You follow your man up here--four hundred miles or so--and what's the consequence?
You lose all hope of finding her, and your 'man' does just what the big chief said he would do, and lays you out--though it wasn't your fault after all.

Then you take possession of another man's shack when he isn't at home, eat his grub, nurse a broken head, and wonder why the devil you ever joined the glorious Royal Mounted when you've got money to burn.

You're a wise one, you are, Phil Steele--but you've learned something new.

You've learned there's never a man so good but there's a better one somewhere--even if he is a man-killer like Mr.William DeBar." He lighted his pipe and went to the door.

For the first time in days the sun was shining in a cold blaze of fire over the southeastern edge of the barrens, which swept away in a limitless waste of snow-dune and rock and stunted scrub among which occasional Indian and half-breed trappers set their dead-falls and poison baits for the northern fox.