matter on hand. If any of you see
Lablache just tell him I shall join him in about two hours' time."

Horrocks rode off and his four troopers headed towards the Foss River.

Despite the fact that his horse had been under the saddle for nearly
eight hours Horrocks rode at a great pace. He was one of those men who
are always to be found on the prairie--thorough horsemen. Men who, in
times of leisure, care more for their horses than they do for
themselves; men who regard their horses as they would a comrade, but
who, when it becomes a necessity to work or travel, demand every effort
the animal can make by way of return for the care which has been
lavished upon it. Such men generally find themselves well repaid. A
horse is something more than a creature with four legs, one at each
corner, head out of one end, tail out of the other. There is an old
saying in the West to the effect that a thorough horseman is worthy of
man's esteem. The opinion amongst prairie men is that a man who loves
his horse can never be wholly bad. And possibly we can accept this
decision upon the subject without question, for their experience in men,
especially in "bad men," is wide and varied.

Horrocks avoided the settlement, leaving it well to the west, and turned
his willing beast in the direction of the half-breed camp. There was an
ex-Government scout living in this camp whom he knew; a man who was
willing to sell to his late employers any information he chanced to
possess. It was the officer's intention to see this man and purchase all
he had to sell, if it happened to be worth buying. Hence his visit to
the camp.

The evening shadows were fast lengthening when he espied in the distance
the squalid shacks and dilapidated teepees of the Breeds. There was a
large colony of those wanderers of the West gathered together in the
Foss River camp. We have said that these places are hot-beds of crime, a
curse to the country; but that description scarcely conveys the wretched
poverty and filthiness of these motley gatherings. From a slight rising
ground Horrocks looked down on what might have, at first sight, been
taken for a small village. A scattering of small tumbled-down shacks,
about fifty in number, set out on the fresh green of the prairie,
created the first blot of uncleanly, uncouth habitation upon the view.
Add to these a proportionate number of ragged tents and teepees, a crowd
of unwashed, and, for the most part, undressed children, a hun