en a twig
snapped and his heart beat nervously.

The first hint that he was heard came with the winding of an arm like a
band of steel round his neck, while another held his arms to his side
so that he could not fight. The hand about his neck dropped instantly
to his mouth, as he braced himself against the relentless grip. Then
he knew that his captor was as anxious as he not to be heard.

He was lifted from his feet, his head still in chancery and his mouth
closed. He could hear the meeting breaking up, the crunching passage
of the silent bohunks returning to the camp. Suddenly he was dropped,
and a shadow faded noiselessly into the other shadows of night.

"Mavy!" he called in a low voice. "Mavy!"

Only two dull taps came back to him from the shadows.

CHAPTER XII

SERGEANT MAHON SKIRTS DEATH

Blue Pete, alias Peter Maverick, alias anything that seemed to suit the
varied occasions of his checkered career, thrust aside the curtain of
foliage covering the hiding place of his new raft. There was no reason
why he should visit the raft just then; he could have no possible use
for it until he had in his hands those two horses up in Torrance's
stable. But ever since he had been forced to knock Koppy's pointing
rifle from his hands to save Juno the half breed had been oppressed by
a thousand fears.

He did not understand the bohunks--he did not want to. In his vivid
life he had met most kinds of men, but the wild Continental scum that
took to railway construction as its own special line of effort was
beyond his experience. Hitherto he had been able to anticipate the
villainies of his enemies--and in some of them he himself had
revelled--but no one had yet charted the designs of creatures like
Koppowski and his comrades.

Even as the foliage parted Blue Pete knew why he had looked. The raft
was gone. He was not surprised, but his anger was none the less for
that. With a muffled oath he let the foliage fall and dropped to the
ground with the intuitive sense of the wild at evidence of an enemy.

A moment's thought raised him to his feet again, to strike recklessly
back along the river's brink into the bush. Koppy and his crew, he
knew, were busy about the bridge at that hour; the whole out-of-doors
was his.

Blue Pete, a name once on the lips of every rancher and cowboy, sheriff
and Mounted Policeman, from the Montana Badlands to Medicine Hat--once
cowboy and rustler, again cowboy and Mounted Pol