THE LONG ARM
OF THE MOUNTED

BY

JAMES FRENCH DORRANCE

Author of "Never Fire First"

Frontispiece by
EDWARD C. CASWELL
(Missing from source book)

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1926,
BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

To
ESTHER DORRANCE
OUR BELOVED AUNT
AND
SUBSTITUTE MOTHER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I [Across Medicine Line]
II [Rescue Unwelcome]
III [In the Wrong Party]
IV [Riding Boot Rivals]
V [Too Much Luck]
VI [Sealed Lips]
VII [Last Warning]
VIII [Threat of Doubt]
IX [Bust 'em, Broncho]
X [Home of Flame]
XI [Did He Dare?]
XII [By Single Strand]
XIII [In Punishment Gulch]
XIV [His Biggest Debt]
XV [Trapping for Proof]
XVI [Clean as a Hound's Tooth]
XVII [Calling a Bluff]
XVIII [Rustled to a Finish]
XIX [Surprises for Flame]
XX [Poor Branded Man]
XXI [The Nest of the Crow]
XXII [Threat of Spikes]
XXIII [Coming a Cropper]
XXIV [Out of the Nest]
XXV [Grip of the Law]

THE LONG ARM OF THE MOUNTED

CHAPTER I.
ACROSS MEDICINE LINE.

An inanimate monument of whitewashed stones glistened in the moonlight as though each boulder was of pure platinum.

Not much to enthuse about, especially were you the one who had helped in its erection in the years of your youth; yet sight of it gripped John Childress, sergeant of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, much in the same way as Miss Liberty, down in New York harbor, takes hold of the immigrant entering the alleged promised land. For the moment he forgot that he had ever had a part in long-ago boundary-line marking. A touch of spur, a lunge of willing horse and he was on—he was across "Medicine Line," thus giving, as did the non-com in his thoughts, the Indian name to that more-or-less mythical smear which separates all King George's American acres from all of Uncle Sam's.

Childress was riding a draw in the hills which gave from the States into the Fire Weed Country of Canada's marvelous West. He wore the scarlet-blue-gold uniform that knows no stain. The horse he rode, a gray stallion whose coat glistened like silver in the moonlight, might have looked white under sun-glare, but in any light he was somebody's horse.

At the heels of the gray tailed a brindle hound. Poison was his name—just that all may know his disgrace and have it over with. Childress had bought the horse down in Missoula, when his service mount had gone painfully lame from the hard riding of a scouting trip on the star-spangled side of that mythical boundary line. Poison, the pup, who had grown to believe that the big gray and he were kennel-mates, had followed along, in that faithfulness of beast to beast which passeth human understanding. The sergeant possessed no bill-of-sale for or to the dog. Repeatedly, in his severest regimental manner, he had ordered the queer-looking canine home. But always a snort from the silver beast had countermanded orders. At that, after closer inspection of Poison, the sergeant decided none would make pursuit for recovery.

Although Luna was silvering that she'd be gone and night-dark soon would be there, Childress was not hurrying into the Fire Weed Country. To be sure, there were ranch-houses where he might have spent a comfortable night, but, no matter how soft the bed, he must have suffered because of his uniform. Give him just a week or two, a visit to a cache already made, and he'd be as plain a looking citizen as ever forked a horse. He was going into mufti, the penalty for secret service in the "Royal." To-night he meant to skirt the region, seeing no one of the local ranchmen. But he was coming back a plain cow-punch in an effort to solve the problem of stock that must have been exceedingly sick to drift so regularly across "Medicine Line."

Childress was a mile beyond the border when the hit-hit-hit of a horse coming at race-track speed caused him to draw rein and wheel the silver bulk of his mount across the trail. Came at once a whine from Poison.

"What's the matter, pup?" he asked, as the hound lofted himself against the stirrup. "Do you think they've missed you over in the States and are needing sausage-meat?"

Poison, perhaps realizing his limitations, did not say.

"Don't worry, brute," he said laughing. "You're an alien now and The Force'll look after you."

As Poison licked the man's rein-tired hand, there came streaking through the moonlight what looked to be a slender lad astride a rangy bay. The horse had gone lame in its right forefoot, but was making speed despite any handicap of pain.

"Pull up a bit, kid!" Childress shouted in time to prevent being run down by any blind rush. "What's the moonlit hurry."

The bay slid to a stop, almost within touch of the silver and scarlet apparition which blocked the narrow trail.

"Let me pass—let me pass!" The cry was in a treble that pronounced the rider either exceeding young, or something else again.

"Sure, you can pass," said Childress. "I don't own this trail. But you might tell me just what's the all-fired hurry?"

At the moment a fleck of cloud shrugged one side of the moon, putting all the silver spot-light upon the uniformed sergeant.

"A Mountie!" cried the rider. "Thank God for a Mountie!"

"No desire to deny the uniform of the service," said the sergeant. "What can I do for you, son?"

For answer, a concealing hat of black felt was swept off and hung upon the saddle. The cloud took itself still farther from out the orbit of the moon, which then played all its light upon the reddest strands of braided hair that ever a girl wrapped around her head. Such was the trust of the uniform that, honestly worn, never has failed woman, beast or mere man.

"Son!" laughed Childress. "One on me. What can I do for you, sister, that you're willing to thank God about in advance?"

The boy-clad girl plunged. "I'm Bernice Gallegher from the Lazy G Ranch. Some of that damn Yankee bunch down at Crow's Nest has been running off our stock. Thought I could get away with the boy stuff. One of our old punchers, the darned renegade, recognized me and chased me out."

She paused for breath. Sergt. Childress waited anxiously for her next word. The Crow's Nest renegades over in Montana and their particular connection with the rustling of stock out of Fire Weed was the detail which would take him into mufti in the next few days.

"Running me out of the Nest wasn't enough," went on the girl whose mane looked like flaming gold in the moonlight. "I went to the nearest county-seat of that State they call Montana. The Nesters followed, charged me with horse stealing, although this poor beast has been mine since he was a colt. They got up a posse of roughs that stood in. Been chasing me all afternoon—running me ragged. They're right behind me now, and my horse is all in. Any wonder I thanked the good God for meeting up with a Mountie?"

Years of training in emergency had made Childress a man of instant decision. For no part of a second did he doubt the girl's story. And there came confirmation thereof in the distant thud of many hoofs. To get the flame-haired youngling out of danger zone became his first consideration.

"We'll swap horses," he suggested, swinging from the silver beast's saddle. "Off that bay, miss, and on your way. Meet me at Soda Springs anytime to-morrow and we'll trade back."

The girl tried to obey. But evidently there had been too much previous strain. As she kicked a boyish leg over the saddle horn, she collapsed in his arms—absolutely out, in a dead faint.

With suddenly terrified tenderness the sergeant—known throughout The Force as absolutely "hard boiled"—held her from any possibility of a fall. The flame head fell against his chest, pillowed upon the honor ribbons which, through luck and utter unconsciousness of death-fear, he had brought back from the World War. Her lips were parted, her eyes closed. But he noticed, as his arms tightened about her and he leaned to utter anxious words into the fragrance of her hair, that a rich, healthful color began to spread upward into the creamy-tan of her cheeks. Recent years in Arctic patrol, where Eskimo squaws didn't know how to pass out of any picture except from over-feeding on blubber, hadn't sharpened his experience, but he would have taken King's oath that no fainting girl ever looked so much like a blush-rose at dawn.

