"'Way down to the settlement," said the woman. "Okanagan was fool enough to hoist him on a horse, and though I talked half-an-hour solid I couldn't stop him."

Seaforth smiled dryly. "I scarcely think you could. Harry is himself again. What has taken him to the settlement, anyway?"

The woman glanced at him contemptuously. "All men are fools," said she. "He went to meet that girl from the old country, and find out his mistake."

Seaforth said nothing, but went out in haste and saddled a horse, for although it had been apparent to him that there was no affection wasted between Alice Deringham and Mrs. Margery, her words had left him with a vague uneasiness.

In the meantime Alton dropped very stiffly from the saddle in front of Horton's hotel, and, limping up the stairway, found the man who kept it upon the verandah.

"Glad to see you coming round, Harry; but you're looking very white, and walking kind of stiff," he said.

"Yes," said Alton dryly. "I shall probably walk just that way all my life."

Horton made no attempt to condole with him. He knew Alton tolerably well, and felt that any sympathy he could offer would be inadequate.

"Well," he said, "here's a letter Thomson brought you in from the railroad."

Alton tore open the envelope, and read the message with a faint relief, for it was from Deringham, and stated that an affair of business would prevent him returning to Somasco for some little time. Then he remembered that to delay a question which must be asked would but prolong the suspense.

"I'm going through to the railroad, but the ride has shaken me, and I'll lie down and sleep a while," he said.

"Well," said Horton, "you know best, but you look a long way more fit to be sitting beside the stove up there at the ranch. That was a tolerably bad accident you had?"

Alton glanced at him sharply, but his voice was indifferent as he answered. "Oh, yes, I came to grief bringing in a deer, and lay out in the frost a good while before they found me. Have you had many strangers round here?"

Horton nodded. "The bush is just full of them--looking for timber rights and prospecting round the Crown lands--Hallam's friends, I think. There was one of them seemed kind of anxious about you lately."

Alton's eyes grew a trifle keener, but he was shaken and weary, and made a little gesture which seemed to indicate that he would ask questions later.

"You'll give the horse a light feed, and let me know when supper's on,"

he said.

It was dark when he mounted with Horton's assistance, and the horse plunged once or twice. Then it started at a gallop, and Alton had some difficulty in pulling it up, for the snow was beaten down and the trail was good. He had not been gone half-an-hour when Seaforth, whose horse was smoking, swung himself down before the hotel.

"Where's Harry?" he said.

"On the trail," said Horton. "I wanted to keep him, but he lit out a little while ago, and borrowed a rifle. What he wanted it for I don't know, but he wouldn't be lonely, anyway. One of the boys who was staying here pulled out for the railroad just before him."

"Did you know the man?" asked Seaforth with unusual sharpness.

"No," said Horton. "He was timber-righting, but I'd a kind of fancy I'd once seen somebody very like him working round Somasco."

Seaforth said nothing further, but swung himself into the saddle and rode off at a gallop. He had been unsettled all day, and now it was with vague apprehensions he sent his heels home and shook the bridle.

In the meantime Alton was riding almost as fast, though the saddle galled him and he was stiff and aching. His senses also grew a trifle lethargic under the frost, but he knew there would be little rest for him until he reached Vancouver, and strove to shake off his weakness.

The horse was, however, unusually restive, and would at times break into a gallop in spite of him where the trail was level, but Alton, who fancied there was something troubling the beast, was more than a little dubious of his ability to mount again if he got out of the saddle.

Until that day he had not ventured outside the ranch.

The shadowy pines flitted by him, here and there the moon shone down, and the drumming of hoofs rang muffled by the snow through a great silence which was curiously emphasized when twice a wolf howled.

Still, plunging and snorting now and then, the beast held pluckily on while the miles melted behind them, and midnight was past when Alton, turning, half-asleep, in his saddle, fancied he heard somebody riding behind him. For a moment his fingers tightened on the bridle, but his hearing was dulled by weakness and the numbing cold, and pressing his heels home he rode on into the darkness.

It would probably have occurred to him at any other time that the beast responded with suspicious readiness, but his perceptions were not of the clearest just then, which was unfortunate, because the trail led downwards steeply through black darkness along the edge of a ravine.

