clearer now against the
skyline. He felt, with instinctive shrinking, that their search would be
rewarded there in the blackness beneath the trees. The pace grew faster.
Men glanced at their neighbours now and then as well as ahead, and
Breckenridge felt the silence grow oppressive as the bluff rose higher.
The snow dulled the beat of hoofs, and the flitting figures that rode with
him passed on almost as noiselessly as the long black shadows that
followed them. His heart beat faster than usual when, as they reached the
birches, Grant raised his hand.

"Ride wide and behind me," he said. "We're going to find one of them
inside of five minutes."

There was an occasional crackle as a rotten twig or branch snapped beneath
the hoofs. Slender trees slid athwart the moonlight, closed on one
another, and opened out, and still, though the snow was scanty and in
places swept away, Grant and a big Michigan bushman rode straight on.
Breckenridge, who was young, felt the tension grow almost unendurable. At
last, when even the horses seemed to feel their masters' uneasiness, the
leader pulled up, and with a floundering of hoofs and jingle of bridles
the line of shadowy figures came to a standstill.

"Get down, boys, and light the lantern. Quilter's here," he said.

Breckenridge dismounting, looped his bridle round a bough, and by and by
stood peering over the shoulders of the clustering men in front of him.
The moonlight shone in between the birches, and something dusky and rigid
lay athwart it in the snow. One man was lighting a lantern, and though his
hands were mittened he seemed singularly clumsy. At last, however, a pale
light blinked out, and under it Breckenridge saw a white face and shadowy
head, from which the fur cap had fallen.

"Yes," said somebody, with a suspicion of hoarseness, "that's Quilter.
It's not going to be much use; but you had better go through his pockets,
Larry!"

Grant knelt down, and his face also showed colourless in the lantern light
as, with the help of another man, he gently moved the rigid form. Then,
opening the big fur-coat he laid his hand on a brown smear on the deerskin
jacket under it.

"One shot," he said. "Couldn't have been more than two or three yards
off."

"Get through," said the bushman grimly. "The man who did it can't have
more than an hour's start of us, any way, and from the trail he left his
horse is played out."

In a minute or two Grant stood up with a little shiver. "Y