"Bernice!" he demanded, remembering the name she had given.

As suddenly as she had passed did she snap out of the faint. There was a more or less spasmodic hold upon him as she caught herself together.

"Mount the silver beast—quick!" he directed.

"But, sergeant, there are five of them!" she cried. "I counted, looking back from the top of the hill, just the other side of the boundary."

"You heard me, girl," he snarled, a tone that few had dared disobey. "Make a dust away from here."

Bernice Gallegher watched his square-shouldered back, upon the scarlet coat on which the moon was playing so vividly, as he strode down the road to face, single-handed, the wild, rough-riding quintet who had followed the supposed boy, intent upon a necktie-party. For no fraction of a second had she thought of accepting his generous offer—considered making a "dust" away from her Providence-sent protector. Like a streak, she took after him.

The galloping horses of the outlaw posse pounded nearer and nearer. Sergt. Childress set himself squarely in the road, ready for King's-name confrontation. The pad-pad of the girl's rushing feet caused him to turn.

"You—here?" he grumbled, as though disbelieving that his order had been disobeyed. "Thought I told you—"

"Two guns are better than one against five," she said, panting. "It's my battle you're fighting and I've the right to help you shoot it out." From somewhere about her boy clothes she whipped an automatic.

"Too late," the sergeant groaned, as he saw the lead rider of the posse top the rise of Medicine Line. "Too late for a get-away. Behind me, woman!"

Childress would have made a perfect target as he stood mid-trail, the moon multiplying the brilliance of his uniform. But the weird light also showed the raiders what he was. Perhaps some of the band had felt the steel of the Mounted before. At any rate, his sharp "Who goes?" brought the girl's pursuers to a stop.

"We're chasing a hawse thief," drawled one of the interlopers, possibly the leader. "Let us pass an' we'll get him."

"Describe the stolen horse and the man you're after," said Childress. "The Mounted will get him for you."

There was momentary discussion in tones too low to carry to the ears of the uniformed obstruction.

"Come along with the description, if you're serious," prodded the sergeant.

"At him and over him, boys," someone of the five suggested. "Mounties never shoot first, you know."

Five horsemen lined up abreast, completely filling the trail. Touches of spurs must have ground the sergeant, and the girl behind him, into the dust, but neither of the two flinched.

With the heel of his boot Childress cut a line across the roadway. Doubting if any of the Americans could see, in the uncertain light, what he was about, the trooper explained.

"I've dragged a dead-line. Just try to cross it—any one, or all, of you—and learn that a Mountie shoots, perhaps not first, but always last."

"Hell!" growled one of the night riders.

"'Tain't worth the risk," advised another.

Childress waited, gun in hand, until patience ceased to be one of his virtues. "You're on Canadian soil, gents. The prospect isn't favorable for any crop of armed invasion. Better head back home before you start something you can't fertilize. Otherwise I'll have to take you in charge."

"We're five to one," suggested the leader.

"Five to two," corrected a shrill voice from behind the sergeant. "Come to it, you cowardly Crows!"

Childress groaned inwardly at this unexpected intervention. Why couldn't women stay where they were put? Yet, perhaps, the shrilled invitation turned the tide of conflict. A moment's hesitation and the rope-carriers from the States turned their horses and trotted away into the night.

"To whom am I indebted?" asked Bernice as they walked back to their waiting mounts.

"Suppose we set it down to Lady Luck and your own nerve, young woman."

She might have pouted had there been any chance of his seeing the same in the flickering light. "But my father, when I tell him about it to-night, will wish to write a letter to headquarters commending your bravery."

Childress chuckled. "Child, they wouldn't know what to do with that up at Ottawa. If your father wants to do a real favor to the Dominion, you might tell him, for the Mounted, to do his own tracing of rustled stock and to keep you at home where you doubtless belong."

Childress busied himself quickly with an examination of the bay horse's injured hoof.

"You're something of a brute, aren't you?" suggested Bernice.

He pretended not to hear. "Your horse," he said, "will carry you home if you don't crowd him. I'll camp trail-side, right here, so you needn't fear any change of mind on the part of your friends from over the border. Good night!"

The accent put upon this last decided the girl.

"Sergeant Brave but Impossible," she said, as she swung herself into the saddle, snapped a salute and was gone, for once in her flaming life obeying a man's orders.

When he had spread his slicker and persuaded the pup, Poison, to serve as pillow, Sergt. Jack Childress thanked the Lord that Canada grew such women. He drifted into slumber still wondering would this boy-girl of the range recognize him when clad in mufti. Important it was that she should not.

CHAPTER II.
RESCUE UNWELCOME.

The hammer of hoofs came faintly to the ear of a khaki-clad rider who forked a rangy gray stallion. A light touch of gauntleted hand upon the rein halted the animal. Steel-colored eyes swept the rolling prairie, still bronzed in its winter overcoat. But even with his unusual height full-raised in the stirrups, he failed to discover the disturbance of the prevailing quiet. The contour of this particular section of the Canadian West was secretive, and he concluded that the noise must come from beyond the rise which fronted him.

Although a stranger in the border province, Sergeant Childress had been directed with sufficient detail to realize that he had ridden a considerable distance into the Whitefoot Reservation. This fact increased the puzzle, for the sound suggested a small stampede; yet he knew that the Indians, rationed by a benevolent Dominion, ranged few cattle. After further listening he felt assured that this was an approach of horses. The alert ears of his handsome mount readily confirmed his judgment.

An excited yelp from Poison, the battle-scarred brindle hound that was the ununiformed sergeant's trail mate, soon foretold the exact cause of disquiet. Next moment the low-hung, gray body of a coyote streaked over the ridge with a pack of dogs in hot pursuit.

"Bucks must be wolf-coursing."

He spoke aloud, as he often did to four-footed companions, although he was just beginning to arrive at terms of friendship with the decidedly mismatched pair of the present expedition.

The hound evidently interpreted this observation as permission to join the chase. Perhaps he thought it was a command. Anyway he wanted to go. With a delighted yowl, he unlimbered into a speed that a rabbit-jack might have envied. He became just a brindle flash, so nearly the color of the winter-withered grass as scarcely to be discernible.

"Hell's-bells, you fool rabbit chaser, come back here!" Childress shouted. "Hyah, Poison, don't you know you're a white man's hound?"

But further commands, even had there been any forceful enough to recall that particular canine from the hunt, were smothered on his lips by surprise over the appearance of the first of the hunting party. No Whitefoot—buck or squaw—was astride the lead horse, any more than the beast itself was an Indian pony.

For the coyote Childress had no sympathy.

From more youthful experience he knew that this was far and away the worst enemy of the stock raiser, and one that is not repulsed by civilization, as are other predatory animals of the plains. While the settling of a region generally brings about the rapid extinction of all wild animals, Mr. and Mrs. Coyote welcome the coming of the homesteader, make themselves very much at home with him, raise their young right under his nose and despite bounties, poisons or traps, manage to increase with Rooseveltian litters of six to nine a year. No, for the harassed coyote sympathy was lacking!

But for the rider who led the chase——

Startled eyes stared at a white woman, clinging to one of those pads of yellow leather which the English and the riders of park hobbyhorses call a saddle. Her hat was gone and her hair waved a black flag behind with its generous streaming.

