What little sense men had anyhow! Her father must have realized that she had seen the strange horse in the barn and he should have known that she was consumed with curiosity. But men would be men. She must wait or expose the hand that would show her interest in the owner of Open A.
The steak came shortly, broiled to that happy turn between medium and rare, and garnished to a degree that even Owner Sam could not have commanded from the Celestial chef. Nothing much was said while Flame ate, for all knew what that border air did to appetites. And the girl, her mind quite absorbed as to what and whyfor the silver stallion, kept knife and fork busy, occasionally dropping both implements to run fingers through her wondrous hair.
Not until she had pushed back her plate and refused the "slab" of pie offered by Chan Toy—on the ground that she had some respect for her girlish figure—did Dick Murdock speak to her directly.
"It's been a hard day for all of us, Flame," he began, banishing the frown, and replacing it with the nearest he knew to a look of adoration. "Can't we have a bit of close harmony on just one or two of the old songs. Start it off, pal!"
Flame looked at her father. He was comfortably sprawled in his big chair at the head of the table, his meal-time cigar half smoked, his entire manner one of content. Nothing alarming or even startling could she see in his attitude. This seemed to be just like a hundred other evenings after a hard day's work on the range. Yet there was the silver stallion box-stalled in the Lazy G stables! What did it mean? Was the outfit by prearrangement trying to lull her to a sense of security about this man she wanted to doubt, but could not—this stranger who seemed to be playing the only other woman on the Fire Weed range? Entirely possible. But she would not weaken, even to ask questions.
"I'm pretty tired, boys," she said, after an appealing look at her father, which that worthy chose to ignore. "But a little harmony, not too close, might rest all of us. Shall it be, 'Bringing In the Sheaves' or 'What Shall the Harvest Be?'?"
"Rustlers," murmured Rust, from his place at the far end of the table, evidently in answer to the interrogation of the last song title.
"What did you say?" The snapped question came from Sam Gallegher, and his entry evidently was most unexpected.
"Nawthin' that amounts to anything," murmured the reddish puncher, and he slumped back in his chair, pretending an interest in the bottom layer of a pie crust that he previously had scorned.
Flame straightened in her chair. They were holding out on her, the whole bunch of them, including her father. They had his prize horse in the stable and they had him somewhere about, and they were afraid to tell her! Of all that she was convinced. She realized that she had just a moment in which to decide, and in that moment she decided to play them at their own game.
"Let's have 'The Cowboy's Dream,' Firecracker," put in her father. "We all get in strong on the chorus of that old-timer."
Flame pushed back her chair, but did not rise, for there was no formality about the Lazy G's after-supper "sing." Flinging one khaki-covered knee over the other she began in a contralto as clear as a day in June:
"Last night as I lay on the prairie,
And looked at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Would drift to that sweet by and by."
And then the outfit, with bass, tenor and unidentified squalls, swung into the decidedly repetitious chorus:
"Roll on, roll on;
Roll on, little doggies, roll on, roll on.
Roll on, roll on:
Roll on, little doggies, roll on."
As though she thought they needed the instruction she came right back at them with the dogmatic lines of a second verse, in which a dim narrow trail leads to the bright, happy region; but a broad one to perdition was "posted and blazed all the way." She sang, between their lusty roll-ons, of the "great round-up," where cowboys, like doggies, were gathered to be marked by the Riders of Judgment, and on to the final warning:
"They say He will never forget you,
That He knows every action and look;
So, for safety you'd better get branded,
Have your name in the great Tally Book."
Several other ranch songs followed, but somehow the usual zest of their not unusual chorus exercise was lacking. She halted them for false harmony on "Poor Lonesome Cowboy" and when they began to twit Dick Murdock for his scowl and his refusal to sing, she gave them "The Dreary, Dreary Life" which generally marked the end of the chuck-room concert. This well known range lament, calculated to bring tears to the strongest eyes, ran:
"A cowboy's life is a dreary, dreary life,
Some say it's free from care;
Rounding up the cattle from morning till night
In the middle of the prairie so bare."
After complaining of "the wolves and owls with their terrifying howls" the cowboy of the song envies the farmer and the man who stays home with wife and child. And the last "yowl" gives all the glad part to the cook, thus:
"Half-past-four the noisy cook will roar,
'Hurrah, boys, she's breakin' day!'
Slowly we will rise and wipe our sleepy eyes
The sweet, dreamy night passed away."
Flame suited action to the word of the song, pushing back her chair and rising to a pair of tired feet. "It's the sweet dreamy for me, boys," she said. "Come on, dad."
Although Smiling Dick Murdock concentrated his gaze upon her, the girl spared him no look. Not so easily was he to get back into favor after such an attack as he had made upon Jack Childress, that different sort of man.
No word passed during the brief walk from the chuck-house to the owner's cabin. The father, having missed none of the wordless tilt between his daughter and the handsome range boss, was wondering what it was all about.
"Out roaming the range this afternoon, Firecracker, you missed a caller," said Gallegher when they had settled on either side of the reading lamp in the plain but comfortably-furnished living-room. "Serves you right."
"I knew I'd missed something while stabling my beastie," returned the girl. "But it will be news if you tell me what you did to our neighbor that he should leave the pride of his heart, Mr. Silver, stabled with us. I hope there wasn't any rough stuff?"
"Rough stuff? Over what?"
"You know as well as I do the cloud of rustling suspicion that hangs over him. This outfit's not inclined to be pulling on silk gloves where he's concerned. Again let me say that I hope there was no rough treatment."
The father smiled tolerantly. "If I'd known you were so deeply interested, girl o' mine, I'd have kept him by hook or crook or invitation to dinner until you loped in. He rode over with a led saddler, and asked us to keep his silver horse while he's away on some particular business the exact nature of which was left to our imagination. Said his one man, an Irishman named Mahaffy, I believe, would have all he could do looking after the stock—his breeding band—and he did not want to risk Silver while he was gone. I could not refuse such a neighborly request, and I didn't ask any questions. There are times when I don't like to answer. You can have the thrill of exercising the beauty beast if you like."
"He's going away—where?" The girl scarcely realized that she had put a question. She flushed with embarrassment when her father laughed at her.
"Seems to me that some one is strangely interested in one rustler suspect," he commented unfeelingly. "What's friend Dick Murdock going to think and say. I can tell you, though, where the attractive neighbor is going—at least where he said he was going. He has some important business to transact down in Montana."
The girl said no more, but busied herself with a bulky catalogue just received from Eaton's, the Winnipeg department store, a volume that has been called "the next-to-Bible of the West Canada housewife." She made out a sizable order, tossed it across the table for her father's approval, and decided she was tired enough to "dint the feathers."
