Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/22

20 "Get into the scow and pole," said Tempest quietly. "We're wasting daylight."

"Get out of that strap," said Dick in sudden roughness. "You know you can't pull." And then Tempest looked him between the eyes.

"You're in a lone patrol, my man," he said. "But when you come in contact with your superiors you'll do them the honour of remembering that they are your superiors. Now, get into that scow—sharp."

He fitted the belt to his waist, for the broken arm was strapped over his breast, and trod forward to take up the slack. And in the trace before him Moonias bowed his black bullet head with the groan of a bull. Dick flung himself over the thwart and laid hands on the idle sweep; and behind his amusement at Tempest's moral reproof stood the uneasy knowledge that he was not obeying the superior officer only, but the superior man.

The hour dropped through brief twilight into dark. Sharp bush-scents moved on the quickening chill of the air. Stars opened wide and calm over the forest, laying reflections as calm on the river until the scow burst them into a myriad meteors. Back in the trails a brown bear swung his clumsy way and a red dog-fox flicked like a passing thought. That tense silence which is the essence of sound strengthened as the forest-life waked and walked. In the dusk the crashing of the two men on the bank marked their way. In the scow the third man trod the treadmill step to the sweep. But their bodies were hid from each other even as their hearts were hid.

Past a snake-fence and a clearing three Indian dogs came racing, pallid blurrs like strayed souls on the dark. A white-man's voice roared at them, and a white-man tread came down the river over the level-laid swathes of hay. And then Dick heard Randal of Pitcher's Portage calling:

"Give us a holt there. My—is that you, Sergeant? Well, I've got a fire an' some grub up to the shack. Turnin' cold, ain't it?"

The scow felt the new vigour of the pull and made a squattering, snuffling haste through the water. Round the bend Randal's home-lights swung in sight, and to Tem-