The
fellow's face was ashen. His knees shook.

Tom was in almost as bad a condition himself.

Beresford's high voice cut in. In his delirium he was perhaps living
over again his experience with Pierre Poulette.

"Maintiens le droit. Get your man and bring him in. Tough sledding.
Never mind. Go through, old fellow. Bring him in. That's what you're
sent for. Hogtie him. Drag him with a rope around his neck. Get him
back somehow."

The words struck Tom motionless. It was as though some voice were
speaking to him through the sick man's lips. He waited.

"Righto, sir," the soldier droned on. "See what I can do, sir. Have
a try at it, anyhow." And again he murmured the motto of the Mounted
Police.

Tom had excused himself for what he thought it was his duty to do on
the ground that it was not humanly possible to save his friend and
bring West back. It came to him in a flash that the Mounted Police
were becoming so potent a power for law and order because they never
asked whether the job assigned them was possible. They went ahead and
did it or died trying to do it. It did not matter primarily whether
Beresford and he got back alive or not. If West murdered them, other
red-coats would take the trail and get him.

What he, Tom Morse, had to do was to carry on. He could not choose the
easy way, even though it was a desperately hard one for him. He could
not make himself a judge over this murderer, with power of life and
death. The thing that had been given him to do was to bring West to
Faraway. He had no choice in the matter. Win or lose, he had to play
the hand out as it was dealt him.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

OVER A ROTTING TRAIL

Tom believed that Beresford's delirious words had condemned them both
to death. He could not nurse his friend, watch West night and day,
keep the camp supplied with food, and cover the hundreds of miles
of bleak snow fields which stretched between them and the nearest
settlement. He did not think that any one man lived who was capable of
succeeding in such a task.

Yet his first feeling was of immediate relief. The horrible duty that
had seemed to be laid upon him was not a duty at all. He saw his
course quite simply. All he had to do was to achieve the impossible.
If he failed in it, he would go down like a soldier in the day's work.
He would have, anyhow, no torturings of conscience, no blight resting
upon him till the day of his death.

"You're reprieved, West," he announced si