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208 white men have put up a job on the Indians to scare them from their hunting ground, bring them in, and I'll see that they get what's coming to them. The thing is to get these Indians back home. You'll have to step lively if you do it before snow flies."

Connie saluted, and as he crossed the room the Superintendent glanced with pride at the trim figure of his youngest recruit. "He'll get to the bottom of it," he muttered. "He's a sure enough tillicum."

Red Tail Lake lies beyond the Bonnet Plume Pass. On the second day out, when Connie explained to Ick Far the object of their patrol, the Indian listened in silence and at the end wagged his head gloomily. Despite years of service with the Mounted, the Indian, Ick Far, retained the savage's dread of the supernatural. But stronger than this dread was his loyalty to the service. Orders were orders. And Ick Far, albeit with fear and trembling, would have followed an officer of the Mounted to the very place of departed spirits.

On Burton Creek, and again at Hot Springs, the scout with much muttering and foreboding of evil, pointed out the graves of the men he had helped McKeever to bury.