Unquestionably her sorrel mount was a thoroughbred and making a pace that only a life-or-death mission could excuse on a course so preempted by prairie-dog towns. This was not sport that he gazed upon, but folly which might at any moment be turned into tragedy.

Then he sighted a broken rein dangling from the useless bit and therefrom deduced the situation. Excited by the chase, the high-strung animal had become a runaway. The woman rider was helpless and in most imminent danger.

A touch of his unspurred heel upon the flanks of Silver caused the gray stallion to spring into action. The lean, powerful body gripped in the sergeant's thighs responded splendidly, and the race was on.

To his own risk from the burrowed habitations of the marmots John Childress gave no thought; he was riding to save the life of a woman. Nor did he pause to consider that the rider ahead was followed by friends, the beat of whose horses crowded upon his ears. He rejoiced that the proven speed of his mount assured his overtaking the runaway if only both beasts might avoid the all-too-many pitfalls presented by the dog-holes.

As he drew near, a cry came back to him from the woman. In the circumstances, any show of fright was excusable, and he readily condoned the frantic-sounding appeal for help. He did not need urging, especially as the fleeting glimpse of the face turned back to him showed the subject for the rescue to be both young and beautiful.

He sent an imprecation after Poison, when the hound, in joining the pack, caused the small wolf to turn sharply. The sorrel thoroughbred, who had forgotten training so completely as to run away, surely remembered to follow the dogs. The swerve with which changed direction was accomplished seemed almost to unseat the rider.

"Some rider, that girl!" The exclamation was wrung from Childress as he saw her regain balance with only the stirrups to aid. "But why the hell will anybody ride a saddle without a horn?" He did not attempt to answer his question into that piece of human folly.

As his own mount made the turn and closed up, his thought centered on the surest method of saving the fair rider. This was an emergency quite outside his varied experience. For a second his glance rested upon the rope coiled over the pummel in front of him. He knew that with this trusted "string" he could stop the stampeder quickly, but such a stop, likely, would mean a dangerous fall for the woman; might utterly defeat, indeed, the purpose of his effort.

There was a safer, surer way if, in her fright, she was capable of giving him the slightest assistance. Riding alongside, he could pluck her to safety, holding her against his flank until the obedient Silver slowed to a stop. But if she insisted on clinging to that joke of a saddle, would his arm have the strength to wrench her from it bodily? At once he decided that the emergency demanded the attempt.

"I'll have you safe in another moment," he called to her by way of encouragement, as the silver beast came up to the sorrel's rump.

He did not understand the look she threw back to him, nor her effort to swerve the filly with the single rein that remained in her clutch.

"Don't!" he shouted. "Can't you understand? I mean to pick you off. I'll not drop you."

Every lunge of the big gray brought him nearer, even though the supposed promise of the competition seemed to give the other horse increased speed. Knowing what was expected of him, Silver needed no guiding hand.

Now he could have reached out and touched her. Next moment his horse fell into the other's stride and the fruit was ripe for plucking.

"Loose your knee grip!" he ordered with authority. "Don't be afraid." His voice was assured, and, indeed, there was small risk for her in the arms of one trained and hardened as was Childress. But this young woman, who never before had seen him, nor even ever heard of him, could not know that.

That she shrank from him he laid entirely to her panic. Nerving himself for supreme effort, he planted his weight firmly upon the shoe of the right stirrup and leaned toward her.

The cry which sprang from her lips was surely a warning, but did not deter him. His arm flung around a fragile waist and his grip tightened. Then, with a mighty heave, he lifted her clear of the English saddle and swung her into his own seat, finding a perch for himself upon the cantle.

At the moment there were no complications. The sorrel thoroughbred, relieved of the rider's weight, broke her stride, veered to one side and slackened her pace. Silver eased down at command and slid to a stiff-legged stop. Only the coyote and the hounds, now led by Poison, the interloper, continued the mad dash across the prairie.

"What did you do that for?" came the indignant demand from the fair unknown in his arms. A breath hot with anger caressed his cheek.

"Do what?" he asked, utterly surprised.

"Drag me from my horse when I'd distanced the field! I wanted to be in at the death—all alone—by myself. I'd have won out except for your blundering. Never realized what you were attempting until you had hold of me."

A genuine disappointment tempered the flame in her dark eyes and the anger of her tone.

"But the sorrel was running away," Childress protested. "Don't you realize that you might have been——"

"The sorrel was running with the hounds as only Princess can run," she interrupted.

"Ma'am, your rein had broken and I was afraid——"

"I can't see in the least how that concerns a stranger," she flashed. "Did any one ask you to be afraid? Not I, at any rate. Down on the ranch I often ride Princess without any rein at all and she was obeying every knee signal I gave her until you crashed in."

A faint shout, succeeded by a chorus of the same, came from the crest of the rise which they just had topped so perilously. Childress looked over his shoulder to see a dozen well-mounted huntsmen and women gazing down at them.

"Oh—oh, they have seen!" cried his burden of beauty. "Set me down—instantly!"

A wilted feeling possessed the rescuer. In all good faith he had "run a beezer." The situation would not have been worse had he insisted on saving Annette Kellerman from drowning or putting out a fire consisting only of motion-picture smoke pots. With a groan for his distressing blunder, he lifted her down; then meekly followed her.

"I'm right sorry, miss, or madam—" he was beginning when the eager baying of Poison sounded across the reservation, and he realized that he no longer held her attention.

"The dogs are going to get that coyote!" she cried. "And here I am helpless, unhorsed by you! The most exciting hunt the Strathconna Club ever held, too." Her red lips quivered, adding to his torture. "I'd have been in at the death if you'd——"

"It's not too late yet!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Take Silver, here, and cut across country. He's sure-footed and easily can outrun any horse in that bunch on the hill."

"But you——"

She was smiling over a prospect of triumph yet possible, though seemingly lost. To finish ahead on a strange horse would be a real victory!

"I'll rope your mare and follow."

As he spoke, he took his string from the saddle horn. Cupping his hands, he tossed her into the worn saddle that obviously was large enough for two of her mold. Places he found for the toes of her small boots in the straps that swung his stirrups.

A glance toward the field showed her that the other members of the Strathconna Hunt Club, assured of her safety, had resumed the chase. Turning to him, her eager eyes danced a mischievous acceptance of his offer. A word from him sent the well-named Silver on his way, probably wondering in his equine brain what was the meaning of the suddenly lightened burden.

For a moment he stood staring after her. "My Stetson's off to you, young woman. You're a blue ribbon for nerve, a rose for looks; you sure can ride and you've got the courage of one of our own. Here's hoping you gather a brush!"

But his heart was hammering a troubled query. What a yearling she must think him?

The very idea of saving a lady from death who wasn't in the slightest danger of passing out and who particularly didn't wish to be saved!

CHAPTER III.
IN THE WRONG PARTY.

The smile of Jack Childress was one of the famous smiles of the Royal Mounted, but it was not in evidence this brilliant morning of early spring. His attempt to save the girl had been really, honestly gallant, and he held nothing against her attitude. He had blundered, but the look she gave him on riding away astride Silver showed that she understood his intention and more, thanked him for trying, even though his try was a miss.

He started to stalk the sorrel, cropping grass nearby, evidently content at being relieved of the responsibility of the chase, now that she had no rider aboard. In this effort he was successful, thanks to his skill with the rope. Crawling up hand-over-hand, he closed in on the horse and repaired the broken rein.