Flame took refuge of her own room, the size of which was such that it served as bedroom, boudoir and shower-bath—this last an unusual ranch luxury, thanks to the immediate presence of the lake and a windmill which, aided by a lofty tank attachment, gave the entire home ranch a considerable and unfailing water pressure. Hers was a dainty room, done in white and hung with blue draperies. At once it was characteristic and yet it wasn't. Had one seen the young mistress only in saddle clothes, which were waist, breeches and boots, with no compromise of skirt, this blue-and-white—almost Dresden—effect must have seemed somewhat incongruous. But the room was sacred to Flame, the only woman on the ranch. None ever entered it except the China-boy who "made it up and down," as he put it. There, in the mirror of her dresser, she scowled at the freckles that persisted to bridge her nose, but as always decided not to amputate them. Had a pimple appeared—— But fair as was Flame's skin there never had been a prairie draft so hot as to burn her.
This night she put on the flimsiest of the things she had learned to wear in her few years at a Montreal convent—the few years of an education cut short by the death of her mother and a feeling that Dad-Sam would "go wild" did she not return and take care of him. Before she tucked herself in under the silken blue spread that concealed a couple of blankets—provincial nights are cold at this early season—she studied herself in the glass and was not ashamed to preen a trifle. What would he think of her could he see her now and in so different a costume than the rough range ones in which she most often had greeted him? What would he think? And why—why was she worried, or even interested, over what he'd think, if, indeed, he'd think at all?
With the windows particularly open to-night, that she might hear and get into the fray should any attack be made upon the silver horse of suspicion, she pulled the brocaded coverlet up to her chin, and repeated words to herself.
"You fool go to sleep!"
That was the order repeated over and over, at first verbally, then in thought. "Go to sleep—you're tired! Go to sleep!" But for once the order was not obeyed.
Flame found herself pondering over what might be this mission in Montana from which he might not speedily return. There was something weirdly strange about his leaving Silver with another ranch outfit. Suppose that a raid on their stock took place while he was absent from his "baby" ranch in the basin, presumably on business in Montana? Was not that State the base from which the rustlers worked; the haven to which they drove their loot for brand blotting and hurried sales farther south? Would she, then, still be able to cling to her persistent belief that Childress was a gentleman and not the scoundrel that so many believed him? This last question she did not answer, except to breathe a fervent hope that there would be no raid.
Then she slipped from her bed, put pink toes into purple "mules," walked to her dressing-table and, for the first time in more than a year, set a small alarm-clock. Usually she could waken at any hour on which she set her mind; but to-night her mind did not seem to be entirely under control. And there was something she must know—something that meant getting up with the Chink cook and riding hard until she knew. Her father had been too courteous to ask questions, but she need not be. The newcomer called her Flame and she called him Jack when they were alone.
Why was Jack going down into Montana on an inferior mount, his own prize left to the care of a man he scarcely knew? Why? But particularly why—why was she losing sleep over the fact?
Flame's clock did not fail her. Next morning she was up with the cook who, at that season of the year, was not perpetrating any of the half-past-four roars. She slipped out of silken "nighterie" and into the rougher clothes of the range. Without disturbing her father in his quarters across the living-room, she crossed the quadrangle and entered the chuck-shack to the unblinking surprise of Chan.
"Coffee and cakes, Chan," she ordered with a grin as cheerful as though she had slept the clock around instead of only a quarter of it. "And you needn't say that I had so early a breakfast should any one ask for figures."
"Cheerio—I mean righteo," returned the Chinaman. To him these white ranch people were a queer lot, but Gallegher a good boss, and the young lady less troublesome than the housewives for whom he had worked in several towns. "Chan keep sleclet much better 'an Mister Murdock."
She gave him a quick look, followed by sharp demand: "Just exactly what do you mean by that, you heathen."
Chan grinned broadly, as he always did when she called him "heathen." She had been the object of his most respectful worship from the time of a near tragedy of the winter before. The cook had returned from a vacation in Strathconna, which boasted a considerable Chinatown. There he had acquired a new idol or joss, a dreadful-looking dragon figure, which he enshrined upon a shelf in the dining compartment of the chuck-house. Rusty, the buster, came in for supper, saw the new decoration and proceeded to ring it with his sombrero instead of using the regular hat-and-gun rack. At the very moment the Stetson settled over the emblem of Buddhism, Chan appeared in the doorway of the kitchen partition, in hand the carving knife with which he was about to slice roast beef. He saw the desecration, and seeing, saw red. With a yell that would have done credit to the most supernatural banshee, he started after the bow-legged horseman, brandishing the knife in religious frenzy. When almost within reach of the thoroughly frightened Rust, who had entered upon a life-or-death marathon around the long table, not daring to pause to open the door for the refuge of the yard, Flame had entered. Taking in the tense situation at a glance, she tripped the knife-man for a heavy fall.
After forcing Rust to remove his hat from the Celestial's sacred object, and insisting that he apologize to the cook, she had convinced Chan that her ready tripping probably had saved his life. The outfit undoubtedly would have "eaten him alive" had the carving knife reached its mark. Thereafter Chan swore by her, and for her, but never at her.
"Murdock, he clazy about Missie Flame—so much clazy he can kepp that sleclet away from nobody but she—you."
"Well," she returned after a moment of pondering on the Chink's sage observation, "you'll keep my early departure this morning a 'sleclet' from all hands or I'll—I'll feed you to the buzzards!"
Still grinning, Chan went about the cooking of a hurried breakfast, sorry that there were so few culinary touches that might be added to an early morning meal that was calculated particularly to "stick to the ribs."
Breakfast finished, she leathered her own particular black; paused a moment to stroke the cold muzzle of Silver, the strange visitor; then she mounted and was off in an easterly direction at a pace calculated for long distance travel. She congratulated herself that she was up and away before any of the outfit was stirring. Even on ordinary occasions she was adverse to answering questions about her proposed movements, but never had been able to persuade her father and the older busters of the fact; moreover, this was no ordinary occasion.
To herself, Flame did not apologize for the unwonted interest she was taking in the affairs of a comparative stranger. No more did she try to explain this interest. The fact that it came from the heart, not the brain, did not alarm her. There had been so little heart interest in her life thus far that she found a sort of thrill toying with this one.
Her chief concern, as her horse brushed through the fire weed and over the stretches of rising grass, was whether or not she could pick the pass he would take on his ride into Montana and, picking it, would she arrive before he had gone through. Admittedly she was worried about what had happened on or about the home ranch. Childress' leaving of the silver stallion was a queer proceeding at least. She did not doubt her father's statement that their big neighbor had brought the horse over and ridden away toward his one-section ranch on a led animal. But the general demeanor of the boys, particularly of Smiling Dick Murdock, had alarmed her as to what might have happened when Childress had rounded the lake and ridden beyond the vision range of Sam Gallegher. It was more to satisfy herself on this point than to attempt to pry into the big ranchman's affairs that had led her afield so early.
And if she were lucky enough to encounter him jogging southward into the State of Trouble, what should she say to him, what ask, how explain her early-morning presence so far from home? With the thrill of a school girl engaged on some momentous undertaking in behalf of love's young dream, she asked herself, answered herself—then discarded her answers.
