The NWMP commander, Colonel George French, desperately attempts to have the boys escorted home. However, the brothers manage to tag along on the eight-hundred-mile march of NWMP men and wagons headed for Fort Whoop-Up, in what will one day be Alberta, with the hope that they will catch up with the thieves. Besides the terrible life-threatening hardships brought on by bad weather and brutal terrain, Rob worries about his mother and wounded father and fears he might even lose Luke and never find Smokey or the other horses.