CHAPTER XV.

TRAPPING FOR PROOF.

Duncan O'Hara sat perched on the top rail of the Rafter A corral fence, puffing viciously at a burned out briar. He had just finished the most distasteful of the varied tasks that fell to the caretaker of the home ranch, the position to which Major MacDonald had demoted him on return of the family party from Strathconna a few weeks before, when he had been called upon to report the loss of more horse flesh to the rustlers. This task was the care of the orphan colts, of which the ranch harbored half a dozen. The range mare has no instinct of charity and has no mind for adoption, no matter how pitiful the circumstance. The foal which is orphaned must either be destroyed or fed cow's milk by hand. Hence the title of nursemaid, which went with the assignment.

The greenest range rider balked at this job, and Darned Cuss, the regular nurse, endured it only because it enabled him to be near his wife, who was the competent housekeeper of the home ranch.

Assuredly it was no detail for a boss buster, and O'Hara suffered keenly over the humiliation. His dignity would be weeks recovering, for the other hands would not let him forget it, even after Cuss had returned from the lower range to resume his undignified position.

All his life Dunc O'Hara had been "getting even" with somebody for something or other, and he was now engaged, with the aid of his pipe, in studying out the retaliation which this indignity demanded. At first he was puzzled as to whom he should get even with. Fitzrapp had drawn him into the mess and had not shouldered his full share of the responsibility over the winter's loss. For a time the buster's dark thoughts were directed against the handsome ranch manager. But he was aware of the folly of nose smiting. Fitzrapp had been kind to him in the past, and promised greater benefits for the future. Besides it was the major, the widow's uncle, who had issued the order sending Cuss into his saddle and him--O'Hara--to the milk bottle.

He had definitely decided to get even with the gray bearded veteran when his attention was drawn from various forms of possible requital by the sound of horses loping up the rise from the creek trail. He looked up to see Fitzrapp and Cuss returning, accompanied by Season's Greetings, a misnamed half-breed wrangler who had been riding the ranch limits to search for strays.

Greetings, as was his uproarious habit, covered the last hundred yards at a dead run and dashed into the yard with a "Whoop-la-la!" worthy of his Comanche ancestors on his mother's side of a rather indefinite house.

Knowing what to expect from the breed, Duncan O'Hara was discreet and offered no salutation.

"Well, if here ain't old Mother O'Hara!" cried the wrangler, as though suddenly aware of his presence on the fence. "Am I in time to help with the milkin', ma?"

Darned Cuss was but a moment behind, and his query, though possibly honest, was no less disquieting.

"How are the orphans, Dunc?" he asked, with a serious face, even before he dismounted. "I've been a-worryin' some about that little brindle feller."

"The colts is all right, Darned," said O'Hara sulkily, "though as a truthful gent I've got to admit they been whinnyin' for their regular bottle holder."

Fitzrapp merely nodded to him and went on to the stable with his horse. When he came out a few minutes later O'Hara was still hunched on the fence like a sick crow. The ranch manager went over to him and put a friendly inquiry. O'Hara grunted some unintelligible reply.

"Come out of the dumps, old topper," said Fitzrapp persuasively, "I'm bringing the major around in good shape and have talked him out of his rage. He's convinced you did the best you could under the circumstances and with the small force we left you. He's sorry he fell on you so hard, and if he doesn't make it up to you, I assuredly will. Anything new?"

"Nothin' much." O'Hara looked a shade more cheerful.

"No strangers about the ranch?"

"Only that feller from Montana you was tellin' me about--the one what rides the silver stallion."

Fitzrapp started. "You don't mean it! When was he here? Has he gone?"

O'Hara took his time about relighting the crusted briar. "Oh, he didn't show up here at the ranch," he said; and then he told in detail about the new settler over in the cup.

"How did you happen to stumble on this?" Fitzrapp asked after a moment in which he was engaged trying to work out a cross-word puzzle of his own.

"Well," drawled the chief buster, "you tells me to keep an eye on our widow, didn't you? The other day she gets sort of restless and sends for her cayuse. I gives her a good start and then trails, not because I think she's up to anything, but just to get away from them confounded bawlin' colts."

"Up to anything, O'Hara?" demanded Fitzrapp, instantly disturbed. "What do you mean, man?"