In case Jack—Mr. Childress proved entirely unmolested, in good health and in his right mind, riding about his own private business, Flame realized she would need to take care lest she make herself and her impulsive action seem ridiculous. That would be simply insupportable! He might think of her worse than the situation really warranted—that she was in love with him; when, of course, she was but "mildly interested." Yes, she would need to take care, unless—and she almost hoped that something in the way of mild discipline had been administered. What a chance that would give for her to show sisterly interest and sympathy!
Meantime her mount had been throwing the miles behind fleet heels. They had reached a point on the range where she must choose her pass for the "hold-up." Would he take the narrow, rocky one that gave way across "Medicine Line" directly south of his own place, or would he swing around to the valley farther east. She decided that all depended on where in the States he was headed. As she was totally without information on this point, she accepted the first chance that offered and eased her black down into a rocky defile that afforded a direct gateway to Crow's Nest, a settlement of ill-repute, as well as to law-abiding towns farther south.
Once on the trail she dismounted and examined it closely for traces of any recent passage. Two nights before there had been a downpour which washed clean the earthy portions of the road. She could see no hoof marks and was satisfied that none had passed in either direction since the rain. If the owner of the Open A intended to use that gap to the States, she was in time.
Around a sharp bend, she halted her horse in mid-trail, having thought of a subterfuge that might lessen his suspicion that she was laying in wait for him. Loosening the cinch on her cow-saddle, she waited with the patience of a feminine Job. And presently she was rewarded. The scrape of an iron shoe upon a rock came to her ears from beyond the pinnacle that hid her presence. At once she busied herself with the saddle straps, and so Jack Childress found her, engaged in a commonplace operation of the trail.
Flame did not look up until he was almost upon her, and then with well feigned surprise. This changed quickly to real anxiety when she saw the peep of a white bandage beneath the brim of his hat. She took full advantage of the moment afforded her for speculation. Something, then, had happened to him the day before—some injury that required the use of a gauze dressing! Noting the position of the injury, she recalled that other morning when she had discovered Dick Murdock, Roper and Rust about to do a dreadful thing with a red hot running-iron. It required no great strain on her lively imagination to figure out what had happened.
Not for a second did she doubt her father. Samuel Gallagher never had lied to her, and she did not believe that he would begin in this twilight stage of their close acquaintance. This thing that had been done to Childress had been perpetrated after he had deposited the silver stallion and started back to his own little ranch. For just a second she was disappointed in him that he should have permitted a second attack to succeed. A man as upstanding as he seemed to be should not have been caught napping twice, should at least have left his mark upon the enemy. She had seen no trace of conflict upon any of the outfit about the home-ranch board the night before. They must have sprung some new-fangled surprise upon him. She could not bring herself to believe that Jack—her Jack as she whispered to herself—was a man afraid to fight. Should he prove to be that sort, of course, her interest must end; but he would not! She knew he would not.
By this time he was upon her, pulling his mount to a halt in a state of surprise, the genuineness of which could not be doubted.
"Our trails do cross, Flame of Fire Weed!" he exclaimed gladly. "Although yesterday, when I did not find you in your own corral, I feared my luck was slipping."
He had pulled off his hat, in utter disregard of the bandage about his forehead.
"What—what has happened to you, Jack Childress?" she cried, sweeping a hand in gesture across her own fair forehead.
"Nothing worth worrying about," he assured her. "Are you going far and headed my way? Can I help you with that saddle?"
She stamped her foot. "I'll not be put off with polite chatter. Those roughnecks that dad calls an outfit got you and branded you after you'd left Silver with us as a hostage of your good behavior. Dick Murdock, the smiling fiend, will answer to me for every inch of the burn. Does it hurt terribly and have you done everything possible for the wound?"
Childress grinned reassuringly, pleased beyond measure at her snap-of-the-hammer sympathy. "I've done everything possible," he said. "The wound don't hurt. Probably there will be no permanent scar. But above all else, let me absolve Murdock and his men. They had nothing to do with this. I did not see any of them yesterday. I doubt if they knew I had been to the ranch until they found Silver in your home stable."
"Then it must have been that shifty widow's outfit that got you," she flared, after a long inquiring look that convinced her he was not absolving his enemies who rode the Gallegher brand just to save her trouble. "You'll have to spin an iron-clad excuse, Jack, before I'll forgive you for letting any of that Rafter bunch catch you napping." She paused a moment—a pause he did not interrupt, being entirely too busy identifying the emotions that played across her face. "Strange," she went on, more to herself than to him, "strange they should hit on the same ordeal that our busters had. That Tom Fitzrapp must have been talking to Murdock. Will you climb down off that horse, brother, and let a woman have a look at what has happened? Men are worse than babies when it comes to looking after their wounds."
Sergt. Childress obeyed, already convinced that in the end he would make a clean breast of exactly what had happened.
"Be careful," he admonished as she started to unwind the bandage.
She frowned at him. "You're worse than a child with a cut finger," she chided. "I'm not going to hurt you, son."
"I meant be careful with the bandage—it's all I've got with me."
"I'll take care of that," she assured him and went on removing clumsily fixed pins, each of which she saved in the sleeve of her shirt, as though in a pincushion.
At last the bandage was off and she stood back to observe the havoc wrought his brow. She stared a moment; then transferred her gaze to the bandage.
"Didn't you have any salve—any ointment?" she demanded.
"Would that have been good for—for what ails me?" he answered with a cheerful question of his own. "Does the horseshoe effect meet with your artistic approval?"
Obviously she was puzzled. Who wouldn't have been? The idea of jesting over as deep a disgrace as can come to a man on the range—a living degradation than which many would have preferred a merciful death!
"What's the idea, Jack?" she demanded after a moment. "For a poor branded man you don't seem as concerned as might be, and if I was going to put the horse thief brand on any misguided freebooter, I'd burn deeper than your decorator seems to have done. I don't get this smear any more than I do your attitude toward it. Suppose you come across clean."
"Sorry, Flame, that you don't like my artistry with the brush," he laughed. "I hadn't time to ride over to the Rafter A and show it to our dashing widow friend."
Shy as a beautiful, speckled trout, she refused to take the bait of Ethel Andress' mention; but she was quick to demand further information regarding the brand.
"Your artistry, what do you mean? And what had a brush to do with it?"
"Recall, if you please, that day not so terribly long ago when you arrived in the nick o' time to save a certain roped ranchman from the decorative efforts of Messrs. Rust and Roper, doubtless members of the impressionistic school and deep burners with the running-iron."
The girl nodded actively and the sergeant went on, changing to the personal form.
"Perhaps you don't remember that I said as we were riding to your home ranch something about a valuable idea that had come to me from the frustrated attempt. This masterpiece of forehead decoration is the working out of that idea. I sent to Strathconna for a tube of blister paste and a brush with which to lay it on. I worked hard to paint an artistic horseshoe and if the effect isn't what it should be, blame the zig-zag crack which Paddy Mahaffy put in my only mirror when he dropped it the other day—seven years' bad luck to him! I didn't put any brand within the shoe, as it is not necessary that the folks I'm going to visit should know exactly where I acquired the mark of the thief. It will be enough that they should think me what I am not—a rustler of horses."
