, boyish laugh.

"I'm afraid mine isn't a whole lot of good alongside of yours," he said. "What's your difficulty?"

Sergeant Silk did not answer immediately. But presently he opened a button in the front of his brown canvas tunic, and, thrusting in his hand, drew forth something which looked like a long parcel, in wrappings of dirty white cloth.

Dan watched him unwinding the wrappings. They were ominously stained with ragged smears of a dull red colour.

"My!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "What have you got there? A dagger!"

"Looks so," Silk nodded as the cloth dropped to his feet. He laid the weapon across his left hand and held it for the boy's inspection. "What d'you think of it?" he asked.

Dan bent over it without touching it. The weapon had a long, slender, double-edged blade, which tapered to a very sharp point. The handle was of ivory, decorated with bands of tarnished silver, wrought in a curious Oriental design.