Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/257

 big fellow in a red shirt you could see farther than a semaphore arm.

Now, I don't say those Indians were attracted by the gold rush to Coyote Bend. Coyote Bend, or any other place, old or new, stale or prosperous, would get its share of the redskins. Where they came from or where they went nobody knew. They'd drop in from nowhere, and, if they liked the place, they'd grunt and settle down for a spell; if they didn't like it, they'd grunt, in benediction or otherwise, and leave.

I'm not saying they smelled the whisky in that train. I'm not saying they knew Clancy was importing fire water, and they were just there to feast their eyes on the barrels and meditate on what was inside. I'm not saying anything at all about that, or what followed. There's only one man that perhaps might have explained it—I say "perhaps" because he never did; and also, because he knew Indian nature as well as any white man in the West. That was Perley.

Whether Perley even knew that Clancy was at the Bend or not, I don't know. I only know that he could have known it if he'd bothered to read the waybills; and it was likewise on the cards that he might have learned the day before, down at Big Cloud, that the whisky was going up the following morning. I don't know, and that's straight. Sometimes I think he did; sometimes I think he didn't. I don't know.

Anyway, Lee slid to the ground as the train stopped, and went back to the car that held the consignment for the Bend. As he fumbled with the door, he got a whiff of raw spirit that nearly knocked him over. And