the movements of our would-be captors.

"D'you know that plunder can't be far away; those fellows haven't had
much time to make their _cache_," he reflected, more to himself than to
me. "I wonder how they accounted to Lessard for us. Just think of
it--somewhere within twenty miles of us there's in the neighborhood of a
hundred thousand dollars of stolen money, planted till they can get it
safely; and the men that got away with it are helping the law to run us
down. That's a new feature of the case; one, I must say, that I didn't
look for."

He lowered the glasses, and regarded me soberly.

"They fight fire with fire in a grass country," he observed. "The
Mounted Police are a hard formation to buck against--but I've a mind to
see this thing to a finish. How do you feel about it, Sarge? Will you go
through?"

"All the way and back again," I promised recklessly. I wasn't sure of
what he had in mind, but I knew _him_--and seeing that we were in the
same boat, I thought it fitting that we should sink or swim together.

"We'll come out on top yet," he confidently asserted. "Meantime we'd
better locate some secluded spot and give our nags a chance to fill up
on grass and be fresh for to-morrow; we're apt to have a hard day."

"It wouldn't be a bad scheme to fill ourselves at the same time," I
suggested. "I'm feeling pretty vacant inside. The first bunch of buffalo
that has a fat calf along is going to hear from me."

"If we can get over this ridge without being seen, there's a canyon with
some cottonwoods and a spring in it. That will be as good a place to
hole up for the night as we can find," Mac decided. "And there will
likely be some buffalo near there."

So we ascended cautiously to the top of the divide, keeping in the
coulees as much as possible, for we knew that other field-glasses would
be focused on the hills. Once over the crest, we halted and watched for
riders coming our way. But none appeared. Once I thought I glimpsed a
moving speck on the farther bank of Lost River. MacRae brought the
glasses to bear, and said it was two Policemen jogging toward camp. Then
we were sure that our flight had not been observed, and we dropped into
a depression that gradually deepened to a narrow-bottomed canyon. Two
miles down this we came to the spring of which MacRae had spoken, a tiny
stream issuing from a crevice at the foot of the bank. What was equally
important, a thick clump of cottonwood and willow furnished toler