The team swung into faster stride, the cold wind whistled past him, and
the snow whirled up from beneath the runners, but while he listened,
the rhythmic drumming behind him also quickened a little. Then a
faintly musical jingle of steel accompanied the beat of hoofs, and
Winston glanced about him with a little laugh of annoyance. The dusk
was creeping across the prairie, and a pale star or two growing into
brilliancy in the cloudless sweep of indigo.
"It's getting a trifle tiresome. I'll find out what the fellow wants,"
he said.
Wheeling the team he drove back the way he came, and, when a dusky
object materialized out of the shadows beneath the birches, swung the
horses right across the trail. The snow lay deep on either side of it
just there, with a sharp crust upon its surface, which rendered it
inadvisable to take a horse round the sleigh. The mounted man
accordingly drew bridle, and the jingle and rattle betokened his
profession, though it was already too dark to see him clearly.
"Hallo!" he said. "Been buying this trail up, stranger?"
"No," said Winston quietly, though he still held his team across the
way. "Still, I've got the same right as any other citizen to walk or
drive along it without anybody prowling after me, and just now I want
to know if there is a reason I should be favored with your company."
The trooper laughed a little. "I guess there is. It's down in the
orders that whoever's on patrol near the settlement should keep his eye
on you.
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