CHAPTER XVIII.

RUSTLED TO A FINISH.

Reclining on a steamer chair, Ethel Andress sat upon the porch of her log ranch house and gazed with an anxious expression down the wide valley toward the United States. From time to time she transferred her gaze to a scrap of paper, evidently torn from some memorandum book, which she held in her slender hand. The writing on it was hurried, but the chirography familiar. The intermittent repetition of the reading eventually attracted the attention of her uncle, who sat beside her in a rustic rocking-chair, pretending to be interested in the latest copy of an Ottawa newspaper that had reached Rafter A.

"Haven't you memorized Fitzrapp's message by this time?" he asked in a bantering tone. "You've read it through often enough since the Indian hiked home with it."

For answer, she read the note again, this time aloud:

Band of five, well mounted, have just crossed the ford. Seem to be making for the two-year-olds. Unquestionably the old rustling outfit. Season's Greetings and I are going after them and won't spare lead. Promise our best to land them this time. My love to you, Ethel.

This disturbing missive had been brought to the ranch house the evening before by an Indian boy who declared that he had been riding hard since early afternoon, to the truth of which statement the drooping ears, limp tail and hard breathing of his pony bore mute evidence. The messenger had been unable or unwilling to add any details, except that the white bosses, one of whom was Fitzrapp, had made smoke riding toward the invaders.

"If Tom was so desperately anxious to land the rustlers, he might have left off the last five words," remarked the widow.

Her uncle looked his disapproval. "You're peeved again with poor Fitz? Seems to me you're pretty hard on him lately, considering all his devotion." And then the handsome old pioneer turned away to enjoy a smile. He had lived his loves in his day and knew the price that must be paid by a mere male with aspiration, ambition, and a pain in his heart.

"There is a time for everything, uncle," was her return. "I'll give him the high sign when--if ever--I'm ready to hear further on that love-to-Ethel subject."

Uncle Ivan was too wrought up over the news of a new raid upon his fair relative's stock for his mind to be troubled long over the widow's capriciousness. A menacing look came into his eyes as they followed the creek trail to the south.

"Isn't it just my confounded luck to be laid up here in a rocking-chair when those mangy coyotes get busy again?" He spoke this ferociously. "If I hadn't been so plumb stubborn against 'squeezing Lizzie,' I'd have ridden that bronc."

The week before he had gone to Corn Cob Basin to look over the band of yearlings which had been wintered there under hired herders from the Indian reservation. He had become disgusted at their clumsy efforts to break an "outlaw," and, forgetting his years, had taken the beast in hand. Ethel knew his horror of "pulling leather," which is range argot for seizing any part of the saddle. From his remark about "squeezing Lizzie," she understood that he might have saved himself a fall and the sprained knee which at present disabled him by laying hold on the saddle horn.

She had a tolerant smile for his equestrian vanity, and replied sympathetically: "Anyway, you defended your faith once more, and that's something! The boys ought to give a good account of themselves in this brush. They seem to have had warning enough."

"If they'll only shoot!" exclaimed the major.

"Aversion to pulling a trigger is one of several things I don't understand about Tom Fitzrapp," said Ethel thoughtfully. "I wonder if he's gun shy. I've long been convinced that Season's Greetings is an old four-flusher, although he looks capable of any atrocity. They've both had chances at these horse thieves before, but we never hear of any casualty list. Sometimes I'm afraid that Tom is too soft-hearted for a real man."

"Men aren't what they used to be, Ethel," the pioneer replied. "Even the Indians and most half-breeds of to-day are more streaked with yellow than red. When I was young---- Well, I'm not too old to show them yet. If the boys come back this time without a scalp, I'm going down into Montana after the scoundrels myself."

The weeks had passed swiftly since the men of Ethel Andress' outfit had returned empty-handed from their raid on the Open A. Despite her hatred of rustlers, the widow had not found it in her heart to grieve that the evidence of stolen horses was wanting. For one thing, she was not displeased that Thomas Fitzrapp should occasionally be disturbed from the pedestal of self-sufficiency upon which she thought him too prone to climb. Again, as her relative and her ranch manager had enforced the handicap of her sex by insisting that she remain at home, a proceeding which she always resented, she was glad that their sortie had proved a failure.

With a fresh tingling of nerves, she recalled now her surprise when John Childress had ridden into the yard a few days after the raid, and gravely saluted her as she sat alone on the porch. She still felt that her uncle or Fitzrapp might have warned her that the stranger was expected. But this they had not done, and she had been forced to make the best of her least becoming frock and a disarray of the hair that was far from what she would have wished. She had set down to his credit the fact that he seemed not to notice these defects in the least, but had spent an hour with her in animated converse, until the return of the men revealed the real reason behind his call.

