CHAPTER XIX.

SURPRISES FOR FLAME.

Dusk was just about to crash into night, as it has a habit of doing on the Canadian plains until summer comes along with its near-midnight daylight, when Flame Gallegher loped up to the small lake that lay in front of the straggly Lazy G establishment. Since sun-up she had been in the saddle, riding hard on the cattle that wore her personal brand, shooting a few coyotes that she found looking for "doggies," helping a cow or two that needed aid in the throes of range motherhood, enjoying the vigorous air, and wondering a lot about what might be going on to the eastward--on the Open A, where the attractive mystery man had settled down with his queer Irish helper, and on the Rafter A where the difficult widow held court.

She was tired, was Bernice, although the flame of her would not admit it. Her horse was tired, a fact that needed no admission, for its rider knew. She guided him into the lake at a point where the gravelly bottom shelved gently and, with her puttee-clad legs draped around the saddle horn, waited until thirst had been slaked. Then she headed to the stable for a hurried unsaddling, realizing from the sounds that came from the cook-shack that she was late for supper and need expect no help.

The first surprise came to Flame when she led her unleathered mount into the barn. There, in one of the comfortable box-stalls reserved for the prize horses of the Lazy G, stood Silver, munching his rations of oats as contentedly as though he belonged.

"What the--what the hell!" she exclaimed, right out loud and regardless.

Silver did not trouble to respond, even if his equine brain held any remembrance of her.

In silence she went about the task of bedding down and feeding her horse; the while her mind was busy. What could have happened to bring John Childress' prize stallion under their roof, not just for a meal, but all tucked in for the night? Was the beautiful beast's master--the elusive, attractive, enigmatic unknown--a guest at the house? Or was it possible that the cogs had slipped, affording a show-down and a capture which left him a prisoner? Not yet was she ready to doubt the man who was more or less under general suspicion; but she did hurry with her chores that she might the sooner get to her place at the oil-cloth covered table where the Galleghers, father and daughter, regularly ate with the men of the outfit.

She entered the long, unfinished room with her usual greeting when she arrived late for the evening meal, the nearest to a formal occasion which the Lazy G Ranch could boast.

"Cheerio!" she cried, and spun her light sombrero to an empty prong on the elk's head that served as hatrack.

"You're late to-night, Firecracker," remarked her father, above the softer-spoken greetings of the several punchers.

"Small matter, if you've left me anything to eat," she countered cheerfully. "I'm hungry as a li'l old brown bear what's just got through a winter's nursing his paw. How about it, Chan Toy, you biscuit-mixing son of a mandarin?" She was the only member of the outfit who ever dared to joke the Chinese who, as cook, swayed no mean sceptre over their ever-hearty appetites.

"If you no like what am left," returned the Chinese with unsmiling countenance, "you know what you can do, Missie Fireworks."

"And what can I do, you heathen Chinee?" she demanded with mock severity.

"You smile and make a face up. Then Chan Toy cook you a beeve-steak special."

"That's the yellow boy," she cheered him, as she pulled back her regular chair and sat down at the table to the right of her father who held the owner's place of honor at the head of the oblong board. "You cook me a beeve-steak special, with mushrooms and bamboo sprouts."

"From a can, the mushrooms," he advised her, and waddled off toward the kitchen which was divided from the dining-room by a partition that ran halfway to the unceiled roof.

Already she had scanned the faces about the oilcloth; all were familiar--regulars. If Jack--Jack Childress had been to the ranch since her departure that morning, either he had not stayed for supper or was under restraint somewhere about the home ranch. She was anxious, yet she scorned to ask questions. Covertly she studied the expression of "Smiling Dick" Murdock who, at his usual table place, had finished his meal and was smoking, his chair tilted back. "Scowling Dick" would have been a better name for him this evening. From the thunder cloud of his expression, she deduced that nothing serious had happened to their mysterious neighbor. Yet any reassurance gained from that source did not help her in solving the mystery in silver hair that the stable sheltered. She'd have to wait until meal's end and the nightly confab with her lonely parent, unless she wished to lay herself open to a show of interest that would have been inadvisable.

What little sense men had anyhow! Her father must have realized that she had seen the strange horse in the barn and he should have known that she was consumed with curiosity. But men would be men. She must wait or expose the hand that would show her interest in the owner of Open A.

The steak came shortly, broiled to that happy turn between medium and rare, and garnished to a degree that even Owner Sam could not have commanded from the Celestial chef. Nothing much was said while Flame ate, for all knew what that border air did to appetites. And the girl, her mind quite absorbed as to what and whyfor the silver stallion, kept knife and fork busy, occasionally dropping both implements to run fingers through her wondrous hair.

