"Thought perhaps you hadn't noticed," the officer said. "None of you
other gentlemen noticed either, did you?"

The "other gentlemen" held a dogged, sulky silence. A girl cantered
through the gate of the stockade and up to the store. At sight of
Morse her eyes passed swiftly to Beresford. His answered smilingly
what she had asked. It was all over in a flash, but it told the man
from Montana who the informer was that had betrayed to the police the
place of the whiskey cache.

To the best of her limited chance, Jessie McRae was paying an
installment on the debt she owed Bully West and Tom Morse.




CHAPTER VIII

AT SWEET WATER CREEK


Before a fire of buffalo chips Constable Beresford and his prisoner
smoked the pipe of peace. Morse sat on his heels, legs crossed, after
the manner of the camper. The officer lounged at full length, an elbow
dug into the sand as a support for his head. The Montanan was
on parole, so that for the moment at least their relations were
forgotten.

"After the buffalo--what?" asked the American. "The end of the