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!