fire
coming, and the smoke so thick I couldn't tell a hill from a hollow. I
waited a while longer--I was in this brush up here"--she pointed to a
place almost opposite--"and in a little while I heard more shooting, and
in a minute or so, he"--indicating Hicks--"came splashing through the
river. He was on the sand-bar before I could see him clearly, and coming
straight toward where I was huddled in the brush. Oh, but I was
frightened, and before I knew it, almost, I poked the gun between the
branches and fired at his head as straight as I could--and he fell off
his horse. Then I ran, before any more of them came. And that's really
all there is to it. I was plodding up the river, when I heard Gordon
shouting two or three hundred yards behind. Of course I knew his voice,
and stopped. But dear me! this seems like a bad dream, or maybe I ought
to say a good one. I hope you won't all disappear in the smoke."

"Don't you worry," MacRae assured her. "When we vanish in the smoke
we'll take you with us."

After we had eaten we made a systematic search of packs and
saddle-pockets, and when we had finished there was more of the root of
all evil in sight than I have laid my eyes on at any one time before or
since. The gold that had drawn us into the game was there in the same
long, buckskin sacks, a load for one horse. The government money, looted
from the paymaster, part gold coin and part bills, they had divided, and
it was stowed in various places. Lessard's saddle-pockets were crammed,
and likewise those of Hicks and Gregory. Bevans' _anqueros_, which I had
taken from his dead horse, yielded a goodly sum. Altogether, we counted
some seventy-odd thousand dollars, exclusive of the gold-dust in the
sacks.

"There's a good deal more than that, according to Goodell's figures,"
MacRae commented. "Lessard must have got away with quite a sum from the
post. I daresay the pockets of the combination hold the rest. But I
don't hanker to search a dead man, and that can wait till we get to
Walsh."

"Yuh goin' t' lug this coyote bait t' Fort Walsh?" Piegan inquired. "I'd
leave 'em right here without the ceremony uh plantin'. An' I vote right
here an' now t' neck these other two geesers together an' run 'em off'n
a high bank into deep water."

"I'd vote with you, so far as my personal feeling in the matter goes,"
MacRae replied. "But we've got a lot of mighty black marks against us,
right now, and we're going in there to relate a most am