"Then you're going down into Montana on a visit?" she asked, more to gain time in which to ponder the madness of a man who, without compulsion of any sort, would so disfigure himself.
There ensued momentary digression, for he asked her to oblige him by replacing the bandage. He wanted the blistered horseshoe to become well set, and he did not care to exhibit it until he reached his destination.
"This visit?" she reminded him, when she had performed a first-aid effect that would have been a credit to an army nurse.
"I haven't lost any animals yet from this popular out-door sport of rustling in Fire Weed," he returned readily. "But then I haven't many and I haven't been here long. I am tired, though, of the suspicion that hangs over me and my silver horse. I owe at least one of the gang a toasting for that day he marooned me on that ledge and forced me to chin myself out of difficulty on the wriggliest length of hemlock I ever hope to tie to. Moreover, we see nothing of that scarlet patrol that we asked of the Commissioner of the Royal Mounted. Something must be done, and without any fuss, I'm going to attempt to do it."
Sergeant Jack was sorry as soon as he had spoken that he had mentioned the Mounties. That was his one slip into direct prevarication, and it did not come easy from him to lie to Flame of Fire Weed. He tried to excuse himself to himself by the fact that he had used the uniform color scheme in his statement, but realized the evasive poverty of such an excuse. As long as he confessed so much of his plans, why didn't he go the whole way and tell her that Mahaffy and he were the scarlet patrol—very much without the scarlet? He had trusted her with much, trusting without exacting even a nod of promise that she would not reveal his plan; then why not tell her everything? But something tied his tongue on the big secret. He was not sure just what this was, but argued mentally that there would be time enough for disclosures when he had accomplished something on this special detail.
Flame had listened to his revelation with widening lids. These now narrowed as she weighed the proposition.
"Then you're going——"
"To Crow's Nest first, possibly farther into Montana—wherever the trail leads."
"Don't go to Crow's Nest," she begged. "They'll kill you!"
"They're more likely to enfold me like a brother." He raised a hand in mock salute to the forehead bandage.
"It's the hell-hole of the West," Flame continued to voice objection. "I wouldn't send my worst enemy into it. What are a few stolen horses and lifted hides to——"
He was pleased beyond measure at her interest, the thought of which would ride with him no matter what the danger. But he realized that the morning was slipping away. An after-dark entry into the Nest for a stranger was a foolhardy undertaking. Pleasant as it was to tarry here on the safe side of "Medicine Line," studying emotions as portrayed on what was becoming to him the fairest face he had ever seen, regardless of freckles and flare of hair, Childress realized that he must ride on.
"Nothing's likely to happen to a branded man," he reassured her. "By night my forehead will wear what seems to the casual observer to be a real scar."
"But the Crow's Nest!" she cried. "I wish you weren't going into that brimming cup of iniquity alone. Suppose we ride back to the ranch and tell your plan to dad. He'll send Murdock or one of our trusty busters to back you up."
Childress grinned. "My dear——" He caught his breath at the daring phrase of endearment which had popped out so unexpectedly; but she seemed not to have noticed. "Flame, I wouldn't ride into hell brushing stirrups with Murdock. If you'll let me adjust that saddle for you—fix whatever's wrong with the leather, I'll be on the way along the primrose path."
"There's nothing wrong with the saddle, Jack." Her turn for confession had come and she met it gallantly—without a blush. "I slipped a cinch just to have an excuse for laying in wait for you, hoping you'd come this way."
Almost at this moment did he tell her something that he was beginning to feel sure eventually and inevitably would be told; but he held his tongue.
"You guessed the right pass," he parried the danger point. "Take good care of Silver, won't you, Flame?" He swung into the saddle and cantered down into the draw where soon he would leave the land of the beaver for that of the eagle.
"Crow's Nest," Flame murmured almost in a wail. "Crow's Nest! Why did he wish such a task on himself?"
In the heart of the bad lands, where the Bitter Root Mountain range begins, lies the nest of the crow, one of the few remaining hide-outs which the taming West affords. It is easy of access once you know the trail whether you come from the prosperous Montana towns to the south or from the Canadian province to the north. And it is safe enough to all who have won their spurs at outlawry in either direction. A single road leads to it; although there are several trails away from it, available to those who are "in the know" and forced to make a sudden get-away.
At the entrance gulch, through which the only wagon road winds its way into the dreary upland, so well called "bad," there dwells a small rancher who finds it worth while to keep within the law. His chief source of income, on which he pays no tax, is to signal the approach of strangers, particularly officers of the State or Federal government. A flag which he can raise or lower without leaving his front porch sends the alarm to the outlaw nest. The system may be old-fashioned, but it has not yet been discarded either for the telephone or the radio. Telephone wires can be cut by a posse that really is in earnest about paying the Nest a surprise visit and radio communication is, as yet, too much of a mystery to interest these border folk as a safeguard.
It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon when Sergeant Jack rode up to the out-guard ranch house. From his previous visit to Montana he had learned enough about Crow's Nest to understand the method of safe approach. The bandage had disappeared from his forehead; written there in lines of fire was the horseshoe brand of disgrace.
Lounging, as was his wont, in a sway-backed chair built by stretching an undressed hide upon a proper arrangement of saplings, loafed the outguard—a long-nosed, lanky, unshaven mountaineer. At his feet, in half slumber, lay a couple of nondescript hounds, reputed to be efficient guardians, so far as alarm was concerned, of the entrance gulch at night. In the scraggly front yard a boy of nine or ten years was playing as best he might with no mate to make up a real game. In the open door of the shack a slovenly woman appeared, evidently the wife and mother, drawn from some household task by the noise of the horse's approach.
"Greetings and salutations, friend," was the sergeant's opening. "Is everything sitting pretty up at the Nest?" His hat was tilted low over his forehead, concealing the informative scar.
"That there all depends on who yuh are and what yuh want," returned the man on the porch without moving a muscle of his elongated frame. "I'm Doc Chase, ranchman and honest. I don't pay no attention what goes on up there. Who're yuh?"
Childress removed his Stetson, disclosing the tell-tale wound which already was beginning to look like a scar.
Chase started up in his chair, then sank back again, as though the effort was painful.
"They got yuh, eh?" he remarked. "Wonder they let yuh get away, Childress, with just a brand, considering the Strathconna Breeders has put an alive-or-dead on you."
"How did you know my name?" the sergeant demanded.
"Don't know your real name—only the one you've borrowed from somebody in the Mounted. Recognized yuh from the description on the bill and the picture. What was the matter with your gun that yuh let 'em treat yuh like a maverick?"
"They got me when I wasn't looking and I guess they didn't know about the reward. You don't seem interested in collecting it."
