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146
THE LAW-BRINGERS

down, but I knew that coon coat of his. And the flies were buzzing. Ugh!"

"All right. Don't you worry about Ogilvie. He's been shut of his troubles these six months, lucky devil. Hold on till I get Kennedy and the buckboard. You must show us the place right now."

But among the close-set young poplars and the sweet-scented Balm of Gilead at the coulée-top Slicker backed away.

"I—I guess I'll stay with the team," he said, and the two policemen crashed down through the undergrowth together, with the drumming of woodpeckers in the hollow trees about them sounding like hammering on an empty coffin.

Sunk deep in the coulée-bottom was a bundle of rough fur; something that gleamed, as though scratched out by a questing coyote, and a boot turned upwards, with a white butterfly poised on its tip. In the hot air the buzzing of flies came up drowsily, suggesting sleep. But Ogilvie's sleep was six months long.

Dick stooped over the thing on the ground. For a little time he did not move. Then, with a strong jerk of his wrist, he pulled a knife from the joint of the neck and collar-bone and stood up, quenching Kennedy's exclamations.

"We have found Ogilvie's bones," he said. "That's all you know. Now help shift him out of this."

Four drove home where three drove out, and in the loose-box at the barrack-stable Ogilvie was laid, wrapped decently in a Hudson Bay blanket. Then Dick went up to his bedroom and washed and brushed himself, whistling softly the while. The hound-instinct was awake in him, whipping him on to the blood-trail, and already he had scented the two whom he must follow. If it were not Robison who had done this thing then it assuredly was Grange's Andree, and it behoved him to have those two suspects in his hands before the news of Ogilvie's return got loose in Grey Wolf. He had enforced present silence from Kennedy and Slicker. But he would not be able to keep it for long. He laughed, brushing the thick hair back