Although Fitzrapp had hinted as openly as he dared that they could dispense with her presence, she had sat through the business session, youthfully thrilled at the thought of a race between these two men. She had found herself comparing them as they sat on either side of the desk at which the major was drawing up an agreement for the contest, and she decided that they would be well matched for a race of another sort had it not been for the handicap of suspicion under which the stranger labored.

The business ended, she had been rather pleased at the way in which he declined her uncle's invitation to have supper with them. His excuse had been that ranch duties called him, but she had gained and retained the impression that the refusal was but the outcropping of a well-bred instinct not to dine at their table while he was under the slightest suspicion.

In the succeeding weeks she had twice met him on the open range and exchanged a few words with him, but on neither occasion had the situation held anything to lend weight to Fitzrapp's continuing suspicion that he was the real leader of the rustlers. For that reason she had said nothing about the meetings on returning to the home ranch. She was quite sure that she was "the master of her soul," accountable to no man and equally convinced that she would be very certain of her own heart and mind before she permitted any change in the state of widowed blessedness.

One of these range meetings with the ranchman of mystery had possessed an angle which disturbed her in spite of herself. In her hard riding for exercise and relief from ranch monotony, she had passed the boundaries of her own range onto that of Sam Gallegher. Emerging from a coulee she had come suddenly 'upon Childress, and riding with him was Flame of Fire Weed. Their stirrups brushed and they were in close converse. Had there been suitable cover at hand she would have taken refuge and permitted them to pass. As there was no chance of getting out of sight, she had ridden up and made the best of it. And she had rather admired that girl of Gallegher's that day. Flame, she decided, was fast budding into the fullness of her womanhood, and would soon be able to hold her own in any company. The way she had kept their brief trail-side conversation angling around the fact that her "dad" had heard from the commissioner of the Royal Mounted and that an inspector on special detail would soon be at work on their troubles had been really a masterpiece of self-possession and social tact.

Only a week before had occurred the momentous incident of her second visit to the Open A. One of her women friends from Strathconna was paying her a visit, and they had started out in the buckboard for a long prairie drive. They were discussing where they should go when Childress and his one-section ranch had come to mind. Her story regarding him had been sufficiently tinted with romance to excite the curiosity of her visitor, so that the heads of the gray team had been turned toward the basin. Fancifully, they had pretended that they were members of a posse running down a band of desperate horse thieves, and they had worked themselves into quite a gay mood by the time they sighted his cabin.

Childress was so frankly glad to see them, and so insistent that they should accept his hospitality to the extent of an improvised luncheon, that they had left the buckboard and spent a merry hour over a meal which he served on the top of an empty packing box in the shadow of the cabin's overhang. A can-opener was responsible for most of the menu, but two large rainbow trout, caught that very morning in the near-by stream, served as a delicious _piece de resistance_. The widow's guest had been quite captivated, and repeatedly declared on the drive back to the Rafter Ranch that she could never believe him a horse thief. Indeed, Ethel herself had reached the decision that she should require absolutely convincing proof of his guilt before believing.

Just now something in the distance caught the widow's restless eye. Arising, she went to the porch edge and shaded her face against the sun, which was sinking, very red, behind the distant Rockies.

"Dust showing down the valley," she reported. "We'll know how they fared before very long."

Stepping into the house, she returned in a moment with a pair of field glasses.

"How many riders?" demanded her uncle. "How many riders?" he repeated querulously, before she was able to give him an answer.

"Only two."

"That means no prisoners," grumbled the pioneer.

"But----" The significant look of her flashing eyes made it unnecessary to complete the sentence which would not have become her tender lips.

"Yes, possibly they've killed them," he agreed. "Possibly. But I doubt it. Men don't seem to have the nerve to shoot to kill out on the range these days."

It was half an hour before Fitzrapp and the queerly named buster rode into the yard. The two on the porch waited with such patience as they could command while saddles and bridles were stripped off and the soaking wet blankets hung on the fence of the stable corral to dry. Any departure from this program of horse comfort first would have been an unheard of violation of ranch tradition.

Presently the arrivals approached the house. Their expressions told the story, and a single glance was sufficient for the reading. The Rafter A had been despoiled again. It only remained to learn the extent of the loss and the details of the raiders' escape.

"It's bad business, little woman," said Fitzrapp, who looked well-nigh exhausted, sinking into one of the rockers.

