To Cameron, who for a month had been attached to Superintendent Strong's
division, the life was full of movement and colour. The two constables
and Sergeant Ferry found the duty of keeping order among the navvies,
but more especially among the outlaw herd that lay in wait to fling
themselves upon their monthly pay like wolves upon a kill, sufficiently
arduous to fill to repletion the hours of the day and often of the
night.
The hospital tent where the little nurse reigned supreme became to
Cameron and to the Sergeant as well a place of refuge and relief. Nurse
Haley was in charge further down the line.
The post had just come in and with it a letter for Constable Cameron. It
was from Inspector Dickson.
"You will be interested to know," it ran, "that when I returned from
Stand Off two days ago I found that Little Thunder, who had been waiting
here for his hanging next month, had escaped. How, was a mystery to
everybody; but when I learned that a stranger had been at the Fort and
had called upon the Superintendent with a tale of horse-stealing, had
asked to see Little Thunder and identified him as undoubtedly the thief,
and had left that same day riding a particularly fine black broncho,
I made a guess that we had been honoured by a visit from your friend
Raven. That guess was confirmed as correct by a little note which I
found waiting me from this same gentleman explaining Little Thunder's
absence as being due to Raven's unwillingness to see a man go to the
gallows who had once saved his life, but conveying the assurance that
the Indian was leaving the country for good and would trouble us no
more.
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