least as much about a horse as Lance Courthorne, however, bent them to his will, and the team were trotting quietly through the shadow of a big birch bluff a league from town, when he heard a faint clip-clop coming down the trail behind him.  It led straight beneath the leafless branches, and was beaten smooth and firm, while Winston, who had noticed already that whenever he strayed any distance from the hotel there was a mounted cavalryman somewhere in the vicinity, shook the reins.

The team swung into faster stride, the cold wind whistled past him, and the snow whirled up from beneath the runners, but while he listened, the rhythmic drumming behind him also quickened a little.  Then a faintly musical jingle of steel accompanied the beat of hoofs, and Winston glanced about him with a little laugh of annoyance.  The dusk was creeping across the prairie, and a pale star or two growing into brilliancy in the cloudless sweep of indigo.

“It’s getting a trifle tiresome.  I’ll find out what the fellow wants,” he said.

Wheeling the team he drove back the way he came, and, when a dusky object materialized out of the shadows beneath the birches, swung the horses right across the trail.  The snow lay deep on either side of it just there, with a sharp crust upon its surface, which rendered it inadvisable to take a horse round the sleigh.  The mounted man accordingly drew bridle, and the jingle and rattle betokened his profession, though it was already too dark to see him clearly.

“Hallo!” he said.  “Been buying this trail up, stranger?”

“No,” said Winston quietly, though he still held his team across the way.  “Still, I’ve got the same right as any other citizen to walk or drive along it without anybody prowling after me, and just now I want to know if there is a reason I should be favored with your company.”

The trooper laughed a little.  “I guess there is.  It’s down in the orders that whoever’s on patrol near the settlement should keep his eye on you.  You see, if you lit out of here we would want to know just where you were going to.”

“I am,” said Winston, “a Canadian citizen, and I came out here for quietness.”

“Well,” said the other, “you’re an American, too.  Any way, when you were in a tight place down in Regent there, you told the boys so.  Now, no sensible man would boast of being a Britisher unless it was helping him to play out his hand.”

Winston kept his temper.  “I want a straight answer.  Can you tell me what you and the boys are trailing me for?”

“No,” said the trooper.  “Still, I guess our commander could.  If you don’t know of any reason, you might ask him.”

Winston tightened his grip on the reins.  “I’ll ride back with you to the outpost now.”