distance, where willow
grove and straggling bluff floated on the dazzling horizon, and the
fibrous dust rose in little puffs beneath the horses' feet, until
Stimson pulled his beast up in the shadow of the birches by the bridge,
and looked back towards Silverdale. There, wooden homesteads girt
about with barns and granaries rose from the whitened waste, and behind
some of them stretched great belts of wheat. Then the Sergeant,
understanding the faith of the men who had sown that splendid grain,
nodded, for he was old and wise, and had seen many adverse seasons, and
the slackness that comes, when hope has gone, to beaten men.

"They will reap this year--a handful of cents on every bushel," he
said. "A fine gentleman is Colonel Barrington, but some of them will
be thankful there's a better head than the one he has, at Silverdale."

"Yes, sir," said Corporal Payne, who wore the double chevrons for the
first time, and surmised that his companion's observations were not
without their purpose.

Stimson glanced at the bridge. "Good work," he said. "It will save
them dollars on every load they haul in. A gambler built it! Do they
teach men to use the ax in Montana saloons?"

The corporal smiled, and waited for what he felt would come. He was
no longer the hot-blooded lad who had come out from the old country,
for he had felt the bonds of discipline, and been taught restraint and
silence on the lonely marches of the prairie.

"I have," he said tentatively, "fancied there was something a little
unusual about the thing."

Stimson nodded, but his next observation was apparently quite
unconnected with the topic. "You were a raw colt when I got you,
Payne, and the bit galled you now and then, but you had good hands on a
bridle, and somebody who knew his business had taught you to sit a
horse in the old country. Still, you were not as handy with brush and
fork at stable duty,"

The bronze seemed to deepen in the corporal's face, but it was turned
steadily towards his officer. "Sir," he said, "has that anything to do
with what you were speaking of?"

Stimson laughed softly. "That depends, my lad. Now, I've taught you
to ride straight, and to hold your tongue. I've asked you no
questions, but I've eyes in my head, and it's not without a purpose
you've been made corporal. You're the kind they give commissions to,
now and then--and your folks in the old country never raised you for a
police trooper."

"Can you