The rancher and Dorothy came next in a comfortable sleigh, with large buffalo robes all around them to keep out the cold.  Then came the two women servants in a light wagon-box set on runners, and driven by Jacques.  A Mounted Policeman in a jumper formed the rear-guard at a distance of about half-a-mile.  The wagons were well stocked with all necessaries for camping out.

It was a typical North-West morning, cold, bracing and clear.  The dry air stimulated one, and the winter sun shone cheerfully down upon the great white land of virgin snow.

There was a sense of utter solitude, of an immensity of space.  There was no sound save the soft, even swish of the runners over the snow, and the regular muffled pounding of the horses’ hoofs.

Within the next hour so buoyant were Dorothy’s spirits, and so light-hearted and genuine her outlook on things in general, that Douglas began to wonder if the events of the previous evening were not, after all, the imaginings of some horrible nightmare.

On, on, over the plains of frozen snow.  The sun was so strong now that Douglas was obliged to put great goggles over his eyes, and Dorothy pulled a dark veil down over hers, for fear of snow-blindness.  They had left the flat prairie behind, and were now in the bluff country which was simply heights and hollows lightly timbered with birch, poplar and saskatoon bushes, with beautiful meadows and small lakes or “sloughs” scattered about everywhere.  They passed many pretty homesteads nestling cosily in sheltered nooks; but no smoke rose from their chimneys; they all seemed to have been deserted in a hurry.  Their occupants had doubtless fled into Battleford.  What if they had been too late to reach that haven of refuge!

At noon the travellers stopped in a little wooded valley for dinner.  It was more like a picnic party than that of refugees fleeing for their lives.  The Scotswoman actually made a dish of pancakes for the troopers, because she said there was one of them who reminded her of her own son, whom she had not seen for many a long day.  The sincere thanks of the hungry ones were more than recompense for the worthy dame.

They all sat down on buffalo robes spread on the snow, and Dorothy was immensely taken with the gentlemanly, unobtrusive way in which the troopers waited upon the women of the party.  But they were all mostly younger sons of younger sons, and public school men, so after all it was not to be wondered at.  The high standard of honour and duty, and the courage that was a religion animating the force—­the North-West Mounted Police—­was easily accounted for.  She began to understand how it was that some men preferred such a life to that of the mere quest for gold.