He was not given long for his futile efforts.  The same rough voice which had bade him rise now ordered him to walk, and he found himself forced forward by the aid of a heavy hand which gripped one of his arms.  The feeling of a blindfold walk is not a happy one, and the officer experienced a strange sensation of falling as he was urged he knew not whither.  After a few steps he was again halted, and then he felt himself seized from behind and lifted bodily into a conveyance.

He quickly realized that he was in a buckboard.  The slats which formed the body of it, as his feet lit upon them, told him this.  Then two men jumped in after him and he found himself seated between them.  And so he was driven off.

In justice to Horrocks it must be said that he experienced no fear.  True, his chagrin was very great.  He saw only too plainly what want of discretion he had displayed in trusting to the Breed’s story, but he felt that his previous association with the rascal warranted his credulity, and the outcome must be regarded as the fortune of war.  He only wondered what strange experience this blindfold journey was to forerun.  There was not the least doubt in his mind as to whose was the devising of this well-laid and well-carried-out plot.  Retief, he knew, must be answerable for the plan, and the method displayed in its execution plainly showed him that every detail had been carefully thought out, and administered by only too willing hands.  That there was more than ordinary purpose in this blindfold journey he felt assured, and he racked his brains to discover the desperado’s object.  He even found time to speculate as to how it had fared with his men, only here he was even more at a loss than in the case of his own ultimate fate.

In less than half an hour from the time of his capture the buckboard drew up beside some bush.  Horrocks knew it was a bluff.  He could hear the rustle of the leaves as they fluttered in the gentle night air.  Then he was unceremoniously hustled to the ground, and, equally unceremoniously, urged forward until his feet trod upon the stubbly, breaking undergrowth.  Next he was brought to a stand and swung round, face about, his bonds were removed, and four powerful hands gripped his arms.  By these he was drawn backwards until he bumped against a tree-trunk.  His hands were then again made fast, but this time his arms embraced the tree behind him.  In this manner he was securely trussed.

Now from behind—­his captors were well behind him—­a hand reached over, and, by a swift movement, removed the bandage from before his eyes.  Then, before he had time to turn his head, he heard a scrambling through the bush, and, a moment later, the sound of the creaking buckboard rapidly receding.  He was left alone; and, after one swift, comprehensive survey, to his surprise, he found himself facing the wire-spreading muskeg, at the very spot where he had given up further pursuit of the cattle whose “spur” he had traced down to the brink of the viscid mire.