breath. He simply said that Hans died after telling us that they had
been attacked, and that the gold was hidden at Writing-Stone. And
Lessard, as I said before, had passed up the gold episode at the time;
all his concern seemed to be for the robbers' apprehension, which was
natural enough since a crime had undoubtedly been committed and he bore
the responsibility of catching and punishing the perpetrators. The
restoration of stolen goods was probably dwarfed in his mind by the
importance of capturing the stealers.

I was vastly interested in that phase of it, too, for I realized that a
speedy gathering in of those men of the mask was my only chance to lay
hold of La Pere's ten thousand; and I had a theory that they were hardly
the sort to be content with that sum, and that Hank Rowan's _cached_
gold would be an excellent bait for them, if it could be uncovered.
Those steadily reiterated phrases, "raw gold--on the rock" might have
some understandable meaning if one were on the spot, but MacRae had kept
that to himself--and I wasn't running a bureau of information for
Lessard's benefit. The Canadian government might trust him, but I
wouldn't--not if he took oath on a stack of Bibles, and gave a cast-iron
bond to play fair. I couldn't give any sound reason for feeling that
way, beyond the shabby treatment he'd given MacRae. But somehow the
man's personality grated on me. Lessard was of the type, rare enough,
that can't be overlooked if one comes in contact with it; a big,
dominant, magnetic brute type that rouses either admiration or
resentment in other ordinary mortals; the kind of a man that women
become fascinated with, and other men invariably hate--and sometimes
fear. I didn't stop to analyze my feeling toward him, just then; but I
had the impulse to keep what little I knew to myself, and I obeyed the
promptings of the sixth sense.