CHAPTER XXVIII--THE RETURN TO “WATER CASTLE”

The “lean-to” consisted of two compartments, and the walls of both were furnished with hooks, for slinging hammocks apparently, though there were no hammocks now in the place.

In fact, save for an old stove, which was evidently a home-made contrivance, there was nothing to be found in either compartment, until Sergeant Dick said he would take a final look-round.

He peeped upon some shelves in the inner room and spied a fragment of writing-paper, plainly overlooked.

Opening it out and shining a light upon it, the inspector and Sergeant Dick saw that it was apparently a scrap of a letter.

This is what they read:

“... be foolish to touch their stock, Bud, old chap. Anyway, we will turn out in full force to-nite, the eight on us, and you and your wife. Muriel and Jenny be going to Paquita Springs this afternoon, so the coast will be quite clear. We will not need to trick them as usual.

“’Till I see you, to-nite, at the hut.

“Your true pal, “Alf Arnold.”

“That clinches it, sergeant,” said the inspector with grim satisfaction, carefully folding the scrap of paper and putting it away in his notebook. “This bit of paper would hang the Squatter of the Lake, I should say, or at any rate get him a good stretch in jail, even if you were unable to swear to the lamp, or we couldn’t trace those who sold it.”

“And--and it would seem to show that Muriel and Jenny--the niece and daughter, I mean--are not concerned in the outrages of the gang, are wholly innocent of all complicity in the lawlessness. ‘We will not need to trick them as usual,’ the letter says, ‘and as they are going to Paquita Springs the coast will be quite clear.’”

“Yes, yes, it is evident those two girls are innocent and know nothing whatever of the villainy of their relations and the Seymours. Come now, we will hurry back the way we came, proceed at once to ‘Water Castle’ and try to effect the arrest of Old Alf and his lot.”

“One moment, inspector! I have an idea by which we may capture them without bloodshed--a thing that I have grave doubt we will achieve unless we resort to some ruse. You know the strength of ‘Water Castle,’ and the character of the squatter and his sons, to say nothing of his wife?”

“What is your plan?”

“First that we do not disappoint them, in the hope of presently hearing a big ‘boom’ from this quarter. Let us leave a time-fuse to blow the hut up when we are back across the valley.”

“A good idea. We will do it. If the Arnolds believe they have blown us all to pieces, we ought to be able to capture them easily. They will take no precautions against our coming.”

“Exactly! I will tell you the rest of my plan for taking them, as we go.”

While Sergeant Dick and the inspector laid the fuse, the troopers were all told to drive the cattle, horses, and sheep to the farther side of the valley, well away from the force of the explosion.

Sergeant Dick and Medhurst then quitted the hut, laying their powder trail right across the valley. At the top of the gully the troopers rejoined them. Then Sergeant Dick applied a lighted match to the long, thin trail of powder.

With a hissing splutter the tiny red flash ran down the slope of the hillside and went zigzag-ging away across the valley until it looked no more than a fast-traveling, tiny red star in the darkness.

It neared the farther side, and all prepared for the detonation.

Sure enough it came.

A great, lurid sheet of flame lit the night under the opposite cliffs, there was a thunderous roar, echoed and reechoed by the hills around, and the solid rock under them shook and trembled.

Then the police turned their backs on the cup-shaped valley, from which it was not possible without human aid that any of the stolen animals could escape; for the top of the gully, we have forgotten to mention, was closed by a high gate, secured by a padlock.

Descending past where they had first entered the gully, the party came almost immediately--on just turning an angle in the cliff--to a solid wall of rock through which the gully was continued in the shape of a wide natural tunnel or cave.

They passed inside this, and saw an opening before them not more than four or five feet wide and six feet high. It was covered over outside with a mass of an evergreen creeper, which effectually masked it in like manner to the cave in which the Seymours had been captured.

Thrusting the creeper aside, Sergeant Dick and Inspector Medhurst emerged on the prairie within not more than two or three hundred yards of the Seymours’ hut.

“Oh! ow! ow! Ye are ghosts come back from the grave to haunt us!” was the yelled greeting they got, as they pushed open the door of the hut, from the two Seymours, who squirmed and writhed in the chairs they were tied to.

“You see, inspector? They naturally concluded we had fallen victims to their horrible trap and been blown to atoms, all of us,” said Sergeant Dick, grimly.

“Ah, they had laid a trap for you, then, sir. I suspected as much from the way they were chortling to themselves after we heard that explosion,” said one of the two troopers who had been left guarding the prisoners.