Not until she had pushed back her plate and refused the "slab" of pie offered by Chan Toy--on the ground that she had some respect for her girlish figure--did Dick Murdock speak to her directly.

"It's been a hard day for all of us, Flame," he began, banishing the frown, and replacing it with the nearest he knew to a look of adoration. "Can't we have a bit of close harmony on just one or two of the old songs. Start it off, pal!"

Flame looked at her father. He was comfortably sprawled in his big chair at the head of the table, his meal-time cigar half smoked, his entire manner one of content. Nothing alarming or even startling could she see in his attitude. This seemed to be just like a hundred other evenings after a hard day's work on the range. Yet there was the silver stallion box-stalled in the Lazy G stables! What did it mean? Was the outfit by prearrangement trying to lull her to a sense of security about this man she wanted to doubt, but could not--this stranger who seemed to be playing the only other woman on the Fire Weed range? Entirely possible. But she would not weaken, even to ask questions.

"I'm pretty tired, boys," she said, after an appealing look at her father, which that worthy chose to ignore. "But a little harmony, not too close, might rest all of us. Shall it be, 'Bringing In the Sheaves' or 'What Shall the Harvest Be?'?"

"Rustlers," murmured Rust, from his place at the far end of the table, evidently in answer to the interrogation of the last song title.

"What did you say?" The snapped question came from Sam Gallegher, and his entry evidently was most unexpected.

"Nawthin' that amounts to anything," murmured the reddish puncher, and he slumped back in his chair, pretending an interest in the bottom layer of a pie crust that he previously had scorned.

Flame straightened in her chair. They were holding out on her, the whole bunch of them, including her father. They had his prize horse in the stable and they had him somewhere about, and they were afraid to tell her! Of all that she was convinced. She realized that she had just a moment in which to decide, and in that moment she decided to play them at their own game.

"Let's have 'The Cowboy's Dream,' Firecracker," put in her father. "We all get in strong on the chorus of that old-timer."

Flame pushed back her chair, but did not rise, for there was no formality about the Lazy G's after-supper "sing." Flinging one khaki-covered knee over the other she began in a contralto as clear as a day in June:

"Last night as I lay on the prairie, And looked at the stars in the sky, I wondered if ever a cowboy Would drift to that sweet by and by."

And then the outfit, with bass, tenor and unidentified squalls, swung into the decidedly repetitious chorus:

"Roll on, roll on; Roll on, little doggies, roll on, roll on. Roll on, roll on: Roll on, little doggies, roll on."

As though she thought they needed the instruction she came right back at them with the dogmatic lines of a second verse, in which a dim narrow trail leads to the bright, happy region; but a broad one to perdition was "posted and blazed all the way." She sang, between their lusty roll-ons, of the "great round-up," where cowboys, like doggies, were gathered to be marked by the Riders of Judgment, and on to the final warning:

"They say He will never forget you, That He knows every action and look; So, for safety you'd better get branded, Have your name in the great Tally Book."

Several other ranch songs followed, but somehow the usual zest of their not unusual chorus exercise was lacking. She halted them for false harmony on "Poor Lonesome Cowboy" and when they began to twit Dick Murdock for his scowl and his refusal to sing, she gave them "The Dreary, Dreary Life" which generally marked the end of the chuck-room concert. This well known range lament, calculated to bring tears to the strongest eyes, ran:

"A cowboy's life is a dreary, dreary life, Some say it's free from care; Rounding up the cattle from morning till night In the middle of the prairie so bare."

After complaining of "the wolves and owls with their terrifying howls" the cowboy of the song envies the farmer and the man who stays home with wife and child. And the last "yowl" gives all the glad part to the cook, thus:

"Half-past-four the noisy cook will roar, 'Hurrah, boys, she's breakin' day!' Slowly we will rise and wipe our sleepy eyes The sweet, dreamy night passed away."

Flame suited action to the word of the song, pushing back her chair and rising to a pair of tired feet. "It's the sweet dreamy for me, boys," she said. "Come on, dad."

Although Smiling Dick Murdock concentrated his gaze upon her, the girl spared him no look. Not so easily was he to get back into favor after such an attack as he had made upon Jack Childress, that different sort of man.

No word passed during the brief walk from the chuck-house to the owner's cabin. The father, having missed none of the wordless tilt between his daughter and the handsome range boss, was wondering what it was all about.

"Out roaming the range this afternoon, Firecracker, you missed a caller," said Gallegher when they had settled on either side of the reading lamp in the plain but comfortably-furnished living-room. "Serves you right."

