"You're not like the Swede; you didn't lose your nerve," said Hope.

Berwick made no reply.

"Did you ever see a good man lose his nerve?" the policeman asked.

"No."

"Well, I have. Once I was in the mountains down below with a buck policeman, a Scotch-Canadian from back east, and as good a trooper as ever sat a horse. Got lost in a blizzard on the prairies later on, and they never found him till spring—the coyotes had not left much of him. Well, Chisholm and I went hunting one day, and, travelling along, came to a box canyon. We decided to try and cross it; it was a couple of hundred feet deep, and we started, Chisholm going first. I let him down, he holding my hands with one of his, while with the other he grabbed a bush. No sooner had he put his foot on the ledge we figured on getting down to than he found it soft and yielding. For some reason he dropped my hand and grabbed at a tuft of moss and hung there. Then his footing went further down, which drew his chest tight against the wall of the canyon. I threw myself on my stomach and grabbed him by the collar and said, 'Jump.' His eyes glistened, and he appeared not to hear me. Then I looked over the edge and saw that the ledge he had been standing on had given way entirely, and that he was suspended by his arms alone. He would not speak; he would not move. The wild light in his eyes faded a bit, but there he hung, to all appearance dead. Had I not had a lariat with me I should have been powerless. As it was, I got a slip-knot around his feet, and so up under his arms, and this I made fast to a tree. Then I laughed at him. It is a wonderful light, that which comes into men's eyes at the fear of death. I have only seen it once again—in the eyes of a mother travelling on a river steamer who thought her child had fallen overboard. Losing your nerve is dangerous."

When their drink and Hope's story were finished they walked out in the street, where they met Smoothbore. As they passed him John nodded, and his companion brought his hand half way to the salute and then lowered it. Hope had given himself away; the other saw he was a policeman.

"You know Smoothbore?" Hope asked.

"I have spoken to him."

Hope did not reply for a moment, after which he continued, "There's a man who never loses his nerve."

It was the highest tribute Hope could pay.