day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the
North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he
could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable;
and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to
kill or be killed. It came to him that he was up against a new order
which would wipe Bully West and his kind from the land.

He handed his revolver to Beresford. "I'll ride with you."

"Good. Have to borrow your horse till we reach Whoop-Up. You won't
mind walking?"

"Not at all. Some folks think that's what legs were made for,"
answered Morse, grinning.

As he strode across the prairie beside the horse, Morse was still
puzzling over the situation. He perceived that the strength of the
officer's position was wholly a moral one. A lawbreaker was confronted
with an ugly alternative. The only way to escape arrest was to commit
murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the
great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was
sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of
fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because
he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a
silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier.

Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were
unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. Some of them had been put out of
business. Their property had been destroyed and confiscated. Fines
had been imposed on them. The current whisper was that the
whiskey-smugglers would retaliate against the constables in person
whenever there was a chance to do so with impunity. Some day a
debonair wearer of the scarlet coat would ride out gayly from one
of the forts and a riderless horse would return at dusk. There were
outlaws who would ask nothing better than a chance to dry-gulch one of
these inquisitive riders of the plains.

But Beresford rode into the stockade and swung from the saddle with
smiling confidence. He nodded here and there casually to dark, sullen
men who watched his movements with implacably hostile eyes.

His words were addressed to Reddy Madden. "Can you let me have a horse
for a few days and charge it to the Force? I've lost mine."

Some one sniggered offensively. Barney had evidently reached Whoop-Up
and was in hiding.

"Your horse came in a while ago, constable," Madden said civilly.
"It's in t