Doc Chase sniffed loftily. "Blood money ain't no good to no one stranger. I reckon you'll be welcome up to the Nest. Tommie!" This last was called to the boy who came quickly from his play. "Tommie, run up the flag."
"The stripes or the white one?" asked the lad.
"The white, you young idiot. Can't yuh recognize a friend when yuh see one?"
So Childress rode on into the rough country, confident that no pot-shot would be taken at him from the abundant cover on either side of the trail. Had the stars and stripes fluttered from the signal mast on the hill behind Doc Chase's cabin, he probably would not have been allowed to cover the first of the two miles that intervened without being made a target. As the flag was white, he rode safely and unchallenged into the small mountain park which so surprisingly decorated the region of mountainous despoliation.
Years before Bart Crowe, a potential outlaw, had found refuge there, liked the semi-forested location, and had taken up a homestead. Once the property was his and his debt to the law squared by the statute of limitations, he had built a log hotel and passed the word among his hard-riding, careless friends that at Crow's Nest was a sure refuge in the time of storm. The arrangement with Doc Chase had come later and was particularly designed against Prohibition raiders, since Montana sheriffs and their deputies preferred to wait until men they desired had left the "nest."
With the law's repression closing in on the better known and more respectable resorts of the state, Crowe's business had increased. A supply of liquor always available through his rum runners from the North, he had built up quite a trade with loggers from the camps in the Bitter Root forests. They could get in if they looked right to Doc Chase and stay until they had spent their earnings. If there was a tougher place in the United States than Crow's Nest—he had dropped the "e" of his own name for that of the glossy-black carrion birds which were at home among the cedars—Bart Crowe would have wondered "how come."
Before the main structure of the small settlement—a log building of considerable size—Childress dropped rein on his cayuse and entered. Beyond the open door he found a long bar, its wood unpolished and with no brass rail for impatient feet, at which half a dozen men were drinking. Two wore the vividly-colored Mackinaws of lumberjacks and the calk studded boots that went with the same; two were in riding clothes of balloon-trousered cut; a fifth was dressed in the height of Helena fashion and the sixth he recognized from description as Bart Crowe himself. Behind the rough bar, a pasty youth with plastered hair was polishing glasses. The only difference between him and the bartenders of the pre-Volstead era was the fact that he wore a flannel shirt instead of a white jacket, but under the collar of that shirt blazed a crimson tie with a more-or-less diamond accompaniment.
No one paid particular attention to the newcomer, although seven covert glances certainly were directed his way. They had known that someone was coming, as reported by the flag. It was up to him to make the first overture.
Childress glanced at the group, as though seeking a familiar face, and he nodded to the man so easily recognized as the proprietor. He still wore his hat, pulled down over his eyes.
Then he crossed to as strange a bulletin board as ever an outlaw camp boasted. The freshest and most prominent "Wanted" placard held his entire attention, as it was the first time he had seen it since he had ordered a few of them printed and privately and particularly distributed by his friend the sheriff of Bison County, Montana. Below a reasonably good likeness of himself appeared with the usual flare of the small-town printer:
$1,000 REWARD
DEAD or ALIVE
This amount will be paid by the
undersigned for the capture in any
form of
JACK CHILDRESS
wanted for horse stealing. Has
taken name of Mounted Police
officer and may wear uniform.
And there followed a description that was more or less accurate.
Childress spent several minutes studying this poster; then he crossed to the bar.
"Pen and ink," he requested.
The bartender looked startled; the drinkers glanced up.
"Don't serve 'em usually; would you have 'em with or without?"
Childress started a long reach over the bar, which the drink-mixer avoided. Then, evidently, he got a glance-of-eye order from Bart Crowe; set out a bottle of ink and a scratchy pen. "We don't cash no checks up here, mister," he asserted, not to be denied a last fling.
The sergeant took the bottle in one hand, the pen in the other and crossed to the board. There he traced a horseshoe on the brow of the half-tone presentment of himself. When he had finished and returned the pen and ink, he swept off his hat and addressed the group at the bar.
"Now, gents, that poster looks something like me," he said casually. "If anyone of you needs a thousand dollars reward——"
He waited. The others stared—stared most fixedly at the horseshoe scar upon his forehead, in that outlaw camp a royal badge.
"Be yourself, son!" The admonition came from Bart Crowe. "Step up and name your poison—one's as bad as the other."
"You don't mind the brand, then?" Childress demanded.
"Hell, no!" said Crowe.
With that the sergeant walked over to the bulletin board and pulled down the poster which he had arranged to have posted against himself. "That's a go," he said. "What'll you all have."
While they were having—mostly "another of the same"—Childress stepped to the swinging door of the back room where a tin-piano and a "fiddle" were making music for some sort of a dance. Several women were there—best not described. They rented cabins from Crowe for a profession that is older than the oldest. The two-piece orchestra blared, and the two couples on the floor seemed to dance until one of the women, a brunette slightly beyond the life she obviously was leading, caught sight of the stranger in the doorway. At once she let go the big lumberjack who was trying to follow her through the steps of a waltz.
"Here's my man at last!" she cried and quit her rough-shod partner cold.
"Not me," said Childress, trying to back out.
But he was not quick enough. The woman insisted that he dance with her, insisted even to the point of laying violent hands upon him. The group at the bar saw the attack and applauded.
"Better give in afore you offend the lady," advised one of his newly made acquaintances—the one with the pegleg. "Delores Doleroso drives a wicked knife and gen'ally gits what she thinks she wants."
"Come on, you big, beautiful horse thief," urged Delores. "I just love to waltz with a man what's wanted dead-or-alive." She turned to the two-piece "orchestra." "Start that number over!" she commanded.
None of them paid any particular attention to the Swede logger who had been ditched in the midst of a dance for which he already had paid. The mackinaw-clad giant stood mid-floor, rocking his huge frame backward and forward on the calks that studded the soles of his boots. The while he clawed at a blond-bushed chin, his sky-blue eyes shooting dangerous fires.
Although not in the least interested in the dark-eyed dance hall girl who had drafted him as partner, Childress could not be rough with a woman. Since she would not be shaken off gently, there seemed nothing to do but to dance with her. A skillful "stepper," despite infrequent indulgence, he swung her out upon the floor from which all but the deserted logger had retired.
From the Swede came a snarl. "You tank you can steal my girl—Sven Larsen's girl!" was his shout in bellicose basso. "I finish you now—once for sure."
On top of the threat came swift advance which left Childress no doubt that he was in for a fight.
The music broke off in the middle of a run. The group at the bar pressed forward, all eager to see how this strange outlaw, who had dared them to collect the price on his head, would acquit himself against a whisky-crazed lumberjack. Delores, her interest really captured by the upstanding figure of the newcomer and clinched by that livid horseshoe scar upon his high forehead, made faltering effort to halt the trouble she had started.
"Back to your kennel, you yellow dog!" she ordered. "I'll dance with you when you pull off them spiked boots. Be yourself and show some sense."
She tried to throw herself in front of Childress and take the brunt of the jealous rush. But Childress swept her to one side and behind him.
