AN IDLE AFTERNOON.


For the next hour or two I poked aimlessly around the post buildings,
chafing at the forced inaction and wondering what I would better do
after I'd gone with the squad of redcoats to those graves and helped
bring the bodies in. Even if I had a pack-horse and a grub-stake, it
would be on a par with chasing a rainbow for me to start on a lone hunt
for Hank Rowan's _cache_. I didn't know the Writing-Stone country, and a
man had no business wandering up and down those somber ridges alone,
away from the big freight-trails, unless he was anxious to be among the
"reported missing"--which he sure would be if a bunch of non-treaty
Indians ever got within gunshot of him. I damned Major Lessard earnestly
for what I considered his injustice to MacRae, and wondered if he would
send his troopers out to look for that hypothetical gold-dust. I didn't
see how he could avoid making a bluff at doing so, even if he secretly
classed Rutter's story as a fairy-tale, and I promised myself to find
out what he was going to do before I started in the morning.

While I was sitting with my back against the shaded wall of troop G's
barrack, turning this over in my mind, a Policeman with the insignia of
a sergeant on his sleeve came sauntering leisurely by. He took me in
with an appraising glance, and stopped.

"How d'ye do," he greeted, with a friendly nod. "You're the man that
came in with MacRae, aren't you?"

I laconically admitted that I was.

"The k. o. has detailed me to bring in the bodies of the two men who