azing tale. Of
course, we can prove every word of it. But I reckon we'll have to take
these two carcasses along as a sort of corroborative evidence. Every
confounded captain in the Force will have to view them officially; they
wouldn't take our word for their being dead. So it would only delay the
clearing up of things to leave them here. These other jaspers will lend
a fine decorative effect to the noosed end of a three-quarter-inch rope
for their part in the play--unless Canadian justice miscarries, which
doesn't often happen if you give it time enough to get at the root of
things."

Much as we had accomplished, we still had a problem or two ahead of us.
While we didn't reckon on having to defend ourselves against the
preposterous charge of holding up the paymaster, there was that little
matter of violent assault on the persons of three uniformed
representatives of Northwestern law--assault, indeed, with deadly
weapons; also the forcible sequestration of government property in the
shape of three troop-horses with complete riding appurtenances; the
uttering of threats; all of which was strictly against the peace and
dignity of the Crown and the statutes made and provided. No man is
supposed, as MacRae had pointed out to me after we'd held up those three
troopers, to inflict a compound fracture on one law in his efforts to
preserve another. But it had been necessary for us to do so, and we had
justified our judgment in playing a lone hand and upsetting Lessard's
smoothly conceived plan to lay us by the heels while he and his thugs
got away with the plunder. We had broken up as hard a combination as
ever matched itself against the scarlet-coated keepers of the law; we
had gathered them in with the loot intact, and for this signal service
we had hopes that the powers that be would overlook the break we made on
Lost River ridge. Lessard had created a damnatory piece of evidence
against himself by lifting the post funds; that in itself would bear
witness to the truth of our story. It might take the authorities a while
to get the proper focus on the tangle, but we could stand that, seeing
that we had won against staggering odds.

From the mouth of Sage Creek to Fort Walsh it is a fraction over fifty
miles, across comparatively flat country. By the time our breakfast was
done we calculated it to be ten o'clock. We had the half of a long
mid-summer day to make it. So, partly because we might find the full
fifty miles an ash-