The first blow of the contest momentarily stopped the adversary who had thundered forward with huge hands outstretched in the obvious intent to grip the sergeant's throat.
Slightly taller than Childress and much heavier, the Swede shook himself. For a second his close-set, turquoise eyes blazed downward. Then, with lowered head, he rushed again.
That Childress had not been in the path of the human steam roller, that he had side-stepped and was urging Sven Larsen to wait a minute and have his girl returned to him, appeared only to increase the logger's fury. In the next few minutes the sergeant had no thoughts to spare from his blows and footwork.
Larsen abandoned his futile rushing tactics and tried to connect with mallet-like swings. Had one of them landed true, the innocent cause of his jealous rage must have gone to sleep for an uncertain length of time. Although strictly an amateur in all his sports, Childress had developed considerable boxing skill in his barrack days at Regina and by way of exercise in lonely posts from the Yukon to the Arctic; yet, clumsy as was the woodsman's attack, its weight taxed him to avoid being knocked out.
That Larsen shed his return attack as though it were from feather pillows instead of reasonably seasoned fists was disconcerting. The skin of the logger's face was doubtless tough as leather from years of outdoor work in all sorts of weather; moreover, it was heavily bearded and, as yet, showed no mark. Childress was already bleeding in a couple of places from scraping blows which he had not been able altogether to avoid.
The sergeant had no "war" with the Swede. Could he have ended the futile contest by clinching and crying enough, he would have been tempted to do so for the sake of his mission. But, remembering Larsen's threat to finish him, he dared not risk putting himself under such disadvantage.
In the early days of his service with the Scarlet, when on detachment assignment with the end-of-rail crews that were building the Grand Trunk Pacific through the forests of British Columbia, he had witnessed rough-and-tumble bouts in logging camps, although this was his most active participation in one. Always the uniform had prevented his entry, even if he had been so inclined. Generally the crowd stepped in before the last breath had been crushed from the vanquished, and when the onlookers held back he had ordered festivities to cease. Twice within his knowledge, when he had been elsewhere, the crowd had waited too long and murder was the ugly result. In this rough-shod mill, he could not interfere.
His best chance seemed to lie in wearing down the self-crazed giant, then driving home a blow to chin or temple that would force a respite in which he might explain that the black-eyed Delores was nothing of interest in his clam-shell life. Childress began to spar with caution, playing for the logger's wind whenever he was within reach, but chiefly engaging himself in keeping out of the way.
As the minutes passed with no call of time, the sergeant's plan of campaign seemed to be succeeding. Larsen's breathing sounded like the wheeze of a bellows. If he knew anything of reserve, the logger was too angry to apply the knowledge. Evidently feeling the pace telling on him, he tore at the neck of his shirt with one hand, ripping off the buttons until there was exposed a chest as hairy as that of an ape. Then he rushed the harder. Long since he had abandoned the invective of his adopted English for what were probably more weighty curses in his mother tongue.
The sentiment of the onlookers at first had been with the Swede, but this now showed division. The loggers, pressed against the wall of the dance room that the fighters might have all the room they needed, were still with Larsen. But the stranger's game battle against odds of height, reach and weight was winning him supporters among the outlaw group at the open doorway. They did not hesitate to ejaculate pithy advice and encouragement.
Then suddenly, Larsen showed himself still capable of thought. Having edged toward the on-lookers, he lurched and seized a stool which had been vacated to give room. This he spun along the floor, torn and splintered by the spikes of countless boots, toward his advancing opponent. Catching Childress at the knees, it tripped him to a heavy fall. Lunging toward him came the Swede.
Objection from the outlaw spectators showed in a forward press, gasped invective and Bart Crowe's shouted warning:
"Look out there, he means to calk you!"
Already the angry jack's purpose showed in the lift of one spiked, heavy boot. Childress realized that there was not a second to spare.
Larsen meant to calk him—the most dreaded punishment of the West woods! In the thought flashes that come in moments of stress, he remembered men who had suffered the torture and lived through its years of after horror, with cheeks and forehead pitted as from disease, noses flattened, lips punctured—even with eyes gouged out.
The spiked boot was above his head now, about to be ground down into his face. He never had thought much of his looks, but he couldn't endure to be a horror to all who, perforce, should have to notice him.
There entered in a determining thought-flash. Flame of Fire Weed was the whole of it. All of a sudden he realized that he loved the ranch girl. For her, whether he won or lost her, he must save such personal appearance as he had. Thank Heaven that he had a gun—that, although loath to draw it, never had he been beaten in point of time thereto, once his mind was made up. It was now—for Flame!
All in the same flash with his realizations, his gun hand had gone to his hip, his fair warning had been lifted.
"Take care, boozo—I've got you covered!"
The pause gained by his boast was only the length of a breath, of a look. His hand was empty—had failed to find the trusty Colt where it should have been stalled in his hip holster!
A rasped curse from the Swede sounded like the breath of an Arctic winter storm, the sort of storm he had become familiar with on his last long detail in the North.
The boot studded with calks descended, and the end—the unspeakable end—was near.
But in the fraction of the last second a fury of denial moved the seemingly helpless man upon the splintered floor. The vivid remembrance of Flame Gallegher, freckled nose, fiery hair, had something to do with it.
"Not me; not me!" shrieked his primal appetence—his will to live.
With all the power conserved in him by years of trouble service, he threw up the arm that had reached in vain for his gun and took the Swede's tread square, without a whimper, although the pain was beyond experience.
The spikes cut into his forearm, snagging the flesh to the bone. Borrowing strength from the very torture forced upon himself, he gave an upward heave that forced him to a sitting posture and toppled Larsen to a fall.
How long Childress lay in a faint he never knew, for he forgot to ask. The only detail that mattered when he at last came to was that his agonizing effort had ended the fight. In falling backward, the logger had crashed his head against a corner of the "tin" piano and already had been carried out to sleep it off under the trees.
"And if he never comes out of it—the trance," said Crowe, "there won't be any crepe hanging on the front door of the Nest."
"You said some words, brother!" This from Delores, who had been ministering to the sadly punctured forearm. "I'll take him to my cabin for I guess I won him."
"What the hell did you do?" demanded the peg-leg crook.
Childress awoke—otherwise returned to consciousness. He took a look at his arm before they put upon it an antiseptic salve that any road house, used to spearing fights, keeps behind the bar. Then he did shudder at what he had escaped. Would Flame, little Flame with the delicious freckles across her nose—would she ever have looked at him again had he come back to her with the logger's mark all over his face? Of course, she would have scorned him!
Came forward then the violinist of the two-piece orchestra. He held out something that Childress had missed at a vital moment.
"Didn't it fall out of your holster when he tripped you with that stool?" asked the dope artist. "When you were heeled with all of that, me friend, why didn't you pull it sooner?"
"Never draw unless necessary," said Childress, wondering how the gun had torn loose.
"And then," declared the pasty-faced musician, "necessity ain't what it used to be!"