"I knew I'd missed something while stabling my beastie," returned the girl. "But it will be news if you tell me what you did to our neighbor that he should leave the pride of his heart, Mr. Silver, stabled with us. I hope there wasn't any rough stuff?"

"Rough stuff? Over what?"

"You know as well as I do the cloud of rustling suspicion that hangs over him. This outfit's not inclined to be pulling on silk gloves where he's concerned. Again let me say that I hope there was no rough treatment."

The father smiled tolerantly. "If I'd known you were so deeply interested, girl o' mine, I'd have kept him by hook or crook or invitation to dinner until you loped in. He rode over with a led saddler, and asked us to keep his silver horse while he's away on some particular business the exact nature of which was left to our imagination. Said his one man, an Irishman named Mahaffy, I believe, would have all he could do looking after the stock--his breeding band--and he did not want to risk Silver while he was gone. I could not refuse such a neighborly request, and I didn't ask any questions. There are times when I don't like to answer. You can have the thrill of exercising the beauty beast if you like."

"He's going away--where?" The girl scarcely realized that she had put a question. She flushed with embarrassment when her father laughed at her.

"Seems to me that some one is strangely interested in one rustler suspect," he commented unfeelingly. "What's friend Dick Murdock going to think and say. I can tell you, though, where the attractive neighbor is going--at least where he said he was going. He has some important business to transact down in Montana."

The girl said no more, but busied herself with a bulky catalogue just received from Eaton's, the Winnipeg department store, a volume that has been called "the next-to-Bible of the West Canada housewife." She made out a sizable order, tossed it across the table for her father's approval, and decided she was tired enough to "dint the feathers."

Flame took refuge of her own room, the size of which was such that it served as bedroom, boudoir and shower-bath--this last an unusual ranch luxury, thanks to the immediate presence of the lake and a windmill which, aided by a lofty tank attachment, gave the entire home ranch a considerable and unfailing water pressure. Hers was a dainty room, done in white and hung with blue draperies. At once it was characteristic and yet it wasn't. Had one seen the young mistress only in saddle clothes, which were waist, breeches and boots, with no compromise of skirt, this blue-and-white--almost Dresden--effect must have seemed somewhat incongruous. But the room was sacred to Flame, the only woman on the ranch. None ever entered it except the China-boy who "made it up and down," as he put it. There, in the mirror of her dresser, she scowled at the freckles that persisted to bridge her nose, but as always decided not to amputate them. Had a pimple appeared---- But fair as was Flame's skin there never had been a prairie draft so hot as to burn her.

This night she put on the flimsiest of the things she had learned to wear in her few years at a Montreal convent--the few years of an education cut short by the death of her mother and a feeling that Dad-Sam would "go wild" did she not return and take care of him. Before she tucked herself in under the silken blue spread that concealed a couple of blankets--provincial nights are cold at this early season--she studied herself in the glass and was not ashamed to preen a trifle. What would he think of her could he see her now and in so different a costume than the rough range ones in which she most often had greeted him? What would he think? And why--why was she worried, or even interested, over what he'd think, if, indeed, he'd think at all?

With the windows particularly open to-night, that she might hear and get into the fray should any attack be made upon the silver horse of suspicion, she pulled the brocaded coverlet up to her chin, and repeated words to herself.

"You fool go to sleep!"

That was the order repeated over and over, at first verbally, then in thought. "Go to sleep--you're tired! Go to sleep!" But for once the order was not obeyed.

Flame found herself pondering over what might be this mission in Montana from which he might not speedily return. There was something weirdly strange about his leaving Silver with another ranch outfit. Suppose that a raid on their stock took place while he was absent from his "baby" ranch in the basin, presumably on business in Montana? Was not that State the base from which the rustlers worked; the haven to which they drove their loot for brand blotting and hurried sales farther south? Would she, then, still be able to cling to her persistent belief that Childress was a gentleman and not the scoundrel that so many believed him? This last question she did not answer, except to breathe a fervent hope that there would be no raid.

Then she slipped from her bed, put pink toes into purple "mules," walked to her dressing-table and, for the first time in more than a year, set a small alarm-clock. Usually she could waken at any hour on which she set her mind; but to-night her mind did not seem to be entirely under control. And there was something she must know--something that meant getting up with the Chink cook and riding hard until she knew. Her father had been too courteous to ask questions, but she need not be. The newcomer called her Flame and she called him Jack when they were alone.

Why was Jack going down into Montana on an inferior mount, his own prize left to the care of a man he scarcely knew? Why? But particularly _why_--why _was she_ losing sleep over the fact?