At sundown the ground had dried to such a
degree that a horse could lift foot without raising with it an abnormal
portion of the Northwest. The wind veered still farther to the south,
blowing strong and warm, sucking greedily the surplus moisture from the
saturated earth. So we resolved ourselves into a committee of ways and
means and decided that since the footing promised to be normal in the
morning the troop would likely scatter out, might even move camp, and
therefore it behooved us to get in touch with them at once; accordingly
Piegan rode away to spend the night in the Police tents, with a tale of
horses strayed from Baker's outfit to account for his wandering. From
our nook in the ridge he could easily make it by riding a little after
dark.
"Goodell and Gregory and Hicks you know," said MacRae. "Bevans is a
second edition of Hicks, only not so tall by two or three inches--a
square-shouldered, good-looking brute, with light hair and steel-gray
eyes and a short brown mustache. He has an ugly scar--a
knife-cut--across the back of one hand; you can't mistake him if you get
sight of him. Stick around the camp in the morning if you can manage it,
till they start, and notice which way all those fellows go. The sooner
we get our hands on one or more of them the better we'll be able to get
at the bottom of this; I reckon we could find a way to make him talk.
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