Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail by Pseudonym Ralph Connor
page 7 of 390 (01%)
a man of courage, too, unquestioned, and with that bulldog spirit that
sees things through to a finish. To these qualities it was that he owed
his present command, for it was no insignificant business to keep the
peace and to make the law run along the line of the Canadian Pacific
Railway through the Kicking Horse Pass during construction days.

The half-breed had been but a few minutes with the Chief when the
orderly was again startled out of his military decorum by the
bursting open of the Superintendent's door and the sharp rattle of the
Superintendent's orders.

"Send Sergeant Ferry to me at once and have my horse and his brought
round immediately!" The orderly sprang to attention and saluted.

"Yes, sir!" he replied, and swiftly departed.

A few minutes' conference with Sergeant Ferry, a few brief commands to
the orderly, and the Superintendent and Sergeant were on their way down
the steep hillside toward the tote-road that led eastward through the
pass. A half-hour's ride brought them to a trail that led off to the
south, into which the Superintendent, followed by the Sergeant,
turned his horse. Not a word was spoken by either man. It was not the
Superintendent's custom to share his plans with his subordinate officers
until it became necessary. "What you keep behind your teeth," was a
favorite maxim with the Superintendent, "will harm neither yourself nor
any other man." They were on the old Kootenay Trail, for a hundred years
and more the ancient pathway of barter and of war for the Indian tribes
that hunted the western plains and the foothill country and brought
their pelts to the coast by way of the Columbia River. Along the lower
levels the old trail ran, avoiding, with the sure instinct of a skilled
DigitalOcean Referral Badge