rane can have him sent up for
horse-stealing."

Curtis, opening a drawer, took out a slip of paper with some numbers on
it, and then laid the wad of bills on the table.

"Twenty dollars each, Merchants' Bank, and quite clean," he said.

"It was a five-dollar bill on the same bank we found at the muskeg!"
cried Stanton, starting.

"It was." Curtis took up the list. "Now here are the numbers of the
twenty-dollar bills Morant at Sebastian got from the bank a day or two
before he made the deal with Jernyngham; it was with those bills he paid
him the night he disappeared." He paused and added significantly, "I
guess we have got some of them here."

This proved to be correct when they had compared them with the list. Then
Curtis leaned back in his chair and filled his pipe.

"It's a mighty curious case," he remarked.

"Sure," replied Stanton. "You get no farther with it. You have points
against three different men, and it's pretty clear that they haven't been
working together. They can't all have killed the man."

"That's true. Well, I've made a report for Regina, and they'll keep
Glover safe until we want him. I can't tell what our chiefs will do; but
as Glover's not likely to tell them anything, I guess they'll hold this
matter over until we find out more." He locked up the money. "Now we'll
quit talking about it. I want to give my mind a rest."

Curtis had few of the qualities needed for the making of a great
detective; he was merely a painstaking, determined man, with a capacity
for earnest work, which is perhaps more useful than genius in the ranks
of the Northwest Police. He could tirelessly follow the dog-sleds,
sometimes on the scantiest rations, for hundreds of miles over the snow,
sleeping in the open in the arctic frost. He had made long forced marches
to succor improvident settlers starving far out in the wilds; in the
fierce heat of summer he made his patrols, watching the progress of the
grass-fires, sternly exacting from the ranchers the plowing of the needed
guards; and cattle-thieves prudently avoided the district that he ruled
with firm benevolence. The man was a worthy type of his people, the new
nation that is rising in the West: forceful, steadfast, direct, and, as a
rule, devoid of mental subtleties. He admitted that the Jernyngham
mystery, every clue to which broke off as he began to follow it, was
harassing him.

While he spent the evening, lounging in well-earned leisure beside the
stove,