"No hurry. Do you know what you're up against? When I draw this gun I can put a bullet through your head and ride away?" "Yes." "Unless, of course, you plug me first." "Can't do that. Against the regulations." "Much obliged for that information. You've got only a dead man's chance then--if I show fight." "Better not. Game hardly worth the candle. My pals would run you down," the constable advised coolly. "You still intend to arrest me?" "Oh, yes." As Morse looked at him, patient as an animal of prey, steady, fearless, an undramatic Anglo-Saxon who meant to go through with the day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable; and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to kill or be killed. It came to him that he was up against a new order which would wipe Bully West and his kind from the land. He handed his revolver to Beresford. "I'll ride with you." "Good. Have to borrow your horse till we reach Whoop-Up. You won't mind walking?" "Not at all. Some folks think that's what legs were made for," answered Morse, grinning. As he strode across the prairie beside the horse, Morse was still puzzling over the situation. He perceived that the strength of the officer's position was wholly a moral one. A lawbreaker was confronted with an ugly alternative. The only way to escape arrest was to commit murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier. Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. Some of them had been put out of business. Their property had been destroyed and confiscated. Fines had been imposed on them. The current whisper was that the whiskey-smugglers would retaliate against the constables in person whenever there was a chance to do so with impunity. Some day a debonair wearer of the scarlet coat would ride out gayly from one of the forts and a riderless horse would return at dusk. There were outlaws who would ask nothing better than a chance to dry-gulch one of these inquisitive riders of the plains. But Beresford rode into the stockade and swung from the saddle with smiling confidence. He nodded here and there casually to dark, sullen men who watched his movements with implacably hostile eyes. His words were addressed to Reddy Madden. "Can you let me have a horse for a few days and charge it to the Force? I've lost mine." Some one sniggered offensively. Barney had evidently reached Whoop-Up and was in hiding.