"Keep in with the police, Lansing--I've known a good supper now and
then go a long way. They may worry you about fireguards and fencing,
but they'll stand by you when you're in trouble, if you treat them
right. If it's a matter of straying stock, a sick horse, or you don't
know how to roof a new barn, you have only to send for the nearest
trooper."

"Aren't these things a little outside their duties?" Edgar asked.

The constable grinned.

"Most anything that wants doing badly is right in our line."

"Sure," said Grant. "It's not long since Flett went two hundred miles
over the snow with a dog-team to settle a little difference between an
Indian and his wife. Then he once brought a hurt trapper a fortnight's
journey on his sledge, sleeping in the snow, in the bitterest weather.
They were quite alone, and the hurt man was crazy most of the time."

"Then you're supposed to look after the settlers, as well as to keep
order?" suggested Edgar, looking admiringly at the sturdy young
constable.

"That's so," replied Flett. "They certainly need it. Last winter we
struck one crowd in a lonely shack up north--man, woman, and several
children huddled on the floor, with nothing to eat, and the stove
out--at forty degrees below. There was a bluff a few miles off, but
they hadn't a tool of any kind to cut cordwood with. Took us quite a
while to haul them up some stores, though we made twelve-hour marches
between our camps in the snow. We had to hustle that trip."