“Somebody is going to be sorry for this,” he said.  “Now a sensible man would wonder what you expect to make by it.”

“You mean that we can’t connect you with the horse-stealing?”

“Yes,” said the man, “if there was any.  Now there are men behind me who will make you and Horton very sorry you ever fooled with me.”

Seaforth smiled outwardly and with his eyes, for he surmised that the prisoner was willing to bargain for his freedom, but his lips were set and he found it difficult to restrain the rage that welled up within him.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know that it is of any great importance whether we do or not.  It will be enough to hold you by until we find out all that happened one snowy night when somebody fixed a lariat across a trail, and there was another affair up in the bush.”

The light of the fire was on them, and the man’s face betrayed him, though his words were bold enough.  “You don’t take me with a hand like that!”

Seaforth trembled a little as his anger shook him, for he had seen enough.  “I think you are the man we want,” he said.

He had desired to make quite certain and succeeded, but he afterwards regretted it, for the effect of that speech upon the prisoner, who did not answer him, was considerably more than he had anticipated.  The man, who appeared, as Seaforth decided later, suspiciously cowed and dejected, said nothing to any of his captors all next day, and lay down at night in apathetic sullenness, but when the rancher who slept beside him awoke in the morning he had gone, and by way of ironical farewell somebody had hung a pair of rusty handcuffs whose snap-spring was evidently defective upon a neighbouring tree.  One man had kept watch beside the fire, which he had left for a few minutes to bring in more wood, and another by the horses; but while neither of them had seen or heard anything, the fact that their captive was no longer with them remained, and half-an-hour spent in very pointed and personal recriminations did nothing to solve the mystery.  It was Horton who terminated the discussion.

“We’ve no use for more talking, boys,” he said.  “The man was here last night, and he isn’t now, and it don’t count for very much how he got away.  Head right away for the railroad, two of you.  Another two will strike for the pass in the main divide, and if you get through quick enough you’ll turn him off into the back country.  The rest of you will stop right here and help Okanagan to pick up his trail.”

There was a hurried saddling of horses, four mounted men went crashing through the undergrowth downhill at the risk of neck and limbs, and an hour later Seaforth and Okanagan stopped a few moments breathless beside a frothing stream.

“He’ll have gone this way for the river, sure,” said the latter.  “You can tell Horton to send Thomson and Andersen across to watch the canon.”

Seaforth looked at the bushman, and his face was curiously grim.  “You know who he is, Tom?  We must have him at any cost, and I think it is my fault he got away.”