CHAPTER XVI.

CLEAN AS A HOUND'S TOOTH.

Having sent Constable Mahaffy with the team to the railroad for supplies and a small shipment of furniture, Sergeant Childress slept in the half-roofed cabin alone, except for the hound. He had been slumbering for hours when the restless movements and low whining of the dog awakened him. Where his master was concerned, Poison never asserted himself without reason. This his owner had learned to consider, although sometimes he failed to fathom it. Half rising from out his blankets, he struck a match and looked at his watch. The hour was nearly one in the morning, and the light of the half moon poured in through the unfinished portion of the roof.

"Whimpering at the moon, you blithering old alarm clock?" he demanded; but, as he grew more fully awake, he realized that Poison was far too wise to be disturbed by Luna, even when she appeared in all her splendor. Pulling on his corduroys and boots, Childress slipped a .45 into his belt and went out to investigate, the hound licking his heels in approval of the move.

His first interest was Silver, picketed up the creek. As he approached the animal which, with association, was winning his increasing interest, he heard a whistling snort. The sergeant recognized in this not a sound of fright or defiance, but the beast's invitation to its kind. In the moonlight he saw that the horse's ears were pointing toward the upper rim of the cup in an attitude of eager listening, and that he pawed the prairie with an impatient forefoot. The possibility that strays, seeking a change of grass, had headed into his fertile basin was the first supposition. Under ordinary circumstances this need not have kept him longer from his blankets, as their dislodgment could have awaited the daylight. But he knew the horse bands that ranged thereabouts bore either the Andress or the Gallegher brand. In view of the double warning that he was under suspicion, he did not care to have them found on his newly-acquired property.

Taking up a rope that was looped over the firmly planted post to which the stallion was picketed, he strode toward the upper basin, the hound at his heels.

The dozen mares, with their colts, which he had bought and driven in as the foundation of the Open A herd, were grazing peacefully in the upper pasture, and his count showed the presence of no outsiders. He was about to turn back, in the belief that for once the hound had yielded to canine aversion for moonlight, when his nostrils detected a foreign odor in the air of the soft Chinook wind that blew.

He sniffed and sniffed again. "Plug cut!" he murmured under his breath. "Plug cut blazing in a pipe! Somebody's enjoying a smoke up that ravine."

At this time of night no other human should have been within miles of the spot. Indeed, at any hour the presence of a stranger in that side ravine, far removed from any trail, would demand explanation. As rapidly as possible he got out of the moonlight.

Under cover of the shadows thrown by the creek's cottonwood fringe, he advanced with cautious, noiseless tread to the edge of the ravine, which was really a miniature basin connected with the main one by a narrow gap. There he saw twelve or fifteen horses, most of them cropping the luxuriant growth underfoot.

At first his eyes discerned no human figure, though the scent of tobacco could be accounted for only by the presence of man. Then he detected a movement in the shadows on the far side of the ravine, near its mouth. The next moment a short, spare figure, which he did not recognize, stepped into view.

Childress saw the intruder tie a rope around a slender birch, run a line to its neighbor, and then start across the ravine, paying out the rope as he progressed. It was evident that he was improvising a corral for the strange stock in the gully; but why the animals were there was as much a mystery as the stranger himself.

The sergeant was puzzled as to his procedure. There might be a plausible and satisfactory explanation for this strange action, in which case he would regret shooting a trespasser. On the other hand, he did not wish to be shot down himself, which was possible, if he stopped to ask questions which might require embarrassing answers. Moreover, there was that never-fire-first rule of the Mounted. The short man was coming rapidly toward him, and he had but a moment for decision.

His shooting hand was reaching for his gun when he recalled the quieter and most effective method of capture used on himself only a few days before. His aim with the rope was as sure as that of his revolver. Not for nothing had he patroled the Cypress Hills in his younger service days. Silently he adjusted the running knot into a sizable loop and shook out the strands.