The situation amused him. A "Mountie" with his string around another person's "hawse" in a land where autos still are "sniffy things" and the equine is one of man's most treasured possessions! And this at a time when a horse stealing band, presumedly from the States, had been so perniciously active on the ranges along the International border!

Of course, he was safe enough in the circumstance of the young woman having borrowed Silver, a horse whose shoulder-brand he felt confident none of the Strathconna riders would recognize. Yet his hold upon the sorrel gave him an odd feeling, and his expression was grave as he realized that his misunderstanding of the girl's danger had been a tactical error.

To enter the provincial metropolis in such spread-eagle fashion had been furthest from his intention. He was unobtrusive by nature and particularly so by calling, when not in the scarlet of dress-parade. The occasion of this visit, moreover, commanded particular caution. Yet here he was advertising himself and his presence in a most spectacular manner; first by attempting to rescue a lovely creature of the local hunt club when it seemed she neither required nor desired saving, and then by loaning her his unusual mount that she might ride the chase to its finish.

He gazed across the reservation's sweep to the point where the hounds had surrounded an exceedingly tired coyote. The horse nearest the pack was his own gray, and the hair of the daring girl rider again was streaming straight out behind her as she held a firm seat on his over-large saddle and steered with a tight rein.

"Come what may," he murmured reflection, "she'll be in at the finish despite my blunder." But his smile was forced as he added to the filly: "Reckon, Princess, I can pay the piper for this unexpected dance."

Poison, the hound dog, was just that to the coyotes and would finish this one in short order. Served the pirate of the West as it deserved—miserable preyer on small lambs and even older ewes, raider of chicken coops and panhandler at the cattleman's expense when it finds a calf lying under the shelter of some bush where it has been left while its mother grazes or hoofs to water. Yes, the coyote would get just deserts.

But when Childress viewed closely the features of one of the males of the hunting party—this a moment later—he feared that he might be overcharged for the "dance." Unless the description given him was at fault, the oncomer was the particular man of the Strathconna region whom he least desired to meet.

That florid complexion, that aquiline nose above a short-cropped, sandy mustache, that somewhat rotund but powerful figure and the red blaze of a scar on the left cheek—all would seem to introduce to his expert eyes a certain Thomas Fitzrapp, manager of the well-stocked Fire Weed Ranch, thirty miles nearer the International boundary, the horses of which wore the Rafter A of the Andress brand—a half-diamond above the initial letter.

Had the sergeant's own mount been in hand, he would have postponed the meeting indefinitely by trusting to Silver's speed. As he could not race away on a horse belonging to a strange young woman, he decided to brazen out the encounter and, if necessary, revise his Strathconna program. Without troubling to readjust stirrup straps, he flung into the girl's saddle and rode toward the hunting party, which by now was surrounding the pack.

Fitzrapp, approaching at speed, hailed him sharply, with an arrogance of tone that added a last touch to the mental description which the Mountie held of the man he did not wish to meet. He was answered with a glance and a noncommittal "Howdy, stranger!"

"Where do you think you're riding with Mrs. Andress' saddler?" came indignant demand.

Lids narrowed over the eyes of the man in mufti as he surveyed the questioner, fashionably clad in a riding suit of gray whipcord. Andress? The name removed any possible doubt as to the identity of the querulous horseman. But at Regina division headquarters, when he had received his secret service assignment to the Fire Weed country no one had said anything about the lady of the ranch being married. Certainly he was stumbling upon personages this morning!

"Who might you be and why do you question me?" Childress asked, the usual good-nature of his tone dulled by the other's arrogance.

"I'm Thomas Fitzrapp, master of hounds on this hunt into which you've inserted yourself."

"Inserted myself is correct, Mr. Fitzrapp, and I've a suspicion that I don't fit any better than a round peg does into a square hole. None the less I'm riding this filly to her owner that I may swap back for my own beast who happens to be stirruped more to the comfort of my legs. Can't see that anyone should object to that, not even the lady's husband."

Fitzrapp flicked his ivory-handled crop against one of his shining boots, at loss just how to handle this interloper.

"Mrs. Andress is a widow, sir, and somewhat under my protection." He offered this bit of news gratuitously. "Your accent tells me that you're from the States."

The mouth of Childress twitched whimsically. He had been in the United States and recently, but he was not "from" there in the sense meant by the assured master-of-hounds. He grasped the opportunity to cover his connection with "The Force" by an equivocal return.

"I haven't noticed much difference in accent either side of the line," he said. "Shall we join the bunch?"

Childress was not asking permission, not on this any-man's range. He did not wait for answer, but headed toward the hunters.

Their arrival found old Poison offsetting his lack of straight breeding by a strength of character that was causing considerable tumult among the hounds. The Strathconna fashion-folk hunted with a cross between the Russian wolfhound and the English grayhound, swift runners, quick at turning, but not always eager to kill. Gladly had Poison taken upon himself, it seemed, the right to toss the coyote. Then, moved by jealousy, the blooded pack had attempted to take the "brush" away from him.

By the time the sergeant arrived, the police dog had put three of them hors de combat, and was holding the rest at safe distance by threat of savage fangs. None of the men riders had cared to dispute the strange canine's right of possession on behalf of Mrs. Andress, who was clamoring for her prize as the first human in at the death.

"Me and mine sure are interfering with this hunt, folks," cried Childress as he reined the mare and sprang to the prairie sod.

He strode toward his dog, who began an indeterminate, equivocal wagging of his tail. "You darned old scoundrel!" he began, in a tone that only pretended to chide. "Can't you get it through your peaked roof that we're not invited to this party? Give me that wolf!"

The blow he sent Poison's way was accepted by that discriminating beast as a caress, and the dead coyote promptly was surrendered. Picking up a thirty-five pound specimen of the prairie pest, Childress turned toward the young woman, who still sat his horse and had just finished parking her disordered hair. Old Poison slouched at his heels, casting defiant glances from side to side at the other dogs.

"Here's your trophy, Mrs. Andress," he said, removing his Stetson. "Let me apologize again and in behalf of the three of us for breaking into your hunt."

Her smiling return reminded him of the wiles of widows. "I can forgive you all," she said. "I haven't a doubt that you acted with the best intention, and this silver beauty of yours certainly gave me a flying finish. If you'll help me out of your outrageous saddle, we'll call it quits!"

As Childress gallantly handed her down, a fine-looking old gentleman with pointed beard swung nimbly from the back of a big bay gelding and approached with outstretched hand.

"Let me introduce myself," he began, "I am Ivan MacDonald, cast by fate in the rôle of uncle to this young hoyden. I've warned her repeatedly that this Indian reservation isn't a race course, even though it never has been cursed with barbed wire. I've begged her to be content with a nimble-hoofed cayuse instead of that spindle-shanked thoroughbred, and I hoped I had made some impression upon her. But to-day, through some excess of spirit, she got away from me—from all of us—and raced off after that little wolf as though Old Nick himself were after her. We topped the divide, sir, fearing to find her a bundle of broken bones, but were in time to witness your performance, as superb a piece of horsemanship as I've ever seen, and I've grown white in a horse-and-cow country."

The Strathconna riders, most of them mounted on sure-footed cayuses, who had gathered around, expressed their agreement with MacDonald's praise.