The disgruntled buster seemed not to note his chief's annoyance. "Well, Mrs. Andress sure was up to somethin'," he continued. "She rides straight across the range to the bluff that looks down into his cup o' hills, just as if meetin' him was all cut and dried and tied up with blue ribbons. She stands the cayuse there for quite a bit, and I makes cover farther along the bluff. She was watchin' the man trim an outlaw, she was, and I'm here to say he done it proper."

"And then?" urged Fitzrapp, glancing nervously toward the house, where no one seemed to have noticed their return.

"Oh, then she slides the cayuse into the basin and enjoys a nice friendly visit with his nibs. When she starts home, he goes to playin' with a hound-dog as though he was tickled pink."

The ranch manager was frowning now, but not at Duncan O'Hara. "How do you know he's the man I told you of? Are you absolutely sure?"

"He wore all the marks that you'd calculate on seein' from my distance, but I'm countin' more, on the stallion what was staked out near the cabin he's buildin'. Never seen a finer chunk of horse-flesh. He's him, all right, unless you shuffled in the discard when picturin' of him to me."

"Say nothing of this to any one, O'Hara. I'll see you after supper." Fitzrapp strode off toward the house muttering to himself. "So Ethel rode over to see this railroad nester, did she? And she just didn't think to mention it after we saw him yesterday at Gallegher's. Now, Childress, you upstart, I'll have to get the goods on you!"

When he entered the living room the place seemed deserted. "Oh, I say, Ethel!" he called out cheerily. "Where are you?"

The girl started up from a reclining chair behind the curtains of a deep bay window, where she had been sitting in the warmth of the afternoon sun, now dipped behind the Rockies.

"Hello, Tom," she greeted him. "I didn't hear any one ride in. Must have been nodding over this impossible book."

"What have you been doing with your precious self?"

"Except for our interesting ride to Gallegher's, mighty little, I must admit. The ranch is about as exciting as an irrigation project with you all away. I slept--you caught me at that; I read, and I rode a little. If this rustler scare is going to depopulate the home ranch, one of two things is going to happen to Ethel. Either I get in on the fighting or I'll go up to Strathconna and visit somebody."

"Didn't run across any strangers on your rides?" he asked, and waited with no little concern for her answer. If she told him, even thus belatedly, of her visit to Childress' "hole in," his alarm on her account well might be unfounded, he argued. If she kept silent, then he was not alarmed enough.

"Strangers--out in this wilderness? What a chance!" she evaded easily. "Who did you think I might have seen?"

It seemed to him that her eyes narrowed as she asked. He closed his own that they might not tell of his disappointment. "Didn't know but that some scout of the horse thieves had been pestering around," he returned, with an easy manner he was far from feeling. "I'm fagged out, Ethel. I'll have a tub and if you can persuade Mrs. Cuss to advance dinner half an hour my appetite will thank you. Your uncle has ridden to Preston's and won't be home until sometime to-morrow."

Once in the privacy of the hall his face took on a haggard look. His disappointment in Ethel was staggering. Her evasion revealed a state of feeling toward him which he did not care to contemplate. Unless he could hold her, unless he finally won her consent to marry him, all the effort of these years in the province would count for little.

What did it all mean? She had deliberately refrained from telling him of her visit to the Open A. Had she and Childress, by any chance, met before that day on the reservation? Could she be so openly under the spell of Childress' undoubted fascination as to be willing to overlook the suspicion, freely expressed by himself, that he was the leader of the rustlers from Montana?

As he entered his own room a jealous rage swept over him. A chance glance into the mirror on his bureau showed him the anger that blazed in his eyes, and he recognized in the look the passion that drives men to kill.

He drew himself up quickly. "Here, old man," he said to himself, "this will not do. Keep cool and get this interloper. You've got to get him!"

As he changed from dusty riding clothes to loose flannels he decided on his course of action. Ethel Andress was playing some sort of a game, but just what sort it was he could not guess. Very well; he, too, could disguise his hand. He would give no hint that he suspected any dissembling on her part. Then he would seek out Dunc O'Hara and between them they would bait a trap that Childress would certainly spring. Once in his clutches there would be no escape for his rival so far as the widow was concerned. And if the major took the law into his own hands with the American's life as a forfeit--well, he had to win Ethel Andress, that was all. There was quite too much at stake for him to be squeamish over the means by which he won her.