if you treat them
right. If it's a matter of straying stock, a sick horse, or you don't
know how to roof a new barn, you have only to send for the nearest
trooper."

"Aren't these things a little outside their duties?" Edgar asked.

The constable grinned.

"Most anything that wants doing badly is right in our line."

"Sure," said Grant. "It's not long since Flett went two hundred miles
over the snow with a dog-team to settle a little difference between an
Indian and his wife. Then he once brought a hurt trapper a fortnight's
journey on his sledge, sleeping in the snow, in the bitterest weather.
They were quite alone, and the hurt man was crazy most of the time."

"Then you're supposed to look after the settlers, as well as to keep
order?" suggested Edgar, looking admiringly at the sturdy young
constable.

"That's so," replied Flett. "They certainly need it. Last winter we
struck one crowd in a lonely shack up north--man, woman, and several
children huddled on the floor, with nothing to eat, and the stove
out--at forty degrees below. There was a bluff a few miles off, but
they hadn't a tool of any kind to cut cordwood with. Took us quite a
while to haul them up some stores, though we made twelve-hour marches
between our camps in the snow. We had to hustle that trip."

He paused and resumed:

"Better keep an eye on that bunch of young horses, Mr. Grant; bring
them up nearer the house when the nights get darker. Those Clydesdales
are mighty fine beasts and prices are high."

Grant looked astonished.

"I've been here a good many years, and I've never lost a horse," he
declared.

"It doesn't follow you'll always be as lucky," the trooper said
pointedly.

"I was told that property is as safe in the West as it is in England,"
Edgar broke in.

"Just so," remarked the trooper. "They say that kind of thing. I
never was in the old country, but young mavericks aren't the only stock
to go missing in Alberta, which isn't a long way off. The boys there
have their hands full now and then, and we have three or four of the
worst toughs I've struck right in Sage Butte."

Grant leaned forward on the table, looking steadily at him.

"Hadn't you better tell me what you have in your mind?"

"I can't give you much information, but we got a hint from Regina to
keep our eyes open, and from things I've heard it's my idea that now
that the boys have nearly stopped the running of Alberta cattle across
the frontier,