"You speak of me, uncle, as though I were still in pinafores," said the widow, laughing, evidently in fine humor from having outrun the field and been in alone at the death.

"Well, your hair was certainly down your back a few minutes ago," declared the uncle. He turned to the stranger. "You don't know, young man, what a fright was lifted off my mind and heart when you whisked my beloved relative over to your own sturdy mount. Yours is the first masculine arm I ever approved of around her waist."

"Uncle," she protested. "Tell them the truth and spare my blushes. You know that it is the first time you ever saw any one's arm around my waist, whether you approved or not." She looked highly pleased with her repartee on noting that sufficient color had mounted the cheeks of the handsome stranger to show through his coat of tan. Obviously her delight increased when a side glance found Tom Fitzrapp to be frowning, evidently highly annoyed.

"Nothing worth speaking about—what I did," protested the under-cover sergeant, wondering if he really was embarrassed or merely pretending so to be.

"Any man near enough could have done it," snapped Fitzrapp uncautiously. "Stunt rider shuff!"

"I notice you weren't near enough, Tom," laughed Major MacDonald. "If our new friend of the silver horse had held to my little spitfire after he had her good and rescued, I'd have been better pleased. But then, knowing her powers of persuasion, I can understand his weakening." With frank, friendly directness, he turned to the civilian-clad Mountie. "Whom have I to thank for my niece's rescue?"

"Wasn't rescued," the widow flashed insistence, but for once without commanding male attention.

"Name's Childress—John Childress. Am having my first intimate look-in at this province. May settle down here for a while if a rolling stone ever gathers moss enough to take root."

All of which was true as far as it went, but scarcely informative for King's-service reasons.

Evidently Fitzrapp disliked the attention which the stranger was receiving. He offered brusque suggestion that they go on with the hunt, assuring the riders that the hounds quickly would raise another coyote.

This proposal, however, brought a chorus of protest. Several glanced at their watches. The hour was noon and the majority decided that they had "hunted" sufficiently for that day. When he found that even Mrs. Andress was content with her single triumph, the "master" called in the dogs.

"Ride with me to the city, Childress," Major MacDonald suggested cordially. "If there's anything about our prize province that you want to know, I'm supposed to be posted."

"That will be a pleasure, sir, though I can't claim it as a reward for my blundering this morning." He sent a meaning smile toward the colorful widow, but missed fire. She seemed not to have heard his remark about blundering, so intent was she in the adjustment of her saddle cinches.

"Then mount, and we're off," said MacDonald. The distinguished-looking major, in turn looked at his niece. His glance, too, was meaning, and advised her that she need not ride with them.

Poison growled parting challenge to the pack, then loped off at a hound's pace after the silver horse that was his pal. The three of them—man, horse and hound—each after his kind, had enjoyed thrills this suddenly eventful morning.

CHAPTER IV.
RIDING BOOT RIVALS.

Ethel Andress believed she knew the men of her immediate command. Hers was the assurance of a widowhood that, after two years, had lost its poignancy over the past for interest in the future. She felt sure of Thomas Fitzrapp, bachelor manager of her ranch in the Fire Weed country—more sure of his feelings than of her own. Her handsome, distinguished uncle was, she thought, an open book to her. She needed not even to turn down the corner of the page when she left off reading him. He was his own bookmark.

He was riding into Strathconna with this attractive stranger in order to try him out without any assistance from her. That was as obvious as a scare head in the Montreal Star. If this Childress man measured up, probably she would meet him again at the hospitable board of the winter house which they shared in the wonder town. If, for any reason, he failed to come up to the pioneer's rough but obligatory standard, he would ride out of her life on the present occasion, and the incident of the morning would not again be mentioned.

In secret, the widow hoped that the unknown would prove sufficiently sterling for further acquaintance, for, even though she had berated him, his resource in what he had imagined an emergency had pleased her. Moreover, she liked the clean-cut, resolute look of him; his direct, outspoken manner; his appearance of having lived a great diversity of experience without too much wear and tear, and—this last count of the indictment essentially feminine—his waving chestnut hair. She offered no protest to her uncle's unspoken decision that she should ride with the other members of the club.

There was wisdom, she realized, in his precaution in a land filled with such a miscellaneous population as had crowded into their Western province in the last few years.

To the evident satisfaction of Fitzrapp, who had missed the major's glance of instruction, she ranged the sorrel alongside his mount. The dogs were under easy control, having lost all interest in any further close contact with the stranger hound, Poison. That for a time she was silent, gazing over the wonder panorama of the Canadian Rockies to the westward, did not trouble the man, for he was accustomed to her caprices and had forced himself to possess great patience wherever and whenever she was concerned. Her initial remark on the ride home, however, was far from encouraging.

"From where—from what port of missing men do you suppose my attractive rescuer hails?" she asked, her manner so innocent as to deny a desire to stab him in a tender spot.

"He wasn't your rescuer," grumbled Fitzrapp.

"Would have been had I been in danger. From where, do you suppose?"

Fitzrapp flung back a gesture toward the Montana hills in the purple distance beyond the border and only a few leagues beyond the limits of her own Rafter A Range.

"From the States," he said with obvious grouch.

There ensued a quarter of a mile of silence. Tom Fitzrapp knew when to keep still.

"What makes you think so?"

She asked the question as though coming from the United States was some sort of a crime.

"I taxed him with it and he didn't deny."

"But I'm certain," protested the widow, "that on the coat tied to the cantle of his saddle there was one of our own distinguished conduct ribbons. Wouldn't that indicate——"

"There were many from the States in the Canadian war forces," Fitzrapp offered. "Probably he's riding back to cash in on some bonus or other graft."

"Bonus—more than you'll ever cash," the widow snapped. The war had cost her a husband and any mention of it still had the lash of a whip for her.

Again they rode in silence.

That Fitzrapp had avoided war service by clever subterfuge and ostensibly meritorious home service was one of the things that continually cropped up between the fair owner of the Rafter A and the dashing foreman employed on advice of her uncle. The man knew better than to enter upon that subject. He regretted the slur that had crept into his tone in discussing the stranger.

But in view of his acknowledged suit for the hand, acres and herds of the widow Andress he was not inclined to brook interference from any attractive adventurer, who might, only too easily, became attracted. As he rode the easy, homeward-bound pace, he considered means of blocking any growth of interest in the widow should the major be inclined toward Childress.

Suddenly a startling thought, an inspiration quite in keeping with the emergency, came to him.

"Did you notice, Ethel, the horse that stranger is riding?"

"Did I notice?" cried Mrs. Andress enthusiastically. "Could I help noticing when he carried me several of the finest miles I've ever ridden? And just remember that the number of those miles is large, considering that my first hobbyhorse was a wall-eyed pinto cow pony, and that I practiced roping animals by tossing strings around the kitchen cat as soon as I could tie a knot."

"But I mean—what's the description of the horse?"

"He's a silver-gray stallion, probably a half-blood, but as beautiful a cross as you'll find in the prairie provinces," answered the widow, who knew horseflesh with that accuracy which most young women reserve for the latest fashions.

"And what have we heard about a silver stallion in the past year?" Fitzrapp asked gravely. "Have those renegades from across the border ever run any of our blooded stock off Rafter A that we didn't see or hear of their leader riding such a horse? Didn't I see a silver stallion myself in a lightning flash that stormy night when I so nearly ran them down at the boundary?"