“They’ll chortle in a different way after their trial,” grimly responded Medhurst. “Of course, had your murder-trap succeeded, you vile wretches, there would have been nothing to prove that it wasn’t an accident, precipitated by ourselves in searching the hut. As it is, that little scheme will prove a very damning factor against you all.”

A start was soon made now for the lake, all quitting the hut and mounting. The two prisoners were set upon their own horses, which had been left in the stable all night.

With their reins tied together and linked up on either side to a trooper’s saddle-bow, the pair were placed in the middle of the troopers. Then, at an easy trot, with the horses’ hoofs muffled, the party rode round the hilly spurs on the northern side of the range, and threaded their way through the woods down to the lake edge.

Sergeant Dick explained his plan for the capture of the Arnolds, as he and Inspector Medhurst rode at the head of the cavalcade. In accordance with it, they were no sooner at the waterside and in view of the lights of the “castle” and the ruddy reflection in the placid surface of the lake, than he fired three shots into the air.

As the reader may need reminding, three shots meant “Want to come off shore,” and was the signal used by the Arnolds and all their visitors.

They had a full code of such signals, which all their friends knew and employed as occasion demanded. Four shots--two rapidly, and then, after a moment, two more in quick succession--for instance, indicated that danger was to be apprehended from some direction.

On his giving the signal, Sergeant Dick and his comrades of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dismounted, and hid themselves behind trees and bushes. They had come to the identically same landing-place where the Ogalcrees had ambushed him, on landing for the first time on that shore from the ark.

The two Seymours had been gagged to prevent them giving any alarm, and moreover, tied to trees.

Hardly had these measures been taken when, through his binoculars, Inspector Medhurst saw the dark shadow of the ark slowly moving away from the verandah of the “castle” and making its way out of the palisaded “dock.”

“There are sure to be some of the menfolk, if not all five, on the craft, men,” whispered Medhurst, explaining his subordinate’s plan now to the troopers. “The sergeant is a fine mimic, as I can bear witness, and he is going to imitate ‘Bud’ Seymour’s melodious voice, and thus lure whoever’s aboard right up to the landing-place. As soon as the scow bumps, every man of you must rush forward, without firing a shot, and get aboard. We don’t want the rest of the family alarmed by a shot. You know the strength of the ‘castle,’ or, rather you don’t know it as Sergeant Dick does, and he says it would be almost impossible to storm it in the face of anything like a fierce fire from within. The Indians found that out to their cost. The sergeant says the floor of the front room drops like a trap on the pulling of a lever, and any one bursting in recklessly may therefore expect to be given a distinct cooler.”

As already mentioned more than once, the scow, for all its awkward build, sailed swiftly. It was soon within hailing distance of the shore, and a man’s voice, the voice of Amos, bawled across the water:

“Who is it?”

“Bud--Bud Seymour,” Sergeant Dick at once answered, mimicking that old scoundrel’s mode of speech exactly.

On that, the ark came on, and the peering eyes in the bushes made out four human forms in the forepart of the craft--two men and two women.

Sergeant Dick’s heart beat faster.

What if one of the women were she whom he loved--whom he loved still in spite of his late ghastly fear that she might be implicated in the awful outrages of the gang and even in their attempt to put him out of the way by hanging!

When close inshore, the quartet on the ark dropped an anchor astern, and then, paying out the rope, proceeded to propel the craft, with the two long sweeps, towards the shore.

By this maneuver, as previously explained, in case of treachery they could haul off-shore again quickly, by dragging on the anchor rope.

Nearer and yet nearer glided the unwieldy craft, and Sergeant Dick’s sharp eyes, trained by long practice to seeing well in the dark, made out Muriel and her cousin Jenny standing just within the cabin door. They were holding the anchor-rope, brought through the other doors, ready to haul on it. The family’s isolation taught them to expect treachery and alarms from the most unexpected quarters.

Amos and his brother Abner were at the sweeps, of course.

Sergeant Dick had assumed Bill Seymour’s hat and coat, and kept behind a small bush so as to hide his lower man. He concealed his face by turning the coat-collar up about his chin and drawing the hat well down over his brows.

Nearer, nearer! Not a yard separated the boat from the landing-place now.

Bump!

Immediately, Sergeant Dick rushed forward, pointing a pair of pistols at Amos and Abner.

“Hands up, both of you!” he bawled. “You are our prisoners!”

The pair stood as if petrified, and the two girls likewise; for all four recognized him in spite of his disguise.

He leaped into the scow, and, with a rush, his fellow police-troopers swarmed after him, all with pointed revolvers.