then and there that no Mounted Police officer had a string attached to
me, by which he could force me to speak or be silent at his will. It was
a dirty piece of business on Lessard's part. Even Dobson eyed him
wonderingly.

"Why, damn it!" Lessard finally burst out, "you've handled this like a
green one, fresh from over the water. You are held up; this man is
robbed of ten thousand dollars; another man is murdered under your very
nose--and then you waste thirty-six hours blundering around the country
to satisfy your infernal curiosity. It's incredible, in a man of your
frontier experience, under any hypothesis except that you stood in with
the outlaws and held back to assure their escape!"

At first MacRae had looked puzzled, at a loss. Then under the lash of
Lessard's bitter tongue the dull red stole up into his weather-browned
cheeks, glowed there an instant and receded, leaving his face white
under the tan. His left hand was at its old, familiar trick--fingers
shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the
knuckles and wrist--a never-failing sign that internally he was close to
the boiling-point, no matter how calm he appeared on the surface. And
when Lessard flung out that last unthinkable accusation, the explosion
came.

"You lie, you----!" MacRae spoke in a cold impersonal tone, and only the
flat strained note betrayed his feeling; but the term applied to Lessard
was one to make a man's ears burn; it was the range-riders' gauntlet
thrown squarely in an enemy's face. "You lie when you say that, and you
know you lie. I don't know your object, but I call your bluff--you--you
blasted insect!"