thin-lipped mouth that tilted up just a bit at the corners. We had
parted in the Texas Panhandle five years before--an unexpected,
involuntary separation that grew out of a poker game with a tough crowd.
The tumultuous events of that night sent me North in undignified haste,
for I am not warlike by nature, and Texas was no longer healthy for me
unless I cared to follow up a bloody feud. But I'd left Mac a
trail-boss for the whitest man in the South, likewise engaged to the
finest girl in any man's country; and it's a far cry from punching cows
in Texas to wearing the Queen's colors and keeping peace along the
border-line. I knew, though, that he'd tell me the how and why of it in
his own good time, if he meant that I should know.

One or two of the buffalo-hunters exchanged words with us while Mac was
building his cigarette and lighting it. Old Piegan stretched himself in
the grass, and in a few moments was snoring energetically, his grizzled
face bared to the cloudless sky. The camp grew still, except for the
rough and ready cook pottering about the fire, boiling buffalo-meat and
mixing biscuit-dough. The fire crackled around the Dutch ovens, and the
odor of coffee came floating by. Then Mac hunched himself against a
wagon-wheel and began to talk.

"I suppose it looks odd to you, Sarge, to see me in this rig?" he asked
whimsically. "It beats punching cows, though--that is, when a fellow
discovers that he isn't a successful cowpuncher."

"Does it?" I returned dryly. "You were making good in the cow business
last time I saw you. What did you see in the Mounted Police that took
your fancy?"

He shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "They're making history in