"I guess I've had enough," he said. "Playing for stakes of this kind isn't good enough for you!"
Winston laughed a little to hide his resentment, as he said, "I don't quite understand."
"Pshaw!" said the American, with a contemptuous gesture. "Three times out of four I've spoiled your hand, and if I didn't know that black horse I'd take you for some blamed Canadian rancher. You didn't handle the pictures that way when you stripped the boys to the hide at Regent, Mr. Courthorne."
"Regent?" said Winston.
The hotel-keeper laughed. "Oh, yes," he said. "I wouldn't go back there too soon, any way. The boys don't seem quite contented, and I don't figure they would be very nice to you. Well, now, I've no use for fooling with a man who's too proud to take my dollars, and I've a pair of horses just stuffed with wickedness in the stable. There's not much you don't know about a beast, any way, and you can take them out a league or two if you feel like it."
Winston, who had grown very tired of his host, was glad of any distraction, especially as he surmised that while the man had never seen Courthorne, he knew rather more than he did himself about his doings. Accordingly, he got into the sleigh that was brought out by and by, and enjoyed the struggle with the half-tamed team, which stood with ears laid back, prepared for conflict. Oats had been very plentiful, and prices low that season. Winston, who knew at least as much about a horse as Lance Courthorne, however, bent them to his will, and the team were trotting quietly through the shadow of a big birch bluff a league from town, when he heard a faint clip-clop coming down the trail behind him. It led straight beneath the leafless branches, and was beaten smooth and firm, while Winston, who had noticed already that whenever he strayed any distance from the hotel there was a mounted cavalryman somewhere in the vicinity, shook the reins.
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?"