best kind
of an outfit; an', then again, it's mebbe not jest the worst; but, any
ol' way you like, Dick, it's the only kind of an outfit I've got."

Dick nodded sympathetically.

"Why, yes, you can see it stickin' out all over. Look at that little
dust-up with the lun_at_ic. Well, now, I should jest 've pumped that
gentleman as full o' lead as ever he'd hold. 'You'd bite me,' I'd ha'
said. 'Well, Mister Lun_at_ic,' I'd ha' said, 'I count you no more 'n a
mad husky; an' when I see a mad husky, I shoot. So you take this,' I'd
ha' said, an' plugged him up good an' full. But for you--well, I see how
it is. He's a kind of a sacred duty, an' all the like o' that. Yes, I
know; only--only I'm not built that kind of a way, ye see."

And Jim was right, and Dick knew he was right. As white and straight and
true a man as any in the north, and able to the tips of his fingers and
toes, but--but not the "kind of an outfit" for the R.N.W.M.P.

And so they parted, on a hard hand-grip. And to Jan Jim Willis gave a
grim, appraising sort of a stare, and (spoken very gruffly) these words:

"Well, so long, Jan! The cards is yours, all right, an' I guess you take
the chips!"

He did not touch the big hound as he spoke. But then, despite their long
and close association, he never had touched Jan in the way of a caress.

XXXVII

BACK TO REGINA

Long before Sergeant Dick Vaughan--he was always spoken of thus, by both
his names--arrived at the R.N.W.M.P. headquarters in Regina news was
received there of his strange single-handed journey from the Great Slave
Lake, of the mad murderer, the mad dogs, of the sergeant's own toil in
the traces, and of his being tracked down by Jan.

The surgeon in Edmonton who attended to Dick's badly wounded and
poisoned neck and right thumb happened to be a man with a strong sense
of the picturesque and a quite journalistic faculty for visualizing
incidents of a romantic or adventurous nature.

An _Edmonton Bulletin_ reporter, in quest of a "story" for his paper,
had the good luck to corner the surgeon in his consulting-room. The
result took the form of promotion for that reporter, following upon
publication in the _Bulletin_ of a many-headed three-column article
which was quoted and reproduced all up and down America. Summaries of
the "story" were cabled to Europe. Snap-shots of Dick and Jan were
obtained by enterprising pressmen in Edmonton, and distributed quite
profitably for their owners to