The sergeant was himself again. The arm still pained, but he was inured to pain. But there was a new sort of trouble in the immediate offing—Delores.
"You'll come to my cabin," she said, as if with authority. "I know what's good for all that's happened to you, horse thief."
"Horse thief?" he asked, forgetting for the moment.
"Your forehead!" exclaimed the dark-eyed sister of trouble. "I don't mind. My only husband was one and they strung him up down Missoula way. You come with me."
Childress had no intention of going with the girl, either to her cabin or to any other. Even had he not been a clean-living soul there must have intervened that early-morning meeting with Flame Gallegher.
"It can't be done, sister," he said, offering a smile for her interest.
"But it was my fault—I got you into the mess," she protested.
"And I got out of it with small damage," he returned cheerfully. "You'd better see what you can do for our logger friend. That crack he gave his head when I threw him might well mean more than a headache to-morrow."
"To hell with——"
Having listened to the colloquy, and realizing from the text thereof that the stranger was no ordinary philanderer, Bart Crowe stepped in with all the authority that is rested in the proprietor of an outlaw joint.
"Here you, Delores, take your damn logger to your own cabin," he said harshly. "You've made trouble enough for one afternoon. Mr. Childress is going to be my guest until he decides what he wants to do, who, with and when. Did you get that?" And he called her a name which is too descriptive for the printed page, no matter how much she may have deserved it.
Thus Sergt. Childress of the "Royal" won his spurs in the most notorious outlaw camp which the States still permits. After a supper with the "bunch," about the board at which he was freely toasted over his escape from the "logger's curse," he rented a cabin of his own and took possession, accepted fully as a horse rustler and a man who could take care of himself whatever the odds.
Clothes, summer clothes—or rather the lack of them had taken Ethel Andress to Strathconna a few days after Childress departed on his Montana visit. Her uncle, the devoted old major, had gone with her, leaving Tom Fitzrapp in charge of the ranch and outfit. None of them knew of their neighbor's departure, or they might not have been so confident that rustling had been halted for a time, at least.
But before Ethel was through with her dressmaker a strange foreboding of range trouble harassed her. Not that any disturbing news had come from Fitzrapp, as should have been the case in the event of any unwonted happening at the ranch. Major MacDonald tried to argue against a hurried return to the Rafter A. Hadn't the horse bands been driven to the upper ranges, where they must be safe? But the fair owner's whim persisted. After they had arrived at the nearest railroad station and retrieved their buckboard team from the livery barn, she had crowded the horses over the home trail.
Old Man Cuss alone greeted the returning owner and her nearest relative when the team finally had covered the prairie miles. His face was always gloomy, so his expression told nothing.
"Everything all right on the range, Darned?" asked the widow as she unbuckled the reins and flung one to either side.
"Mostly," returned the home guard.
"Where is Mr. Fitzrapp?" she inquired.
"Up to the house, nursin' a hurt arm."
Both Mrs. Andress and the major knew Cuss's disinclination to waste any more language than was absolutely necessary. Leaving the steaming team to his mercies, they hastened their steps toward the ranch house. There they found the handsome manager stretched out on a couch in the living-room, his left arm in a sling. Ethel hurried to him anxiously.
"What in the world has happened to you, Tom?" she asked in a voice replete with sympathy.
"I came a bad cropper, Ethel, and, of course, at a decidedly inconvenient moment," returned Fitzrapp gloomily. "I'm more worried about the loss to you than about anything physical that has happened to me. I ought to be fired for the mess I've made of things."
Woman-like, she scorned interest in her own misfortune until she had satisfied herself about his physical one. "Arm broken?" she asked.
The major had thrown off his coat and now approached with the semi-professional air of one skilled by long practice in the crude surgery of the plains, where operations from bringing children into the crowded world to necessary amputations generally are conducted without aid of an M.D.
"Oh, don't make such a fuss over me," said Fitzrapp, gesturing lightly with his free arm. "The wing's only sprained, I guess; I can move my fingers."
The major made a hurried but thorough examination, proving to his satisfaction that no bones were broken, and deciding, from the absence of inflammation, that the injury was trifling.
"That arm needs a good rubbing more than a sling," was the unprofessional verdict delivered, but not unkindly. "Shook you up some when you lit, I reckon. How came it?"
"Yes, how came it, Tom—and what's the new loss? I had a hunch up in 'Conna that I was in for one."
"I've been an awful fool, folks," said Fitzrapp, his face showing a disinclination to recite the details. "If you want to kick me out for this blunder you won't hear a whimper, for I deserve it."
The explosion which the younger man seemed to fear from this forecast of disaster and failure did not follow. With a control that was at variance to past bursts of temper, MacDonald drew up a chair, and his niece, the real loser, still worried over the super-employee's physical condition, stood near by.
"It'll never be a case of kick-out, Tom," said the widow, who never was more attractive than when smiling under difficulties. "How many did they get this go?"
"Thirty-odd of the two-year-olds," murmured Fitzrapp.
"The racing stock," grunted the major. "Damn them!"
"Almost out of our front yard, too. The nerve of them! Did they leave Mrs. Cuss the kitchen stove, or was it too hot to move?" This came from Ethel, at last aroused to anger.
But Fitzrapp had more in the way of news. "And—and they stole Canada, Ethel!" He called out this startling addendum with an agony of voice that reflected his great affection for the splendid black stallion.
For a moment both Ethel and her uncle sat speechless. The fleet-footed Canada was Fitzrapp's personal property, but that did not lessen their keen regret. They fairly boiled with indignation at this crowning outrage, for the horse must have been taken from his box stall in the stable behind the ranch house.
"Wonder they didn't take the porch chairs while they were about it," blazed the major. "Let's have the whole story, Tom."
"If I hadn't been a blooming, blasted idiot," was Fitzrapp's halting start; "if Duncan O'Hara hadn't been in league with the cut-throat band from the States——"
"Dunc O'Hara!" interrupted the major. "Where in hell is that rascal? He didn't show up at the stables when we drove in."
"O'Hara is gone, Major—departed with Canada and the two-year-olds!"
Ethel took this shock stoically; asked Fitzrapp to begin at the beginning and forget the if's.
Fitzrapp pulled himself up on the couch, as though to brace himself for a distressing ordeal, and obeyed.
After the departure of Mrs. Andress and her uncle there had been several quiet days, according to Fitzrapp's account. Then O'Hara had come to him with a report that Childress had left his small ranch on the silver stallion, leaving his man, the silent Mahaffy, in charge. O'Hara had interviewed the Irishman that afternoon and reported him about as communicative as a clam. After dinner that evening, Fitzrapp had discussed the rustling with the head buster; had outlined Ethel's plan of baiting the lower range and then falling upon the thieves in force sufficient to crush them.
