“Huh!” He grunted his favorite monosyllable. He walked about the place, noted every mark in the dust, and poked with his toe, here and there, at certain slightly discolored patches in the corral. “This,” he muttered to himself, “is a highly interestin’ state of affairs, I wish to remark.” He sat on his horse for a minute after he mounted again. He looked off toward the Marias, in two minds at the moment. Then he reflected that Rock Holloway was on his way to Helena. And for various reasons Charlie concluded to play a lone hand. So he made a complete circle of the place, carefully scanning the ground; when he came back to the wagon track, he followed that, riding at a steady trot. * * * * * If he expected that to lead him to any new place, person or conclusion, he was disappointed. In the few years since Charlie first crossed the Marias River, with all the territory north of it an unpeopled waste, the first waves of the ultimate flood of settlers had begun to seep into the country. Up in the Sweet Grass, where he and Rock Holloway had fought a battle with organized thieves, there were now many ranches, small and large. A wagon trail ran between the Sweet Grass and Fort Benton--a trail which crossed the Marias halfway between the TL and the Seventy-seven. The single wagon track Charlie followed angled off until it merged with the Sweet Grass Trail. It was lost in these twin ruts. Wagons came and went daily on that road. One wheel track is as another. For purposes of identification, the trail was lost. But Charlie kept riding. Far off the construction camps began to show--dim smudges on the horizon. As he drew nearer, he could see the dark streak of the grade and the moving teams. And when the Sweet Grass Trail crossed the right of way, Charlie turned aside and jogged toward a cluster of buildings, like a small village sitting by a stream, where the buffalo lodges of the Blackfeet had been pitched in years gone by. Half a mile from this camp he came on a small herd of cattle grazing under the eye of a solitary rider. Perhaps a hundred head of cows, aged, scraggy, culls in fair flesh. He marked three or four different brands from the Judith Basin. “Camp beef?” he asked the herder. “Yeah,” the fellow drawled. He was a pimply-faced youngster with a visible swagger. “Beef for the bohunks.” “Butchered as needed, I suppose?” Charlie commented. “Sure. This is a headquarters commissary. Big layout. Feeding two or three camps from here.” Charlie passed on. On a bit of good grass along the creek bottom he staked his horses and cooked his supper. Grading camps offered none of the hospitality the range afforded. No casual wayfarer got anything there unless he paid his way. They were there to build a grade for the Great Northern, for the profit of the contractors, and it was a grubby, driving business.