Season's Greetings--which undoubtedly was not his real name but the one he had brought with him to the ranch on a Christmas Eve arrival, and the only one to which he ever answered--deposited his lean, undersized frame upon the steps and leaned back against one of the rough, unturned pillars supporting the porch. His plain features were marred by a bristly, undecorative mustache. He had one useless eye that stared straight ahead, while the other, by which he saw, shifted uncertainly. The widow had spoken advisedly in saying that he looked capable of most any atrocity. Fortunately for him he remained in a country where personal appearance counts for very little.

"How deep did they gouge us?" asked the widow, anxious to know the worst.

"Without having stopped for an actual count, I'd say in the neighborhood of seventy-five head," returned Fitzrapp despondently.

"They were fine stock, too. The rustlers got away clean?" The query was sharply put.

"We were up against a quintette of wicked fighters, Ethel. They nearly got us and we hadn't a chance against them."

He tossed his flat-brimmed felt hat to the widow. Through the peaked crown of it a rifle bullet had bored a hole.

"If that had been an inch lower----" he began again, looking up at her as though hoping to enlist her interest. But the widow, with a far-away look in her eyes, was gazing out over the valley.

"'Most nigh got me, too," added Greetings, pointing to a bullet mark in the sleeve of his coat near the shoulder. "I felt that there bird flit past. You can brand me for a slick-ear if it wa'n't plumb discouraging."

The major demanded the whole story, and Fitzrapp nodded to his companion, who looked none too pleased at what he would have termed "passing the buck."

"Mornin' before yesterday all was lovely on the lower range," he began, after a preliminary clearing of his throat, an operation that by no means strengthened his weak voice. "We looks the band over and decides that the thunder an' lightnin' of Monday night had caused some strayin'. So we ambles up Crooked Coulee and back through Feather Bed Meadow, roundin' up a couple of dozen.

"We unlimbers at Breakfast Flat," Greetings continued, "and munches a bit of grub, when up comes young Scar Face with word that the damned rustlers are repeatin' on the lower end of the herd. Mr. Fitzrapp and me climbs into the saddle and sets out hotfoot after 'em and meets the two bucks we'd left ridin' herd a-breezin' away from it as if they had pressin' and important business affairs elsewhere. They'd been told to vamoose, they says, by five angry-lookin' whites, and as the said whites had the drop on 'em, they hadn't hesitated any to do no argument."

Greetings paused for a moment to roll one, took a couple of puffs, and then resumed: "By the time we dusts over the divide and get a bird's-eye view of said situation, the blotters had cut out what hawses they wants and were driftin' them, comfortable-like, toward the ford. When they see us real he-men a-comin', two of 'em drops back as if to have a conversation party, and t'other three speeds up the cut-outs. The rear guard opens quite prompt before Fitzrapp and I knows we're within range, and the duet them rifle bullets sung wasn't like the music of weddin' bells by a darned sight, was it, boss?"

"But didn't you return their fire?" demanded MacDonald impatiently.

"Sure we returns their fire!" replied Greetings indignantly. "But much good that done us. They must 'a' had some new-fangled sort of irons--long range cannon. They makes the dust fly all around us, but we couldn't seem to make no impression in their neighborhood. We tries to go closer, and they takes to shootin' as if we was targets. Some shootin' it was, too, bet your life!" His comprehensive gesture took in Fitzrapp's holed sombrero and his own perforated coat sleeve. "We follows them clean into the night and plumb up to the line. But to get to the short of it, when daylight comes, there wasn't a sign of the murderin' devils or of the herd."

"Did the silver stallion show this time?" asked the widow, her manner noncommittal.

"They left the white beast behind this time," said Fitzrapp, a shade of impatience in his voice. "Probably he was tired out from activities elsewhere. But his master wasn't."

"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.

"I'm sure I recognized Childress as one of the two who covered the flight."

Ethel Andress stared at him in amazement. "You were close enough to a horse thief to recognize him, and you let him get away?"

"Of course not close enough to see his face, but his general appearance in the saddle, and--Ethel, it seems to me pretty hard hearted of you to be so careless of my life after all I've been through. Is the herd more to you than----"

But the high-tempered young widow had not heard his plea. The sounding of a door sharply closed interrupted him.

The two who had returned from the fray looked at each other. "In the hero market, us two would sell pretty cheap, if the widow was the only bidder," remarked Greetings, with a grin that did not make him any more seemly. "She don't think we're anything because we ain't corpses."

"You might have been more thrilling in detailing the encounter," complained Fitzrapp.

"Never was no good nohow a-gildin' of lilies," remarked the breed, unlimbering himself from the steps and crawfishing in the direction of the bunk house.