Ethel gave him a startled glance. "Just what are you hinting at, Tom?"

"Don't want to be too hasty in judging any white man, but the possibility stands out that this chap who calls himself Childress may well be the head of the rustlers, and that the silver stallion prancing ahead there may be the one he has ridden on his costly visits to the Fire Weed range. It won't do our interests any damage to be on guard."

There was no real reason why she should hold a brief for the stranger. None, except the feminine one that she liked his looks and that her lead in the romantic game she played from instinct was to take issue with Tom Fitzrapp.

"But you have no proof," she protested after a moment's thought. "If he is a rustler, why is he riding to Strathconna?"

"Of course, the facts against him may be mere coincidence," replied Fitzrapp, with that deference to her opinion which always had stamped him as fair-minded in her eyes. "But on the other hand, his coming to Strathconna may be sheer bravado. Suppose that he hopes to learn the location and worth of other breeders along the border. Suppose that he means to inquire into the plans of the Mounted Police. There could be a dozen reasons, my dear, for a visit to Strathconna, and, after the way they've run off with our stock, you surely don't doubt that the leader of the band would be bold enough to venture anything, do you?"

"He doesn't have the appearance of a horse thief." Ethel Andress spoke aloud, but with the air of one meditating.

"Your woman's intuition is worth as much as my suspicion; but remember what your uncle says, that thieves seldom look the part. At any rate, it won't do any harm for us to guard your susceptible relative against the undoubted charms of this stranger."

At this the widow's face did not reflect the gravity one might have expected. Truth to tell, she was more diverted by what she was pleased to consider her most devoted suitor's jealousy of any possible rival than interested in his theme.

"Still seeing rivals in every pair of riding boots that come into the offing, aren't you, dear old grouch?" she said, laughing lightly. "Wouldn't it have been most awfully awful had the stranger worn chaps? If I were you, I think I'd try to cheer up. Come, I'll race you to town!"

Touching her whip to the sorrel, she dashed off toward the city that was the cow-town of yesterday, the tall buildings and sentinel-like grain elevators of which were to-day in close perspective.

CHAPTER V.
TOO MUCH LUCK.

Strathconna considered itself a metropolis and, indeed, it was one such, in a budding, modified degree. There were electric lights, a gas plant, street cars, business buildings of brick more than two stories in height and the "Hunt Club." It had more of civic spirit and local pride than most towns of a million souls.

There was nothing old about it in the sense that Montreal and Quebec are aged. Even Winnipeg was patriarchal in comparison. But let any visitor mention "mushroom growth" and every loyal citizen, which included all who had lived more than three months within its bounds, took to verbal arms. To prove that there was nothing "over-night" about the situation, proud boosters took the stranger to the fork where Rowdy River met the Placid. There for more than a century the Hudson's Bay Company had maintained a trading post. The log walls of this still stood, considered as the town's most sacred relic, although the tremendously expanded business of the supply concern now was conducted from a three-story brick building at a prominent crossroads—pardon, at a prominent intersection of wide, paved streets. Strathconna was no toadstool. Strathconna was phenomenal. Strathconna deserved all the adjectives that might be coupled with a city. In addition, its skirts were draped with the grounds and race-track of the "Provincial Fair Association for the Breeding of Better Horses."

In Canada's Wonderland there are a dozen new towns quite like, and quite as ambitious as Strathconna—new as a Christmas gift clock and ticking as vigorously. With five years of Arctic patrol immediately behind, to Sergt. Jack Childress the town was sufficiently vital. He was disinclined to dispute the claims of its most ardent booster. It seemed to him that he had been but a moment out of the Frozen North. His visit to Ottawa, where, at the Mounted Police headquarters on Rideau Street, he had delivered a prisoner of international importance, seemed like a dream. So brief was it that he had not even crossed the bridge to Hull, the factory city in the "wet" province of Quebec which is the near-Broadway of the Dominion capitol and only five minutes away.

"One last detail, Jack," the commissioner of the Royal had suggested. "I know you've earned a rest, but this Fire Weed game has me puzzled. Take it and solve it and I can promise you an inspectorship."

They had been friends for years in the M.P. service and the fact that the one had risen to the topmost rank that The Force possesses had not changed their Jack-and-Jim intimacy. The commissioner envied Childress the years on the French battlefront, and the sergeant, returned to his old service, would have disputed with his competent fists any one who dared say that Jim Maltby's promotion had not been earned.

Early this afternoon, after parting from Major MacDonald, Childress had at last found a stable among many garages and negotiated a stall-without-bath for Silver. In many ways he was satisfied with the ride into town, having managed to ask more questions than he had answered. Evidently Poison did not understand that he was to remain at the stable with the wonder horse. Two blocks away from the barn Childress had found the hound at heel and had been forced to execute a personally conducted return of the beast.

Despite the fact that his time was limited, the scene at the intersection of King and Prince Streets, the hub of this self-nominated metropolis, held him for a time, an interested, wondering spectator. After years of sledding with dogs or behind reindeer broken to harness, he felt a certain thrill in watching automobiles, taxicabs and horse traffic struggle with electric cars for road room on the well-paved street. He found an eddy in the jostling throng of pedestrians and looked his lonely fill, marveling that the traffic officer, a municipal man, was able to keep from under.

The sidewalk crowd was the personification of bustle and particularly striking in its cosmopolitan qualities. Englishmen in loose-hanging tweeds rubbed elbows with the motley throng; the Whitefoot brave, his black hair in a ribbon tied braid, shuffled along in moccasined feet, followed by his squaw wrapped in a gaudy blanket; a Chinese with a basket of laundry upon his shoulder narrowly escaped collision with a Japanese truck farmer who staggered under the weight of his load of tubers; Canadians and Americans, indistinguishable in their similarity of feature and garb and gait; nor wanting were the disabled ex-service men, some still in uniform and on the crutches of continuing pain. Indeed, this was a world's melting pot on a smaller scale than he had noticed in Paris, London, New York, Montreal or Chicago.

But here in Strathconna, the self-styled "City Where Dreams Come True," he missed the hopeless faces that had so impressed him in other similar crowds, for here every countenance appeared expectant. It seemed to be a city of buoyant youth, yet it was a city and therefore not for him. Already he felt a return of the stifling sensation that always came to him with paved streets and towering walls of brick and stone. He was eager to return to the open country, to throw his leg across saddle leather and feel under him the easy pace of Silver skimming the prairie. He rejoiced that two days at most should see the end of the business which called forth his present visit to town. Life in cities was all right for those who liked it, he reflected, but activity of another sort appealed more to him.

Several members of The Force wearing the brilliant uniforms of the "Mountie" off duty, passed by with the crowd. Two of them, with whom he had served on desperate cases, came so near that he could have touched their shoulders by reaching out with one of his long arms. As he was in civilian clothes, following the invariable rule of the Force, there was no recognition, and he gave no sign, such being the nature of his mission.

At the Chateau Royal, one of those Canadian masterpieces of hotel construction several score of rooms too large for Strathconna's present demands, he found quarters for himself. His "John Childress" was registered as inconspicuously as possible and his address set down as "Harve, Montana," the last place in the United States in which he had spent any time on the present investigation.