When the oncomer was within a dozen yards of him he made his cast, the rope cutting through the air with a hiss that was startling in the nocturnal quiet. It settled over the intruder's shoulders before he realized what was happening, and a sharp jerk, into which Childress threw all his strength, drew the noose taut and effectively pinioned the other's arms, making it impossible for him to draw a weapon.

With the strike, Childress shouted: "Easy there, stranger, and you won't hurt yourself!"

The man who had been lassoed made no response, but began to thrash about in an effort to free himself. Resenting this struggle, Poison dashed into the open and assailed the captive with ferocious growls. Not being a man hunter, he refrained from closing in, as he would have done had the rope held a bear or a cougar, but he aided his master by diverting the attention of the struggler from the rope.

Childress began to work up on the string hand over hand, as he would have done had some outlaw horse been at the other end, not for one instant slackening the tie of the noose. It can't be said that his lessons in man roping were long past history, considering the way in which the Lazy G outfit had taken him. In his present effort he was abetted by the fact that his captive seemed anxious only to get away, and made no forward rush in attack. He was soon close enough to throw a fresh loop about the intruder, and then another which determined the issue of the capture. Reaching out he slipped the other's gun from its hip holster and was ready for parley.

He turned the pinioned one around until the moon lighted his face, and then started back in surprised recognition.

"You--O'Hara!" he exclaimed. "What the devil brings you across my trail?"

He knew the man--scarcely could have forgotten him since some years before, at no little risk to the integrity of his own hide, he had saved him from an enraged mob at end of steel on the Trans-continental railroad.

"I never knowed it was you, pard," the captive said huskily, "or I'd 'a' gone on a scout before tryin' to jam you. Call off your hound and slack the rope. I'll put you wise to something you'd ought to know."

Having the full measure of the man he had snared, from past experience with him, Childress did not hesitate to order Poison to heel, and then he loosened his lariat.

Duncan O'Hara stretched his arms and rubbed his shoulders and chest, where the rope had cut. "You shore sprung a surprise snappin' that string around me, pard. When did you bust off from the straight and narrow?"

"I don't get that question," declared Childress, "any more than I do your midnight corral making."

"I mean when did you get outside the law?"

"So far as you're concerned in this deal, I'm not outside the law," returned the sergeant. "What's the game?"

O'Hara found a seat on a tree stump and relighted his faithful pipe.

"This here's a plant," he began, "and as pretty a one as a jealous four-flusher ever worked out. You listen to me and I'll spill it to you on the level. I ain't forgettin' what you done, pullin' me out of that skin-tight hole of a necktie party down in the States."

"I'm listening," said Childress shortly. "Give me all of it."

"For a runnin' start then, I've become range boss for the Rafter A outfit, and I'm wise to everything. They're convinced that you've been runnin' their stock down to the 'Medicine Line' and gettin' away with it. Naturally you're too plumb wise to let them get the goods on you, so Fitzrapp is in for manufacturin' the evidence and puttin' the hawse-thief brand on you for fair. I'm just drawin' good wages and takin' bad orders.

"Tom Fitzrapp says," Duncan O'Hara continued, "'Take a bunch of our two-year-olds and corral them in that there Yankee's ravine. A rope will do the corralin' trick.' There are the beauties." He gestured to the shadowy forms of the horses. "All of them rope-wise and saddle-broke, worth a big roll of anybody's money. I was makin' the corral with my lariat when you came snooping along at an hour when you had ought to been doin' nothing more strenuous than snorin'. Early in the mornin', it's writ on the program, Fitzrapp and MacDonald and a witness are goin' to swoop down on the Open A cup, uncover the evidence and nab you dead to rights. You'll get twenty years, if the old man doesn't shorthorn your term by lendin' you the loads of his gun."

"Is Maj. MacDonald in this?" Childress asked sharply, recalling the pleasant ride he had enjoyed with the veteran the morning of their first and only meeting.

"Not in the plant, I reckon, 'cause he's square and through with young love. But once he sees the evidence, you can bet your ace he'll be ready to shoot the lights out of you. 'Twas Tom Fitzrapp what planned the sanded deck."

"Could expect it of him," muttered the sergeant.

