open. I might desert, which would
be a dirty way to sneak out of a thing I went into deliberately; or, if
they were minded to allow me, I could buy my discharge--and I haven't
the price. Besides, I like the game and I don't know that I want to quit
it. The life isn't so bad. It's your rabidly independent point of view.
A man that can't obey orders is not likely to climb to a position where
he can give them. What the dickens would become of the cow-outfits," he
challenged, "if every stockhand refused to take orders from the foreman
and owners? Do you stand on your dignity when La Pere tells you to do
certain things in a certain way?"

I shrugged my shoulders. There was just enough truth in his words to
make them hard to confute, and, anyway, I was not in the mood for that
sort of argument. But I was very sure that I would rather be a
forty-dollar-a-month cowpuncher than a sergeant in the Mounted Police.

"That fellow with her is the big gun here, is he?" I reverted to Lyn and
her affairs.

"Yes," Mac answered shortly, "that was Lessard."

By this time we had come to the last cabin in the row. A whitewashed
fence enclosed a diminutive yard, and as we turned in the gate Bat
Perkins appeared in the doorway, both hands thrust deep in his trousers
pockets and a pipe sagging down one corner of his wide mouth. He was
rudely jovial in his greeting, as most of his type were. His wit was
labored, but his welcome was none the less genuine.

"I seen yuh ride in, Mac," he grinned, "an' I told the old woman t'
turn herself loose on the beefsteak an' spuds, for here comes that
hungry-lookin' jasper from Pend d' Oreille."

I was duly made acquainted with Bat, and later with his wife, who, if
she did have a trace of Indian blood in her, could certainly qualify as
the patron saint of hungry men. Good cooks were a scarce article on the
frontier then. Bat, I learned, was attached to the Force in a civilian
capacity.

We ate, smoked a cigarette apiece, and then it was time for us to
"repawt." So we betook ourselves to the seat of the mighty, to unload
our troubles on the men who directed the destinies of the turbulent
Northwest and see what they could do toward alleviating them.

This time the orderly passed us in without delay, and once more we faced
the man of rank, who, after taking our measure with a deliberate stare,
ordered MacRae to state his business.

As Mac related the unvarnished tale of the banked fire in the canyon,
t