1929. The story begins: If you ask me, there's nothing like riding across the open prairie for quickening a fellow's eyesight, remarked the Honorable Percy Rapson, breaking a long spell of silence. There's so little to be seen, anyhow, except the grass and the flowers, that he's bound to catch sight of anything unusual. Sergeant Silk smiled at his companion's boyish enthusiasm for the open-air life of the plains. Percy had been sent out to Western Canada to learn farming, but there was no doubt that he was learning a lot that had no direct connection with agriculture. Owing largely to his friendship with Sergeant Silk, of the North-West Mounted Police, he was learning to be manly and self-reliant and he was beginning to know so much scoutcraft that his remark concerning the quickening of his powers of observation was quite justified.