There was admiration in the grin that played about O'Hara's mouth once the pipe was removed.

"Say, pard, you're packin' a powerful heavy jag o' nerve to hole in here right under their noses," he declared. "I plumb admire to know you. But why did you make the doggie break of hobblin' yourself with that skirt?"

Childress' hand clamped upon O'Hara's lean shoulder roughly. "What do you mean by 'that' skirt?"

"Why the gal--the major's niece," said the range boss hastily, cringing under the clutch. "I mean the widow--Lady Ethel. Wasn't you wise that Fitzrapp had cut her out for hisself? I was scoutin' from the bluff the day she rid over here. Was too far away to recognize your face, and never havin' seen you bustin' broncs before I didn't know you by yore tricks. Not knowin' you was you, I spills it to his nibs about the girl's little excursion. If it hadn't been for that, I doubt if he'd have found the nerve to frame this on you. He's plumb set on marryin' the girl."

"Which he'll never do," Childress murmured under his breath. For O'Hara's benefit he forced a laugh. "Leave the woman out of this. If they're going to raid me in the morning, it's time I was getting shut of the evidence."

"I'll sit in that game and draw cards cheerful," declared O'Hara eagerly. "The old major has set me nursemaidin' colts and I'm plumb ready to quit. Here's a picked bunch of hawses, and I present them to you gratis. Bunch them up with your own and run them across the line. You can turn them over quick at Crow's Nest, and make a clean get-away. Hawse thieves ain't goin' to be folks in this here province for a spell.

"And what's more----" O'Hara hesitated, torn between his native greed and a desire to do a whole-souled, handsome thing in repaying the debt he owed. "And what's more," he resumed, with a leer for conquered avarice, "I'll help you drive them and ask nary a cut of the clean-up."

Childress stood hesitating, seemingly pondering over this daring proposal. "I'm not ready to pull up stakes yet," he said finally. "There's more than one skirt, as you call the ladies fair, in the Fire Weed country."

"You're still thinkin' of that there widow," said O'Hara, with an air of conviction. "Forget her. You couldn't never show a pedigree that'd pass muster."

The sergeant did not mention the possibility that he had been thinking of Flame Gallegher the last moment. Instead he suddenly demanded to know how many horses made up the "plant."

"Fifteen--first graders, every one."

Again Childress considered, and this time he seemed to reach a decision. "It's not a big enough haul. When I clean up I want to do it proper. We'll drive these long-tails back to their own range before daylight and I'll bluff it out."

"Then it's yours truly, D. O'Hara for the long scout," said the professional buster mournfully.

"Not if you really want to square our little account."

"You sure did save my worthlittle hide," admitted O'Hara. "What's the ante this time?"

"Go back to Rafter A and manage to keep me posted without letting any of them, not even the widow, know that we're acquainted. They're not going to stop with this attempt to get me. When I'm ready to strike hard and for the last time, I'll declare you in on the game and with a fair share of the pot."

O'Hara had but one objection to offer. If anything went wrong with the "plant," he had promised to return and advise Fitzrapp, who would not bring the major to search the basin that comprised the Open A. In that event Childress would lose the opportunity of appearing innocent. The buster feared, if he delayed his return until after the raid had failed, he would himself be under suspicion and his ability to aid his debtor handicapped.

"We can wipe that difficulty off the slate, old topper," was the sergeant's quick return. "If you get careless with your mount after we've driven these horses back to the main band, you'll have to walk home, won't you? Can't catch a range horse without a rope, and yours will be carried away on your saddle. It's fifteen miles across the range to the home ranch, and traveling on shank's mare you can't possibly cover the distance in time to do any effective warning that'll bother me."

"I begin to see," said O'Hara without elation, and the cause of his gloom easily may be surmised by any one who knows why the average puncher's legs are more or less bowed.

Childress started to saddle Silver, entirely confident that Duncan O'Hara could be trusted to liquidate his debt along the lines he had laid down. More than once were his heart throbs of satisfaction at the opportunity thus presented to foil the trick of one who meant more to him than a rival for any woman's hand.