In less than five minutes the two were riding across the prairie towards Muller's homestead at the fastest pace attainable in the loose, dusty snow, while Breckenridge rode from shanty to shanty to call out the men of the little community which had grown up not far away. It was some time later when he and those who followed him came up with his comrade and Muller. The moon still hung in the western sky and showed the blue-grey smear where horse-hoofs had scattered the snow. It led straight towards a birch bluff across the whitened prairie, and Breckenridge stooped in his saddle and looked at it. "Larry," he said sharply, "there were two of them." "Yes," said Grant. "Only one left Muller's." Breckenridge asked nothing further, but it was not the first time that night he felt a shiver run through him. He fell behind, but he heard one of the rest answer a question Grant put to him. "Yes," he said. "The last man was riding a good deal harder than the other fellow." Then there was silence, save for the soft trampling of hoofs, and Breckenridge fancied the others were gazing expectantly towards the shadowy blurr of the bluff, which rose a trifle clearer now against the skyline. He felt, with instinctive shrinking, that their search would be rewarded there in the blackness beneath the trees. The pace grew faster. Men glanced at their neighbours now and then as well as ahead, and Breckenridge felt the silence grow oppressive as the bluff rose higher. The snow dulled the beat of hoofs, and the flitting figures that rode with him passed on almost as noiselessly as the long black shadows that followed them. His heart beat faster than usual when, as they reached the birches, Grant raised his hand. "Ride wide and behind me," he said. "We're going to find one of them inside of five minutes." There was an occasional crackle as a rotten twig or branch snapped beneath the hoofs. Slender trees slid athwart the moonlight, closed on one another, and opened out, and still, though the snow was scanty and in places swept away, Grant and a big Michigan bushman rode straight on. Breckenridge, who was young, felt the tension grow almost unendurable. At last, when even the horses seemed to feel their masters' uneasiness, the leader pulled up, and with a floundering of hoofs and jingle of bridles the line of shadowy figures came to a standstill. "Get down, boys, and light the lantern. Quilter's here," he said. Breckenridge dismounting, looped his bridle round a bough, and by and by stood peering over the shoulders of the clustering men in front of him. The moonlight shone in between the birches, and something dusky and rigid lay athwart it in the snow. One man was lighting a lantern, and though his hands were mittened he seemed singularly clumsy. At last, however, a pale light blinked out, and under it Breckenridge saw a white face and shadowy head, from which the fur cap had fallen.