e more cumbersome figure of the bay.

And her rider, too, had time to look around. His glance at once fell
upon the stranger, and he knew that it was the man he wanted to talk
to.

The two men met with little formality.

"Sheriff Fyles?" Tresler said as he came up.

There was something wonderfully picturesque yet businesslike about
this prairie sleuth. This man was the first of his kind he had seen,
and he studied him with interest. The thought of Sheriff Fyles had
come so suddenly into his mind, and so recently, that he had no time
to form any imaginative picture of him. Had he done so he must
inevitably have been disappointed with the reality, for Fyles was
neither becoming nor even imposing. He was rather short and decidedly
burly, and his face had an innocent caste about it, a farmer-like
mould of russet-tanned features that was extremely healthy-looking,
but in no way remarkable for any appearance of great intelligence.

But this was a case of the fallibility of appearances. Fyles was
remarkable both for great intelligence and extreme shrewdness. Not
only that, he was a man of cat-like activity. His bulk was the result
of a superabundance of muscle, and not of superfluous tissue. His
bucolic spread of features was useful to him in that it detracted from
the cold, keen, compelling eyes which looked out from beneath his
shaggy eyebrows; and, too, the full cheeks and fat neck, helping to
hide the determined jaws, which had a knack of closing his rather
full lips into a thin, straight line. Nature never intended a man of
his mould to occupy the position that Fyles held in his country's
peace regime. He was one of her happy mistakes.

And in that first survey Tresler realized something of the personality
which form and features were so ludicrously struggling to conceal.

"Yes." The officer let his eyes move slowly over this stranger. Then,
without the least expression of cordiality he spoke the thought in his
mind. "That's a good nag--remarkably good. You handle her tolerably.
Didn't get your name?"

"Tresler--John Tresler."

"Yes. New hereabouts?"

The broad-shouldered man had an aggravatingly official manner. Tresler
replied with a nod.

"Ah! Remittance man?"

At this the other laughed outright. He saw it was useless to display
any anger.

"Wrong," he said. "Learning the business of ranching. Going to start
on my own account later on."

"Ah! Younger son?"

"Not even a younger son!" The two horses