"feller." The steers were not on the
St. Onge reserve. Thus Angus was up against a blank wall. Nobody would
deal openly in stock plainly branded. Garland knew as much as anybody of
transactions in stock, but he had heard nothing which might give a clew
to the missing steers.

With the passage of time Garland and Angus were on terms again, though
naturally there was little cordiality. But apparently Garland retained
no active ill-feeling. The occurrences of that night were known to
nobody but the three participants. As for Garland himself having had
anything to do with the steers, it seemed out of the question. He had
never been mixed up in any shady transactions, and apart from that,
handling stolen stock would be too risky for him. There were only a few
white men who were not above all suspicion; and these there was no
reason at all to suspect. But for that matter there was no more reason
to suspect any Indian. Rennie, however, had a species of logic all his
own.

"No reason!" he grunted. "Why, you say yourself there ain't no reason to
suspect a white man. Then it's got to be an Injun, ain't it? Sure! On
gen'ral principles it's a cinch."

But Angus did not hold with this view. Though he had no special
affection for Indians--as few people who know them have--in his opinion
they were no worse than other people in the matter of honesty. The older
men he would trust with anything. Some of them, especially the chief, a
venerable and foxy old buck named Paul Sam, had been friends of his
father.

"I'll have a talk with old Paul Sam the first time I see him," he told
Rennie. "He's as straight as they make them."

"Well, I guess he's the best of the bunch," Rennie admitted.

A day or two afterward Angus met Paul Sam on the range, looking for
ponies. Though the Indian was old, he sat his paint pony as easily as a
young man. In his youth he must have been as straight and clean-cut as
a lance, and even the more than three score and ten snows which had
silvered his hair had bent his shoulders but little. He was accompanied
by his granddaughter, Mary, a girl of Jean's age, who, being his last
surviving relative, was as the apple of his eye. He had sent her to
mission school and denied her nothing. As he owned many horses and a
large band of cattle, Mary had luxuries unknown to most Indian girls.
She was unusually good-looking and a good deal spoiled, though Paul Sam,
being of the old school, cherished certain primitive ideas