The early Northern dusk was falling when Beresford dropped into the store again.  Except for two half-breeds and the clerk dickering at the far end of the building over half a dozen silver fox furs Morse had the place to himself.

Yet the officer took the precaution to lower his voice.  “I want an auger and a wooden plug the same size.  Get ’em to me without anybody knowing it.”

The manager of the C.N.  Morse & Company Northern Stores presently shoved across the counter to him a gunny-sack with a feed of oats.  “Want it charged to the Force, I reckon?”

“Yes.”

“Say, constable, I wancha to look at these moccasins I’m orderin’ for the Inspector.  Is this what he wants?  Or isn’t it?”

Tom led the way into his office.  He handed the shoe to Beresford.  “What’s doin’?” he asked swiftly, between sentences.

The soldier inspected the footwear.  “About right, I’d say.  Thought you’d find what you were looking for.  A fellow usually does when he goes at it real earnest.”

The eyes in the brown face were twinkling merrily.

“Findin’ the goods is one thing.  Gettin’ ’em’s quite another,” Tom suggested.

The voice of one of the trappers rose in protest.  “By gar, it iss what you call dirt cheap.  I make you a present.  V’la!”

“Got to bore through difficulties,” Beresford said.  “Then you’re liable to bump into disappointment.  But you can’t ever tell till you try.”

His friend began to catch the drift of the officer’s purpose.  He was looking for a liquor shipment, and he had bought an auger to bore through difficulties.

Tom’s eyes glowed.  “Come over to the storeroom an’ take a look at my stock.  Want you to see I’m gonna have these moccasins made from good material.”

They kept step across the corral, gay, light-hearted sons of the frontier, both hard as nails, packed muscles rippling like those of forest panthers.  Their years added would not total more than twoscore and five, but life had taken hold of them young and trained them to its purposes, had shot them through and through with hardihood and endurance and the cool prevision that forestalls disaster.

“I’m in on this,” the Montanan said.

“Meaning?”

“That I buy chips, take a hand, sit in, deal cards.”

The level gaze of the police officer studied him speculatively.  “Now why this change of heart?”

“You get me wrong.  I’m with you to a finish in puttin’ West and Whaley out of business.  They’re a hell-raisin’ outfit, an’ this country’ll be well rid of ’em.  Only thing is I wanta play my cards above the table.  I couldn’t spy on these men.  Leastways, it didn’t look quite square to me.  But this is a bronc of another color.  Lead me to that trouble you was promisin’ a while ago.”

Beresford led him to it, by way of a rain-washed gully, up which they trod their devious path slowly and without noise.  From the gully they snaked through the dry grass to a small ditch that had been built to drain the camping-ground during spring freshets.  This wound into the midst of the wagon train encampment.