The man’s attempt to look sincere was almost ludicrous.  His cunning eyes twinkled with cupidity.  Horrocks kept his voice down.

“Right.  I shall be at Lablache’s store in an hour’s time.  You must see me to-night.”  Then aloud, for the benefit of listening ears, “You be careful what you are doing.  This promiscuous buying of wives, with cattle which you may have difficulty in accounting for your possession of, will lead you into trouble.  Mind, I’ve warned you.  Just look to it.”

His last sentences were called out as he moved away, and Gautier quite understood.

Horrocks did not return the way he had come, but took a circuitous route through the camp.  He was a man who never lost a chance in his work, and now, while he was in the midst of that criminal haunt, he thought it as well to take a look round.  He hardly knew what he expected to find out—­if anything.  But he required information of Retief, and he was fully alive to the fact that all that individual’s movements would be known here.  He trusted to luck to help him to discover something.

The smartest of men have to work against overwhelming odds in the detection of crime.  Many and devious are the ways of men whose hand is against the law.  Surely is the best detective a mere babe in the hands of a clever criminal.  In this instance the very thing that Horrocks was in search of was about to be forced upon him.  For underlying that information was a deep-laid scheme.

Never can reliance be placed in a true half-breed.  The heathen Chinee is the ideal of truth and honesty when his wiles are compared with the dark ways of the Breed.  Horrocks, with all his experience, was no match for the dusky-visaged outcast of the plains.  Gautier had been deputied to convey certain information to Lablache by the patriarchs of the camp.  And with his native cunning he had decided, on the appearance of Sergeant Horrocks, to extort a price for that which it was his duty to tell.  Besides this, as matters had turned out, Horrocks was to receive gratis that for which he would shortly pay Gautier.

He had made an almost complete circuit of the camp.  Accustomed as he was to such places, the stench of it almost made him sick.  He came to a stand close beside one of the outlying teepees.  He was just preparing to fill his pipe and indulge in a sort of disinfecting smoke when he became aware of voices talking loudly close by.  The sound proceeded from the teepees.  From force of habit he listened.  The tones were gruff, and almost Indian-like in the brevity of expression.  The language was the bastard jargon of the French half-breed.  For a moment he was doubtful.  Then his attention became riveted.

“Yes,” said one voice, “he is a good man, is Peter.  When he has plenty he spends it.  He does not rob the poor Breed.  Only the gross white man.  Peter is clever.  Very.”

Then another voice, deep-toned and full, took up the eulogy.