"A hundred of him," he muttered, "and they could take the whole bunch of bohunks. If he's a specimen of the wild Indian, Lord only knows what right we had to clean them out of the land. Mr. Torrance would say it was because they never build railways."

 

To the bohunks, mildly staring after the vanishing halfbreed, his method of reaching the top was merely foolishly exhausting; but several weeks of acquaintance had taught them to accept his silent peculiarities with nothing more than casual wonder, though they disliked him for his unsociability, for the cold contempt that twisted his lips, and for the stifled volcano that smouldered within his squinting eyes. They hated him more than ever now, with a hatred that could be liquidated only in blood. Their own criminal schemes that had taken the lives of two of their companions they did not consider, but the man who had exposed the cause of the deaths, and had made them sweat unrequited hours for exercising the only weapon they knew in their relentless fight against their bosses, must answer to them for his temerity and treason. Hereafter the halfbreed was just prey; sooner or later he would fall before the slumbering fires that knew no law but the knife, no restraint but fear.

 

Torrance looked up at the shadow in the doorway.

 

"Hey? Where did you come from?"

 

"Yuh sent fer me, didn't yuh?"

 

"I thought you were down bossing the Koppy job."

 

"Sartin. We jest was through when he tol' me."

 

"But Conrad only got down there; I saw him." Torrance squinted sternly at the halfbreed.

 

Mavy nodded. "I come by the trestle."

 

"The h--you did!"

 

The halfbreed shrugged his shoulders. The contractor examined him with renewed interest.

 

"How'd you like to be an underforeman?"

 

Again the wide, sloping shoulders shrugged.

 

"Say, you don't mean you'd turn down an extra dollar a day?"

 

"Koppy's underforeman, ain't he?" The halfbreed spat with disgust, and Torrance chuckled sympathetically.

 

"If I did that every time I felt like it about Koppy, I'd be as dry as a camp-meeting in three days. You're not afraid of him, are you?"

 

Mavy grinned.

 

"Because Koppy's going to be some busy for the next few weeks hanging out under that trestle, and we'll need another underforeman perhaps."

 

The squinting eyes took on a sudden gleam, even a keen anticipation that could not escape the contractor's attention.

 

"An' wud I be bossin' 'em about, them bohunks? Wud yuh let me do as I liked?"

 

"Well," smiled Torrance, "not quite what you liked; you'd be under the foreman and me, you know."

 

The halfbreed sighed. "That's allus the way. Suthin's allus foolin' me. 'Cause ef yuh'd gi' me a free hand thar'd be a dozen er so less bohunks the fus' night fer supper. I jes' natcherl hate hidin' my feelin's." He repeated the sigh more hopelessly. "Yuh'd never git the work did; thar ain't bohunks enough in the world."

 

Torrance clutched his hand; here in an unexpected quarter was a man to his liking.

 

"If I could," he whispered, "I'd make you foreman this instant, and round up all the bohunks out of jail. But that ain't what I want you for. Are you a real Indian?"

 

"Naw," drawled Mavy. "I'm a Chinee, with a bit o' Pole thrown in."

 

Torrance showed he could appreciate humour like that. "I mean, can you follow a trail?"

 

The halfbreed's eyes danced. "Take a run in the bush," he said proudly, "an' to-morrow I'll take yuh over it agin t' the foot. Kin I foller a trail! Gor-swizzle! It's wot I done most o' my born days."

 

The contractor ruminated. Much as he dreaded the interference of the Police in the matter of the stolen horses, he hesitated about entrusting their recovery to this strange Indian; and a tardy thought came to him that the Police might question it. He cast the die in favour of his first plan.

 

"You know them horses we been losing?"

 

Mavy kept his eyes fixed on the contractor's face, but he knew the location of door and window with the unerring sense of the trapped wild thing.

 

"If you can find the thief--or who he is--there's under-foreman's pay for you. A dollar a day more--if money's any use to you. Will you take it on?"

 

"No."

 

The reply was prompt and uncompromising. Torrance, flaming as usual before unexpected opposition, was about to fire him on the spot, when the noise of metal against metal drew Tressa to the door.

 

"It's Constable Williams and a new Policeman--a Sergeant. Father's here, Mr. Williams. He was sending for you. There's been a dreadful accident. A piece of the trestle fell and killed two of the men."

 

As Tressa stepped back to let the Policeman enter, the halfbreed slid unobtrusively to the other side of the room and stood in the semi-obscurity facing the doorway, his back tight against the wall.

 

"Yes," stormed Torrance, "and if it had killed a dozen of them it would have served them right. They'd taken out the bolts and cut a rope."

 

Constable Williams, blinking at the sudden darkness of the sitting room, stepped aside and made way for a straight, bronzed figure wearing the stripes of a Sergeant, who was already acknowledging with a winning smile Tressa's unspoken welcome.

 

"Torrance, shake hands with Sergeant Mahon. He's been sent up to clear--"

 

The halfbreed, his squinting eyes staring as at a ghost, seemed to make only a single movement. Then the entire window crashed out, and a pair of heavy boots disappeared over the sill.

 

For one brief moment the contractor and his daughter were stupefied. Not so Sergeant Mahon. With the crash he was at the door, tugging at his belt. But Tressa was in the way, and by the time he reached the open only a tiny cloud of dust rising above the edge of the steep drop to the river bottom told the way the halfbreed had gone.

 

The Sergeant rushed to the bank and looked down the hundred-and-fifty foot wall with a gasp. No need for a revolver there. With a shudder he drew back.

 

Torrance stormed up beside him, rifle in hand.

 

"Where is he? Why don't you shoot? Let me--"

 

The Sergeant, with a deft twist, secured the rifle.

 

"What's he been doing?"

 

"Doing?" yelled the contractor. "Didn't you see that whole window--didn't you--"

 

"We don't shoot men for that."

 

Tressa came to the rescue:

 

"He's an Indian, one of the bohunks. I didn't know he'd done anything. We were talking to him when you came. Daddy wanted to make him underforeman, but he refused. And now"--she peered in awe over the edge--"he's killed."

 

"Guilty conscience, I guess," commented the Sergeant. "Lots of them are taken that way when they see the uniform--though I don't recall quite such a sudden and successful attempt at suicide."

 

"Suicide!" snorted Torrance, who was lying down where he could see the scene below. "Suicide nothing! That chap's a human cat--or he ain't human at all. He came up by the trestle; this is just another way to get down. Look at that dust! He's not falling, not him! He's just kicking up a dust so we can't see, and all the time he's breaking his up record. He's not dropping fast enough to hurt himself . . . but, by hickory! where he finds toe-holds on that cliff beats me."

 

They were all craning over. Down below, the bohunks were scattering like frightened sheep, while those further out gaped. The dust-cloud ............