ed the Inspector gravely.

"Oh, I don't know them. Never knew but one. A good bright little soul
she was. Saw me through a typhoid trip. Little too clever sometimes,"
he added, remembering the day when she had taken her fun out of the
slow-footed, slow-minded farmer's daughter.

"Well," said the Inspector, "we shall possibly come across them in
our round-up. This is rather a big game, a very big game and one worth
playing."

A bigger game it turned out than any of the players knew, bigger in its
immediate sweep and in its nationwide issues.

For three months they swept the plains, haunting the reservations at
unexpected moments. But though they found not a few horses and cattle
whose obliterated brands seemed to warrant confiscation, and though
there were signs for the instructed eye of evil doings in many an Indian
camp, yet there was nothing connected with the larger game upon which
the Inspector of Police could lay his hand.

Among the Bloods there were frequent sun-dances where many braves were
made and much firewater drunk with consequent blood-letting. Red Crow
deprecated these occurrences, but confessed his powerlessness to prevent
the flow of either firewater or of blood. A private conversation with
the Inspector left with the Chief some food for thought, however, and
resulted in the cropping of the mane of White Horse, of whose comings
and goings the Inspector was insistently curious.

On the Blackfeet reservation they ran into a great pow-wow of chiefs
from far and near, to which old Crowfoot invited the representatives
of the Great White Mother with impressive cordiality, an invitation,
however, which the Inspector, such was his strenuous hunt for stolen
horses, was forced regretfully to decline.

"Too smooth, old boy, too smooth!" was the Inspector's comment as they
rode off. "There are doings there without doubt. Did you see the Cree
and the Assiniboine?"

"I could not pick them out," said Cameron, "but I saw Louis the Breed."

"Ah, you did! He needs another term at the Police sanatarium."

They looked in upon the Sarcees and were relieved to find them frankly
hostile. They had not forgotten the last visit of the Inspector and his
friend.

"That's better," remarked the Inspector as they left the reservation.
"Neither the hostile Indian nor the noisy Indian is dangerous. When he
gets smooth and quiet watch him, like old Crowfoot. Sly old boy he is!
But he will wait till he sees which way the cat