CHAPTER XV

UNDER SUSPICION

None of the usual greetings of the Northern trail were offered Seymour as he rode up to the group. Instead, he found himself the target for a battery of frowning glances. The men presented a stolid front of frigid scrutiny. The probability flashed upon him that, as the first stranger to reach the scene, he was under suspicion in connection with the crime.

The sergeant stopped his horse and was about to dismount when there was a movement among the men. A short, stout man, from whose ample belt dangled a small cannon of a revolver, waddled forth to stand before him.

"What's happened?" asked Seymour quickly deciding to say nothing of his previous visit.

"That's what we're goin' to find out," said the fat man in that shrill small voice with which humans of undue girth often are afflicted. "Who're you?"

This question was as natural as Seymour's own, but the manner in which it was asked put him on edge. And since Bart had appropriated his name along with his uniform, he could not answer truthfully without laying himself open to a further explanation than he proposed to make at that moment.

"As for that, who're you?" he snapped back.

"I'm Deputy Coroner Samuel Hardley." The speech was pompous; so was his turning back of a coat lapel to exhibit a nickle-plated badge of office. "I'm also deputy sheriff and represent the law of British Columbia in Gold."

Seymour had suspected his interrogator's identity; was ready with his "Glad to meet you, chief."

"And I've got authority to make you answer my questions," piped the deputy. "Where you from and what's your business?"

"From the Caribou country by way of the Old Sun trail," Seymour answered truthfully enough. "There's my outfit." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the pack horse which stood with prospector's equipment in broadside view. "That tells you what my business is."

"Be ready to prove it. What you know about this murder?"

The sergeant wished he knew just how the Duperow girl stood in this matter. Probably, for reasons of her own, she had gone on before any of the town party had arrived--possibly because she had heard them coming. If any of them had seen her, it seemed evident that she had not mentioned his participation in the discovery, or that he was beating the bush on the case. Yet, after all her seeming frankness and her keen personal interest in the victim, why had she "slid out." Since he could not answer that mental query, he decided on reticence in answering the deputy's spoken one.

"I don't know anything about it," he replied with no appreciable delay, although without accenting the "know," as he should have done in strict truth.

"Queer you should come ambling along with Seymour of the Royal Mounted lying in the road not yet cold," grumbled Hardley. "Yes sir-ee; it looks right queer to me. I think I'd better take you in on suspicion."

Seymour bore down on him with a most direct glance, the blue of his eyes almost black in their intensity--black as the ears of Kaw between which he was forced to look for exact focus. "And I think you'd better do nothing of the sort--on suspicion. I'm a Canadian citizen; I have and know my rights."

The sergeant, of course, was running a sheer bluff. The provincial officer might have placed him under arrest; but to suffer detention was not in Seymour's program, for relief from it probably would require the disclosing of his identity at a time when he felt he could work more to advantage under cover. In the brief moment of their roadside controversy, he had "sized" his man and believed him one who would yield to a stronger will without other than ocular demonstration.

But he did not have time to prove his estimate of Hardley. Aid, or interference--whichever way one looked at it--came from an unexpected quarter.

"The stranger's right, Sam," spoke a handsome, blond-haired chap whose look of intelligence recommended him to Seymour as above average. "You haven't any call to arrest him just because he happened along a public trail at an unlucky moment. Far as that goes, you might better arrest yourself."

"What you driving at, Phil Brewster?" demanded Hardley, breaking away from the stranger's gaze and turning on his fellow townsman. "Are you hinting that I had any hand in sending 'West' one of his majesty's officers?"

"You was jealous of him," put in an old man with a twisted face; the driver of the oxen, if one could judge from the goad upon which he leaned.

"And sore as a pup when you found he had been here a month without your suspicioning," contributed another townsman.

Evidently Hardley was not surrounded by any picked posse and was none too much respected as the peace officer of the community.

Relieved to be out of the calcium, at least for the moment, Seymour swung from his horse and crossed the road to look at the body of Bart, the natural move had he really been stranger to the tragedy.

The deputy chose to ignore the jibes of his neighbors. But he renewed his demands upon Brewster for an interpretation of his insinuations, reminding him he was no "bohunk freighter" to be talked to as an ox.

"Oh, I don't think for a minute that you kicked off the staff sergeant," the handsome chap began to explain. To the real Seymour, listening, came a creepy feeling at the use of his name in such a connection. "I was just using you as an example to show your hasty methods with this stranger," Brewster went on. "You were sitting in your saddle and staring down at the remains when I rode up from the creeks. But I didn't suspect you of firing the shot or even of knowing anything about it."