Despite his modesty, he did not escape the local boosters, particularly the realtors who had everything to offer from corner lots to factory sites and "suburban estates with homes built to live." It was nearly impossible for him to persuade them that he was not an investor. Almost was he sorry that he had not risked acceptance of Ivan MacDonald's invitation to dine with the "family," a bid that marked the end of their ride together. At last, in self-defence, he went to a motion-picture theater, the key of his hotel room in his pocket. On return he made his entry so inconspicuous that the cards of four boosters who were awaiting him in the lobby were not delivered until he came down to breakfast in the morning.

Ten o'clock found Childress at the local office of the Maple Leaf Midland Railroad, a substantial building constructed of a stone that glistened like galena and came from one of the quarries along the line of the road that held an enormous land-grant acreage. Here, again, Childress encountered the "metropolitan" idea. In an ornate foyer an attendant, caparisoned with all the glory of an Oriental diplomat, assured him that they—doubtless meaning his company—had everything in stock from ready-made farms to cow ranges. Childress was directed to the "Department of Natural Resources" on the second floor.

Request brought forth a detailed map of the southern portion of the province. After some comparison between the map and the notes which his memorandum book held, he located the Fire Weed Range, and a particular section bearing the railroad's ownership mark. This adjoined the extensive holdings of the Rafter A Ranch, touched on its western side the Gallegher Range and was not too far from the border for the purpose the sergeant had in view. That this parcel had remained unclaimed by either the Andress or the Gallegher interests seemed surprising and the best piece of professional luck that had come to Childress since his return from gathering Arctic "weather reports" and Eskimo murderers in the subnormal temperature of Frozen Solid Land.

"Guess that six hundred and forty acres ought to answer," Childress mused, after an inspection of certain other vacant sections. "At least, I'll be in the way of the somebodies who are raising all this mysterious rustling hell. Wonder why the Andress or Gallegher interests didn't pick it up? I wonder?"

He gained the attention of a land agent behind the glass-topped counter and found him at once courteously attentive on remarking that he had heard the railroad was offering ready-made farms.

"Greatest idea ever worked out for the settler without considerable capital," declared the agent, with that assured belief that is seldom found except in realtors and missionaries. "Suppose you're situated so that you cannot wait to erect your home and farm buildings even with the help of the two thousand dollar loan that is offered on our other proposition. And suppose again that it is necessary for you to farm and make a living practically the day you start in western Canada. Then you do want one of our ready-mades—a four-room dwelling, a barn for eight head of stock, well dug and pump installed, farm fenced, and gates in place, fifty acres turned over by tractor plow and twenty years to pay." The agent beamed upon him.

John Childress did not lack response, seeming at once to catch some of the other's enthusiasm. "That sure does sound attractive," he said.

"You've had agricultural experience?"

"Might admit that," returned Childress, remembering his experiments with wheat, potatoes, onions and the ever-hardy radish at one of his last posts in the sub-Arctic.

"Married, of course?"

A look so surprised as to seem bashful came into Childress' face. "Married—eh? Not that any one could prove, I hope!"

The Maple Leaf Midland's land agent looked indignant. "Then you don't want a ready-made farm, young man. They are sold only to married men and are designed particularly for the comfort of families."

But he did not turn entirely away, this fatherly agent. He merely nodded to a young woman who had entered the office and was waiting at the map-spread counter. This nod said that he welcomed her and that she would be next to receive his attention. The sergeant looked up hastily, his attention attracted as much by the nervous tapping of the newcomer's fingers as by the railway man's momentary abstraction. He caught a glimpse of the "next" homeseeker.

The woman was young—scarcely more than a girl. She was tall and angular. Her face was flushed, possibly from the exertion of climbing the stairs in a hurry, but not enough to hide the freckles that bridged her impudently cut nose. Her eyes looked like two of the freckles enlarged, vivified, carefully rounded and placed, so brown and solemn they were. Her hair was the sort that oftenest comes with such eyes, the color of flame, soft and very thick, as shown by the braided coronet exposed by her back-thrown felt hat.

Quite a good deal to take in at a glance; but there are glances and glances. Childress was trained to seeing much with his wide-range eyes. He was impressed—with a feeling that he should hurry his own transaction to save the flame lady any unnecessary impatience.

But the fatherly land clerk was addressing him.

"I should say, from the looks of you though, that you soon could remedy that marriage deficiency. There's nothing like trying. As a married man myself, I recommend the state, which needn't be what some call it—a condition of servitude for the male."

With a sense of bashful alarm, the sergeant saw him glance at the woman of marvelous hair. This became as near fright as he ever allowed himself to get when he realized that the unknown in the black riding togs must have heard and was finding difficulty in concealing beams of amusement. Childress, except for a prisoner or two who wore skirts, had enjoyed little experience with the sex he considered "dangerous." To him, romance was somewhere in the future—over the ridge ahead—after he had made good in the scarlet service to which he had committed so many of his active years—something perhaps to be snatched up, if he were lucky, just before the decline set in.

"The only woman I ever thought enough of to marry—" began Childress, and then stopped.

"Ask her again, son," put in the paternal clerk.

"Was already married," the sergeant went on. "Isn't there any way I can get hold of this section"—pointing out the one he had selected—"without hitching into double harness?"

The land agent raised bushy gray brows at this request for an entire section which in Canadian land measurement represents six hundred and forty acres. He explained that the largest of the ready-made farms were but half that acreage; but he could sell him one section—or two, for that matter—on terms of one-twentieth cash and the balance in nineteen annual payments.

"This for me then," said Childress with decision, and he indicated the location he desired.

"For your own satisfaction, we require a personal inspection of the land you propose to buy before you buy it." The agent seemed somewhat puzzled by this unusual client.

"Inspected it on my way from the border," Childress explained. "If it don't turn the trick for me, I don't know of a vacant section that will. In the beginning, I'll graze stock instead of cultivating. What's the initial payment?"

The land agent's eyes blinked at the easiest customer he had handled in many a day. Then he recited other requirements: occupation within six months of date of purchase; railroad reservation of all minerals, gas and petroleum; unencumbered ownership of stock if maintained in lieu of cultivation. But to all these provisos the sergeant nodded ready agreement, handed over the first payment and edged down the counter while waiting for his receipt that the flame lady might have her turn at the maps.

His face wore a satisfied expression over what he considered a good morning's work. The section of Dominion land was to serve, of course, as a cover for his professional activities in the Fire Weed country. "Nobody can raise serious objection to a man hanging around his own individual property and keeping his eyes open," he mused. "And these acres are going to be Jack Childress' ranch for the next year at least. Afterward—well, it will be a tough break if the 'case' lasts into a second payment."

An exclamation from the fair land-seeker who had followed him at the counter startled the sergeant from his musing.

"Too late!" she cried. "Do you mean that I'm too late—that the section has been taken up just this minute?" There was anguish in every word of the cry and query.

He looked up to see the flame woman frowning at him.

"Some folks have too much luck," she declared in a voice the bitterness of which seemed calculated to reach his ears.

The voice did reach them and the vibration of the protest set those members burning.

"The ink's not dry on the transfer; perhaps—" the land agent began, then beckoned to him.

Not at once did the sergeant respond. From the first the voice of the woman applicant had puzzled him. Now, with a flash as of fire, the truth dawned upon him. Here was the Gallegher girl who had stood behind him in that Medicine Line clash with the outlaws from Crow's Nest. Praise be to moonlight—she seemed to have not the faintest recollection of any previous meeting!