Then it was that Duncan O'Hara had broached a daring plan. He had reminded Fitzrapp that they were both more or less in the fair owner's bad graces for their failure at the ford. The disgrace of that could be wiped out and their characters restored for the future by baiting the lower range themselves and cutting down the raiders from ambush. In case any escaped their pot shots they would have their speediest mounts in reserve and go after them for a fight to the death. O'Hara had declared that he would rather be dead than live under a cloud of cowardice.
Fitzrapp mentioned his own chagrin over his previous failures, and said that the plausible buster had finally convinced him that they could turn the trick. They had then cut out between thirty and forty of the best two-year-olds and driven them to the lower range with the aid of a couple of Indian herders. To be certain that there could be no escape, Fitzrapp had ridden Canada as the fastest horse on the ranch. Duncan O'Hara had seemed content with the star-faced half-breed that was his regular mount.
Reaching the lower range, the two whites had left the band in charge of the bucks, who were instructed to put up no fight or objection if white men rode up and demanded the horses. Then they themselves had gone into ambush—one which O'Hara had selected as best covering the ford.
Their waiting was rewarded, Fitzrapp continued, toward the end of the second afternoon, when three well-mounted riders appeared from the south. On O'Hara's argument that they should make their proof complete by withholding fire until the raiders had started to run off the band, they had permitted the three to cross the ford. Then they had witnessed a brief parley between the whites and the Indian herders, who fell back according to instructions. The raiders started the racing-stock band toward the ford and the success of the Rafter A coup seemed assured.
Up to the very moment that it was time to fire, Fitzrapp said, he had not the slightest reason to suspect the buster. But, as he whispered, "Let them have it now!" O'Hara had sprung to his feet, bowled Fitzrapp over with a blow from the butt of his Winchester, and dashed for their hidden horses.
Stampeding his own star-face, O'Hara had mounted Canada and ridden off after the raiders. When Fitzrapp covered him with his own rifle and commanded a halt, the traitor had responded with a jeering laugh. On trying to shoot he had made the tragic discovery that there was no cartridge under the hammer and that the repeating mechanism was hopelessly jammed.
"I emptied my automatic after him, but with no perceptible effect," continued the ranch manager. "At all events, Canada kept on running, and that was the last I saw of either of them."
"And the arm, Tom?" asked the widow, who never seemed able to worry unduly about stock losses.
"Finally I caught the star-faced beast and mounted, intending to go after the traitor and his rustling pals single-handed: but the blasted cayuse began a pitching streak that surpassed anything in my experience on this or any other range. I was thrown, and by the time I got hold of the brute's tie rope again pursuit was hopeless. Examining the saddle, I found a tickler beneath the cinch. That scoundrel, O'Hara, had carried through his preparations to the last detail. You can understand, can't you, Ethel how he accomplished it, in view of the fact that I had not the slightest suspicion regarding him?"
Fitzrapp's eyes were fixed anxiously upon his fair employer.
Mrs. Andress made no effort to hide her disappointment. No more did the major. About the latter's manner there was a calm that seemed ominous. Fitzrapp felt that he could have more easily endured one of the MacDonald flares of temper with which he had had experience. Hastily he flung out the one item of consolation which he had held in reserve for this moment.
"But I did succeed in landing evidence that will convict that Childress upstart as soon as we lay our hands on him," he declared in a tone far more positive and confident than that which he had used in recounting the recent costly raid.
"There is no evidence in what you have told us," said Ethel. "Is there something more?"
"Yes. O'Hara told the whole truth when he said that Childress had abandoned his ranch. He was one of the three who rode through the gap and across the ford to roundup our horses. Look over this find. Picked it up on our side of the ford as I was coming home. Undoubtedly it had just been dropped by one of the raiders, for there was rain the night before and the book, as you see, is perfectly dry, and, besides, none but the rustlers passed."
While speaking he tossed the widow a small memorandum book bound in red leather. The fly-leaf bore the name "John Childress."
"All of the entries are interesting," continued Fitzrapp, feeling that this exhibition of concrete evidence against the rustler would turn the scale of decision in his favor. "Some of them have particular bearing upon our case against him."
He reached out for the book, and after a moment's search showed Mrs. Andress and her uncle a page of dates and numbers.
"Here, for instance, is a record of our losses from the rustlers, as accurate as our books would show it." He turned other pages. "And here are the notes he took when deciding on the location of that pretended ranch. They say there's a missing link in every criminal's make-up, and this would seem to be Childress'."
The widow looked disturbed. The major gestured for silence, and slouched down in his chair in an attitude of deep meditation. It was a considerable time before he spoke, engaged the while making a mental review of Fitzrapp's account from beginning to end, weighing the importance of each reported incident.
"Tom, what are you going to do about that race?" he demanded suddenly. "With Canada stolen you can't live up to your agreement and Childress can claim forfeit on your thousand."
"Hell's-bells, man! You haven't an idea that Childress will appear in Strathconna for that race, have you? Why, he wouldn't dare."
"I'm not so sure," returned the major meditatively. "What leads me to believe that he will make an appearance and insist on a race is that his certificate of deposit was good. The bank paid it without a murmur, and I deposited the money to my account to await developments."
The face of Ethel Andress still wore a puzzled expression. "Childress certainly manages to turn many a card in his favor," she said, gazing out through the open window over the range to the south, now gleaming like an emerald under the ministration of the setting sun. "I'll be glad when his exact standing is settled."
"I believed from the first that the scoundrel was bluffing about that race," asserted Fitzrapp, relieved that the main subject, his overconfidence in Duncan O'Hara, was sidetracked, at least temporarily. "You'll remember, Ethel, that it first was broached that day over at Gallegher's, doubtless to impress the brat with his extravagant sportsmanship. I'm surprised at old Sam letting the girl run the range with him. If she were my child——"
Whatever the widow remembered about that day at Gallegher's evidently was not pleasant; what she knew about Flame ranging the Fire Weed with the attractive suspect unpleasing. She left the living-room for her own quarters.
"A thousand dollars is some money, young man," objected the major, following the interruption of Mrs. Andress' departure. "I can see no possible object in his making so expensive a bluff."
"Well, perhaps he did intend to race me——"
"Does intend to race you is more like it," came shrewd interruption. "And there's your opportunity, Fitzrapp. With this notebook as concrete evidence, coupled with an affidavit from Ethel regarding the theft of the horses, there isn't a doubt that we can secure a warrant for his arrest. You can spring that document on him when he appears at the fair grounds to claim your thousand; have him held under prohibitive bail, and give the authorities time to work up a complete case against him."
"But if he doesn't appear at the track——" began Fitzrapp, as though lacking the older horseman's confidence.
"Then we must take up the hunt down in Montana," said MacDonald with eager assurance. "They'll never be able to disguise a horse like Canada, and with him it will not be a case of brand blotting. You'll probably find the stallion in the hands of some innocent purchaser, but we surely can trace back the transfers until we get the proof on the actual thieves. Against Duncan O'Hara, the ingrate, our case is already plain enough for us to ask the police to placard him through the border states. I'll suggest to Ethel that she offer a reward of five hundred dollars for his capture."