Hardley looked somewhat mollified.

"But Sam was jealous," persisted the ox-driver.

"Stop your noise, Cato!" shrilled the deputy. "There was a perfectly good reason for my being first on the scene. I saw the sergeant ride past my shack all uniformed-up and looking as if he meant business!"

"More'n you'd know how to look," goaded Cato, playfully prodding the deputy with one of his inordinately long arms.

"Want me to bash you up?" Hardley demanded, irritated; then went on with his explanation. "For reasons best known to himself and beyond my ken, now never to be disclosed to mortal understanding, Seymour hadn't been taking me into his confidence either before or after uncovering himself. It wasn't good policemanship on his part, I'll say, but I'm big enough of a man----"

Cato's crackling laughter interrupted. "Big enough, I'll say--but of a man?" he burst out.

"Anyway, I figgered I knew the breed of wolves up the creek better than he did and that he might need help. You know Sam Hardley's gun is always ready. So I saddled up old Loafer there and took out after him, prepared to lend a hand to law and order as was my sworn duty."

There was further exchange among the Goldites--theories regarding the new crime, gratuitous advice for the fat deputy, speculation regarding its effect on the outside reputation of the camp. Glad that interest had shifted from himself, Seymour listened subconsciously.

Suddenly his attention was claimed by a decoration which had not been on the uniform when he had at first scrutinized it. Into the breast opening of the serge coat was tucked a spray of snow flowers.

"Her last tribute," his thoughts whispered. "And an ill-considered one if she has any reason for not wanting her little world to know that she first discovered the crime."

It was unlikely that the imposter had been anywhere that morning where he could pluck flowers which Seymour knew to grow only in the deeper gulches where the packed snow of winter resisted the thaws of spring to the last. The wearing of the nosegay was so out of keeping with the character that Bart had assumed as to attract attention. The sergeant wondered that the men arguing behind him had not already noticed and questioned its presence.

Kneeling ostensibly to tie a bootlace, he rectified the girl's mistake by plucking forth the flowers and tucking them into an inside pocket of his coat. The others, although approaching, evidently had not noticed this deft appropriation. Ruth Duperow's connection with the tragedy was her secret unless later she wished to take the camp into her confidence.

"It's a cinch that these two killings are linked," Hardley was shrilling to all ears within range. "When I get the man that killed the sergeant, I'll have the man that shot the B.C.X. driver; and, vice versa, if I get the man that killed the stage driver, I'll have the one that shot the sergeant."

"Which one do you calculate to get first, Sam?" asked Brewster, straight-faced as an undertaker.

The pudgy deputy stared at him in momentary suspicion, then took the bait. "Cato the Ox might be excused a fool question like that, Phil, but I'd have thought you'd be wise to vice versa. Don't you see, man, that these murderers are one and the same?"

"Then I'd advise you to throw down on that one and the same quick as the Almighty will let you," said Brewster. "The Mounties will be riled to the core over the killing of one of their own; they'll swarm in here like flies as soon as the news gets out."

The mining camp's deputy coroner was obviously disturbed by this logical counsel. Although the morning was not warm, he whipped out a saffron-colored handkerchief and mopped his brow. Evidently that ministration did not satisfy for he took off his hat and polished his pate, which was disclosed to be as bald as an eagle's.

"'Spite your astonishing ignorance in some things, Phil, you sometimes show a glimmer of sense," he said at last. "I was headed right in the first place. I've got to make some arrests and have the victims ready for the Mounties when they come swarming."

His eyes, while delivering himself of this pronouncement, had fixed on the sergeant.

"Victims--you said it," offered Seymour in calculating defense. "Some arrests. I suppose you'll make a bunch of them. Well, start in with me and bring in lots of company. You might as well make the mounted police plumb disgusted with you while you're about it." For a moment he watched Hardley squirm under this obvious scorn, then added: "Isn't a coroner's inquest the first of orderly procedure in a case of this sort? If you get a verdict from a jury, you'll have something to stand on when--when the Mounties come."

Hardley embraced the offering found in Seymour's sudden change from scorn to a practical suggestion. "I'll have an inquest with all due respect to the law, just as soon as we can get the late staff-sergeant into town," he shrilled. "See that you stick around, stranger. There's no telling at who the coroner's jury will point the finger of guilt."

Seymour nodded agreement. From official experience, he knew that there was no telling.