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“I will do it, or it will do me, voila!” Pierre replied. Halby passed over a pistol.

“I’ll never forget it, on my honour, if you do it,” he said.

Pierre mounted his horse and said, as if a thought had struck him: “If I stand for the law in this, will you stand against it some time for me?”

Halby hesitated, then said, holding out his hand, “Yes, if it’s nothing dirty.”

Pierre smiled. “Clean tit for clean tat,” he said, touching Halby’s fingers, and then, with a gesture and an au revoir, put his horse to the canter, and soon a surf of snow was rising at two points on the prairie, as the Law trailed south and east.

That night Pierre camped in the Jim-a-long-Jo, finding there firewood in plenty, and Tophet was made comfortable in the lean-to. Within another thirty hours he was hid in the woods behind Fort O’Battle, having travelled nearly all night. He saw the dawn break and the beginning of sunrise as he watched the Fort, growing every moment colder, while his horse trembled and whinnied softly, suffering also. At last he gave a little grunt of satisfaction, for he saw two men come out of the Fort and go to the corral. He hesitated a minute longer, then said: “I’ll not wait,” patted his horse’s neck, pulled the blanket closer round him, and started for the Fort. He entered the yard–it was empty. He went to the door of the Fort, opened it, entered, shut it, locked it softly, and put the key in his pocket. Then he passed through into a room at the end of the small hallway. Three men rose from seats by the fire as he did so, and one said: “Hullo, who’re you?” Another added: “It’s Pretty Pierre.”

Pierre looked at the table laid for breakfast, and said: “Where’s Lydia Throng?”

The elder of the three brothers replied: “There’s no Lydia Throng here. There’s Lydia Bontoff, though, and in another week she’ll be Lydia something else.”

“What does she say about it herself?”

“You’ve no call to know.”

“You stole her, forced her from Throng’s-her father’s house.”

“She wasn’t Throng’s; she was a Bontoff–sister of us.

“Well, she says Throng, and Throng it’s got to be.”

“What have you got to say about it?”

At that moment Lydia appeared at the door leading from the kitchen.

“Whatever she has to say,” answered Pierre.

“Who’re you talking for?”

“For her, for Throng, for the law.”

“The law–by gosh, that’s good! You, you darned gambler; you scum!” said Caleb, the brother who knew him.

Pierre showed all the intelligent, resolute coolness of a trained officer of the law. He heard a little cry behind him, and stepping sideways, and yet not turning his back on the men, he saw Lydia.

“Pierre! Pierre!” she said in a half-frightened way, yet with a sort of pleasure lighting up her face; and she stepped forward to him. One of the brothers was about to pull her away, but Pierre whipped out his commission. “Wait,” he said. “That’s enough. I’m for the law; I belong to the mounted police. I have come for the girl you stole.”

The elder brother snatched the paper and read. Then he laughed loud and long. “So you’ve come to fetch her away,” he said, “and this is how you do it!”–he shook the paper. “Well, by–” Suddenly he stopped. “Come,” he said, “have a drink, and don’t be a dam’ fool. She’s our sister,–old Throng stole her, and she’s goin’ to marry our partner. Here, Caleb, fish out the brandy-wine,” he added to his younger brother, who went to a cupboard and brought the bottle.

Pierre, waving the liquor away, said quietly to the girl: “You wish to go back to your father, to Jimmy Throng?” He then gave her Throng’s message, and added: “He sits there rocking in the big chair and coughing–coughing! And then there’s the picture on the wall upstairs and the little ivory brush–“