straight drawn brows. The hat had fallen crown up in the snow, and near by, half buried in the white drift, was sprawled a motionless human figure, clad in the familiar summer tunic of the Northwest police.

Corporal Dexter slid out of his saddle, and a second later was kneeling on the ground. He raised the body to a sitting posture, with one of his arms supporting the lolling head, and it needed no further scrutiny to apprise him of the fact of death. His hand pressed against the wet, still-warm face, and he looked at the closed eyelids and tight-locked lips of a man he knew. It was Constable Tommy Graves, R.C.M.P., from the inspection post at Fort Dauntless, two hundred miles to the south.

Corporal Dexter was attached to the barracks at Crooked Forks on the old Dawson road, far across the ranges. But he had met young Graves now and then on long patrol, and remembered him as a gay and gallant comrade. Skirting the edge of a juniper clump there approached from the southward a line of nearly effaced footprints. Thus, after devious wandering, Constable Graves had come to the appointed hour and place, and here his life's trail ended.

The hair at the base of the boy's skull was matted red, and Dexter's probing finger discovered an ugly opening where a bullet had entered from behind. The skin over the forehead was bunched and broken, and the corporal, using a delicately wielded penknife blade, a moment later came into possession of a flattened chunk of lead, .30 caliber size.

The words "vengeance" and "reprisal" are never spoken by a mounted officer. Nevertheless, there is no place on earth where the murderer of a policeman may feel safe from the menace of the reaching hand. Dexter at present was on long patrol in the wilderness, seeking two fugitives who were wanted in the settlements for a brutal case of assault and battery. But now his plans must change. New and more urgent business called him.

Crouching on his heels beside his fallen comrade, he took off one of his gloves, and blew his breath to warm his finger tips. From his pocket he brought forth pencil and notebook, and, with calm, steady hand he wrote his brief report. He himself might be summoned at any time to meet a similar fate, and as a member of a methodical organization it was his duty to leave the written record behind. The bullet was sealed in an envelope with the scribbled page, and the packet then buttoned securely in his tunic pocket.

His own terse statement tucked away for safe keeping, he bent over 

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