rode away shortly afterward, and as the others went back toward the
house Edgar laughed.

"I don't think being a police trooper has many attractions in winter,"
he remarked. "Hiding in a bluff for several hours with the temperature
forty degrees below, on the lookout for fellows who have probably gone
another way, strikes me as a very unpleasant occupation."

CHAPTER XXII

THE SPREAD OF DISORDER

Flett spent a bitter night, keeping an unavailing watch among the
willows where a lonely trail dipped into a ravine. Not a sound broke
the stillness of the white prairie, and realizing that the men he
wished to surprise had taken another path, he left his hiding-place
shortly before daylight. He was almost too cold and stiff to mount;
but as his hands and feet tingled painfully, it was evident that they
had escaped frostbite, and that was something to be thankful for.

Reaching an outlying farm, he breakfasted and rested a while, after
which he rode on to the Indian reservation, where he found signs of
recent trouble. A man to whom he was at first refused access lay with
a badly battered face in a shack which stood beside a few acres of
roughly broken land; another man suffering from what looked like an ax
wound sat huddled in dirty blankets in a teepee. It was obvious that a
fight, which Flett suspected was the result of a drunken orgy, had been
in progress not long before; but he could find no liquor nor any man
actually under its influence, though the appearance of several
suggested that they were recovering from a debauch. He discovered,
however, in a poplar thicket the hide of a steer, from which a recent
breeze had swept its covering of snow. This was a serious matter, and
though the brand had been removed, Flett identified the skin as having
belonged to an animal reported to him as missing.

He had now, when dusk was approaching, two charges of assault and one
of cattle-killing to make, and it would not be prudent to remain upon
the reservation during the night with anybody he arrested. The Indians
were in a sullen, threatening mood; it was difficult to extract any
information, and Flett was alone. He was, however, not to be daunted
by angry looks or ominous mutterings, and by persistently questioning
the injured men he learned enough to warrant his making two arrests;
though he decided that the matter of the hide must be dropped for the
present.

It was in a state of nervous tension that he mounte