WINSTON'S DECISION Farmer Winston crossed the frontier without molestation and spent one night in a little wooden town, where several people he did not speak to apparently recognized him.

Then he pushed on southwards, and passed a week in the especially desolate settlement he had been directed to.

A few dilapidated frame houses rose out of the white wilderness beside the broad beaten trail, and, for here the prairie rolled south in long rises like the waves of a frozen sea, a low wooden building on the crest of one cut the skyline a league away.

It served as outpost for a squadron of United States cavalry, and the troopers daily maligned the Government which had sent them into that desolation on police duty.
There was nothing else visible but a few dusky groves of willows and the dazzling snow.

The ramshackle wooden hotel was rather more than usually badly-kept and comfortless, and Winston, who had managed to conciliate his host, felt relieved one afternoon when the latter flung down the cards disgustedly.
"I guess I've had enough," he said.