CHAPTER VI.
SEALED LIPS.

Sergeant Jack Childress found himself in an exceedingly difficult position, but one from which there seemed no honorable escape. The transfer papers to the section he had claimed were not yet returned from the official desk to which they had been taken for signature. He could not leave the land office without them, even had it been in his nature to run from trouble.

No great strain on the imagination was required to account for the land agent's unspoken summons. Probably he, too, had felt the pathos in the flame lady's voice. The sergeant was about to be asked to select another section, thus adding his own meed of tribute to the chivalry of the West.

Had it been a man who wished to contest his luck in the ranch lottery, Childress would have welcomed the issue. But a woman—so young a woman, with such dangerous hair, brought draft upon a sort of courage he seldom had been called upon to use.

He did not hesitate, at least not to any perceptible degree. His advance was slow, as if in doubt that the land agent really had summoned him. On the way he studied this new and unexpected problem. Even as untrained in femininity as was he, certain deductions were possible.

Her dress, he was inclined to believe, wasn't really a dress at all, but a skirt attached to a waist of French flannel, possibly out of respect to Strathconna, the city. Well-worn riding-boots which showed beneath the hem told him that much. Through the combination her figure showed that it was of the slender, curveless strength which comes from a life of activity in the open. Easily might she have been prettier; yet she might have been a whole lot worse. He had a thought-flash contrasting this unknown with the dashing brunette beauty of the Indian reservation race the previous morning. What had got into Fate to throw him twice within twenty-four hours out of his wonted man's man groove?

"As long as you two strangers happen to be interested in the same section of our wonderful Dominion," the agent opened urbanely, "it occurred to me that you ought to meet." He glanced for reference at the girl's application blank and then at the completed one originally offered by the man. "Miss Bernice Gallegher, of Fire Weed, permit me to present Mr. John Childress, of—of Montana."

There seemed nothing to do but offer his hand. The girl took it, but the shake was of the "pump-handle" variety. As soon as possible she broke the clasp. But her eyes remained upon him, puzzled, questioning. The sergeant knew she saw a resemblance to some one in her past life—that she was trying to place him. He breathed a prayer that the change from bright uniform to somber mufti would prove a sufficient disguise.

Had he heard the agent aright, no little illumination had come to the sergeant. "Miss Gallegher, of Fire Weed!" Only a few hours before he had been wondering why this particular section, key to one of the easiest outlets across the international boundary, had not been claimed, either by Gallegher or the Rafter A interests. And now this surprising young woman had been sent to buy it in and had arrived a moment too late!

There was a period of mutual embarrassment. The considerate land agent had turned to some files within the railing. The situation was theirs to do with as they might. But which one of them should open?

Childress felt the danger of those freckle-colored eyes, the freckles of which had escaped his notice that night at the border. Although well trained in the edict of the Mounted—"never fire first"—he considered that as applying to gun-fire rather than speech.

"I'm sorry we happened to pick upon the same section, Miss Gallegher," he said. "Of the countless others that are loose in the Dominion, isn't there one that would suit you as well?" With purpose well defined, he changed his voice from normal cadence.

"Beat me to it again," she mourned.

For the first time she laughed, but mirthlessly and without a smile.

"Again?"

"That very same question was on my lips—or just behind them. Isn't there any other section of land in all Canada that would suit you as well? If it is humanly possible I must take title to this one back to my father."

There was a troubled, considering quality in her tone; a naive suggestiveness in the lift of her long bronze lashes.

The difficulty of Sergeant Jack was approaching the acute stage. There was no other section of land in all Canada that suited his purpose; yet he could not tell this strangely appealing young creature why this was the key acreage. It was vital that none should know him for what he really was. So clever, so daring had been the operation of the rustlers of this prize Canadian horse stock that no one could be trusted. He felt the need of verbal fencing now, especially as a possibility that their former meeting might be disclosed to further handicap him.

"How long has your father lived in Fire Weed?" he asked suddenly.

"Ten years. But what has that to do with it?"

"And all these ten years this particular section has been open to purchase. How comes it that you only want it now that someone else does?"

Bernice drew up with scorn, her nose taking an increasingly impertinent tilt. "I can see that it's hopeless to treat with you, but I don't mind answering your question. It was plumb carelessness on our part, once we had enough money to buy it. We thought the Rafter A owned it. Reckon they thought we did. It takes a greener to come along and get at the truth of no-man's land. Now, then, Mr. Childress, will you tell me why you covet this particular gap in our glorious hills?"

Evidently a straight-shooter, this Flame of Fire Weed! She was out with the one question he wished she had not thought to ask. He could not answer in full truth and he doubted that any half measure would satisfy one whose eyes were so discriminating.

"I shall graze some stock," he began lamely.

"Horse or cow?"

"Probably both; and we'll be sort of neighbors, won't we?"

She shrugged her thin young shoulders. "Geographically speaking, yes; but otherwise we're not very neighborly down in Fire Weed, particularly with a man who's going to graze 'probably both.'"

Bernice was turning to leave the office, admitting defeat, but with no quiver of lip.

"Just a moment, Miss Gallegher," he begged, something inside him commanding that he not let her depart in entire despair. After all, he'd only require that section a few months if luck was with him. Evidently she had been sent on the long ride to town to corral the range on some sudden tip that it still was open to purchase. No telling what sort of a father awaited her at the home ranch—perhaps a cross-patch, maybe a tyrant. She needn't go back without some hope, so far as he was concerned. He could promise her something without jeopardizing his mission. For the first time in his bashful life he really wanted to promise a woman something.

For a moment he thought she did not intend to turn back. Although she paused at his suggestion, she kept her eyes fixed upon the stairway. The sigh with which she at last returned to him might have been from despair, from resignation—what not.

"I just wanted to say," Childress snapped into it before the impulse evaded him, "that I may not like ranching in the Fire Weed. If I find that I don't, or if, for any other reason, I decide to give up my little ranch—the first I've ever owned, by the way—I promise to give you ample advance notice, so that you can, if you like, step into my shoes."

Strangely enough, there was almost venom in the look with which she now studied him. Suddenly a small gasp of intensity quivered through her slender, strong body. Gone was her dreaminess, her resignation or despair.

"I'll promise you, stranger, that you won't like ranching in Fire Weed," she snapped, "but I'll be damned if I'll step into any man's shoes." And with that she was gone.

Childress realized that he had spoken his well-meant offer sadly, yet that scarcely accounted the ill-will of her response. She seemed as sure that he would not enjoy life in the wonderful hills of her home country as if she knew a dozen reasons why. A sudden suspicion caught him. Was it possible that "Pop" Gallegher, her father, was implicated in the stock stealing which had continued so successfully for more than a year? Was that why he wanted the gap between his own range and the Rafter A—wanted it so badly that he sent his daughter loping to claim it the moment he found it was open to purchase? Never had he seen the parent, but he had heard of him as "hard." No more could he answer the questions he had put to himself. But they would be answered, these questions, even though he dreaded further contact with the sharp-tongued range nymph who had promised him in turn. Or did he dread this prospect? Thank Heaven she did not connect him with that uniformed knight at the border. Declining to answer even his innermost self, he accepted from the land clerk his documents of title and took himself off to locate, as soon as possible, the "Mountie" constable, assigned to act as his aide in the rôle of ranch hand and instructed to meet him here in Strathconna.