The sergeant passed on, saluting, without a word. Doubtless he had liefer far that Captain Arnutt had hit him in the face. But, when all is said, no words could hurt this curious monomaniac now, after that which he had seen with his own eyes and that which he now saw. Complete enlightenment had come to old Sourdough in one fraction of a moment. In the moment when he reached earth, on his back, flung there by his impact with the calculated screwing thrust of Jan's massive shoulder, Sourdough knew that his day was over. He expected to die then and there, and was prepared to die. Contact with Jan had told him in a flash things which could not be written in a page. He tasted in that moment the cold-drawn, pitiless efficiency of the methods of the northland wild, and realized that he could no more stand against this new Jan than a lady's house-bred lap-dog could have stood against himself. As his feet left the ground his life was ended, as Sourdough saw it. And then had come Jan's miraculous, shuddering withdrawal, wholly inexplicable, chilling to the heart in its uncanny unexpectedness. Sourdough mechanically regained his footing, and then with low-hung head, inward-curling tail, and crouching shoulders he slunk away at the heel of his bitterly disappointed master. The collapse of this old invincible within a few seconds was a rather horrid sight and a very strange and startling one. From that hour Sourdough was never again seen in the precincts of the R.N.W.M.P. barracks, and, though many people puzzled over the old dog's disappearance, none ever knew what became of him. The sergeant had been for some time entitled to retire from the service. That night he obtained his commanding officer's permission to do so. XXXIX HOW JAN CAME HOME Captain Arnutt proved himself a friend indeed to Dick Vaughan. Once he had come to understand the position, he fully sympathized with Dick's wish to leave the service at once and return to England. That sympathy he proceeded forthwith to translate into action, and within the month Sergeant-Inspector Dick Vaughan had received his discharge and booked his passage--with Jan's--for England. Despite his elation over the prospect before him, Dick found the actual parting with his comrades in Regina a good deal of a wrench. They were fond of him, and of Jan, and proud of both. And Dick found when the packing was over and valedictory remarks begun that these men had entered pretty deeply into his life and general scheme of things. They were good fellows all, these hard, spare, long-limbed riders of the plains, and they and the North-west had made of the Dick who was now bidding them good-by a man radically different in a hundred ways from the careless, irresponsible, light-hearted Dick who had come to them a few years back direct from kindly, indulgent Sussex.