But men we had known and
trails we had followed furnished us plenty of grist for the
conversational mill. Our talk ranged from the Panhandle to the Canada
line, while our horses jogged steadily southward.
Dark came down on the four of us as we topped Manyberries Ridge, and
seven or eight miles of rolling prairie still lay between us and
Pend d' Oreille. If Mac had been alone he would have made the post by
sundown, for the Mounted Police rode picked horses, the best money could
buy. But it was a long jaunt to Benton, and the rest of us were inclined
to an easier pace, that we might husband the full strength of our
grass-fed mounts for any emergency that should arise on the way.
With the coming of night a pall of clouds blew out of the west,
blanketing the stars and shutting off their hazy light completely, and
when the sky was banked full from horizon to horizon, the dark enveloped
us like a black sea-mist. Once or twice we startled a little bunch of
buffalo, and listened to the thud of their hoofs as they fled through
the sultry, velvet gloom; but for the most our ride was attended by no
sounds save the night song of frogs in the upland sloughs and the hollow
clank of steel bits keeping time to the creak of saddle-leather.
Halfway down the long slope MacRae and I, riding in the lead, pulled up
to make a cigarette on the brink of a straight-walled coulee that we
could sense but not see.
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