-if you _knew_ them--your childlike trust in them would seem
as absurd, perhaps, as it does to me!"

"What do you mean?" cried the girl, regarding the quarter-breed with a
searching glance. "That the men of the Mounted are--that they may
be--influenced?"

Again Lapierre laughed--harshly. "Just that, Miss Elliston! They
are--crooked. They may be influenced!"

"I cannot believe that!"

"You will--later."

"You mean that MacNair has----"

The man interrupted with a wave of his hand. "What I have told you of
MacNair is the truth. I shall prove this to your own satisfaction, at
the proper time. Until then, I ask you to believe me. Admitting, then,
that I have spoken the truth, do you suppose for an instant that these
facts are not known to the Mounted? If not, then the officers are
inefficient fools. If they are known, why don't the Mounted remedy
matters? Because MacNair is rich! Because he buys them, body and soul!
Because he owns them, like he owns the Indians! That's why!

"Just stop and consider what is ahead of a dollar-a-day policeman. When
his five-year term of enlistment has expired, he has his choice of
enlisting for another term, or making his living some other way. At the
end of the five years he has learned to hate the service with a hatred
that is soul-searing. It is the hardest, strictest, most exacting, and
most ill-paid service in the world; and the five years of the man's
enlistment have practically rendered him unfit for earning a living.

"He has lived in the wild country. He knows the wild country. And
civilization, with its rapid advance, has left him five years behind the
times. Our ex-man of the Mounted is fit for only the commonest labour.
And, because there are almost no employers in the North, he cannot turn
his knowledge of the wilds to profitable account, unless he turns
smuggler, whiskey-runner, or fur-poisoner. The men know this.
Therefore, when an officer whose patrol takes him into the far 'back
blocks' is approached by a man like MacNair, with his pockets bulging
with gold, what report goes down to Regina, and on to Ottawa?

"Yes, Miss Elliston, in the Northland there is law. But the law is a
fundamental law--the primitive law of savage might. The strong devour
the weak. Only the fit survive--survive to be ruled, to be trampled, to
be _owned_ by the strongest. And the law is the measure of might!
Primal instincts--pristine passions--primordial brutishness pe