The rain had also washed parts of it away, and no ray of moonlight pierced the vaulted roof of cedar-sprays. The drumming of hoofs rolled along it, there was a hoarse growling far down in the darkness below, and Alton strove to rouse himself, knowing that a stumble might result in a plunge down the declivity. He could dimly see the great trunks stream past him on the one hand, but there was only a gulf of shadow on the other.

Suddenly a flash of light sprang up almost under the horse's feet. The beast flung its head up, and next moment they were flying at a gallop down the winding and almost precipitous trail. Alton's strength had not returned to him, and he set his lips, realizing the uselessness of it as he shifted his numbed hands on the bridle. Twice the horse stumbled, but picked up its stride again, and the man had almost commenced to hope they might reach the foot of the declivity when it stumbled once more, struck a young fir, and reeled downwards from the trail.

It all happened in a moment, but there was just time enough for Alton to clear his feet from his stirrups, and though he was never quite sure what next he did he found himself sitting in the snow, shaken and dazed by his fall, while the horse rolled downwards through the shadows beneath him. He heard the brushwood crackle, and then a curiously sickening thud as though something soft had fallen from a height upon a rock. After that there was an oppressive silence save for a faint drumming that grew louder down the trail.

Alton unslung the rifle which still hung behind him, and crawled behind a big hemlock that grew out of the slope. He could hear nothing but the increasing thud of hoofs for a while, and then there was a sound that suggested stealthy footsteps in the darkness up the trail. Alton crouched very still and waited, but the footsteps came no nearer, and then pitching up the rifle fired in their direction at a venture. The sound ceased suddenly, and while the great trunks flung back the concussion it was evident that the rider was coming on at a furious gallop, and Alton rising sent out a hoarse cry, "Pull him before you come to the edge of the dip!"

The beat of hoofs sank into silence, and a shout came down. "Hallo.

Is that you, Harry?"

"Yes," said Alton. "Lead your beast down."

It was five minutes later when Seaforth found him leaning against a tree with the rifle in his hand.

"What was the shooting for, and where's your horse?" said he.

Alton appeared to laugh softly and venomously, and his voice jarred upon the listener. "Down there, and stone dead. The last drop's most of a hundred feet," he said.

"But how did he get there?" and Seaforth felt a little chill strike through him.

Alton grasped his arm, and his voice was harsher still. "This is the second time."

"Good Lord!" said Seaforth, who understood him, huskily.

"Well," said Alton, "I think the thing's quite plain. If we could get down to the poor beast I figure we'd find something that had no business there under the girth or saddle. The rest is simpler--a little coal oil or giant powder, and--just at the turning yonder--a lariat across the trail. That man knows his business, Charley."

"Good Lord!" said Seaforth once more. "It's devilish, Harry. You're not going to tell anybody, and repeat the mistake you made?"

"Yes," said Alton grimly. "That's just what I figure on doing."

"But," and Seaforth's horror was evident, "he may try again. There are more than the Somasco ranchers who would be sorry if--he was successful--Harry."

Alton laughed, but the grating cachination sent a shiver through his companion. "Yes," he said, "I think he will, and that's why I'm waiting. He may give himself away the third time, and then it will be either him or me."

Seaforth stood silent for almost a minute. "If you would only listen to me--but of course you will not. Can't you see that you are in the way of somebody who stands behind that man?"

"Yes," and Alton's smile was now quietly grim. "It don't take much genius to figure out that. Before I'm through I'll know just who he is, and all about him."

Once more Seaforth was silent a space. Then he spoke very slowly.

"Are you sure you're wise?"

Alton gripped his comrade's arm so that he winced with pain. "It's the second time you've asked me that," he said. "There will not be room for you and me in this province if you ask it me again."

Seaforth shook his grasp off. "You are my partner, Harry, and the only friend I have. God send you safe through with it. Now, is there any use in looking for the fellow with the lariat?"

"No," said Alton in his usual voice. "There isn't. He would have been waiting up there ready to whip the thing away, and by this time he has doubled back down the trail. If you met a man riding along quietly what could you do to him?"