As Morse looked at him, patient as an animal of prey, steady,
fearless, an undramatic Anglo-Saxon who meant to go through with the
day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the
North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he
could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable;
and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to
kill or be killed. It came to him that he was up against a new order
which would wipe Bully West and his kind from the land.

He handed his revolver to Beresford. "I'll ride with you."

"Good. Have to borrow your horse till we reach Whoop-Up. You won't
mind walking?"

"Not at all. Some folks think that's what legs were made for,"
answered Morse, grinning.

As he strode across the prairie beside the horse, Morse was still
puzzling over the situation. He perceived that the strength of the
officer's position was wholly a moral one. A lawbreaker was confronted
with an ugly alternative. The only way to escape arrest was to commit
murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the
great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was
sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of
fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because
he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a
silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier.

Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were
unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. Some of them had been put out of