CHAPTER V.

TOO MUCH LUCK.

Strathconna considered itself a metropolis and, indeed, it was one such, in a budding, modified degree. There were electric lights, a gas plant, street cars, business buildings of brick more than two stories in height and the "Hunt Club." It had more of civic spirit and local pride than most towns of a million souls.

There was nothing old about it in the sense that Montreal and Quebec are aged. Even Winnipeg was patriarchal in comparison. But let any visitor mention "mushroom growth" and every loyal citizen, which included all who had lived more than three months within its bounds, took to verbal arms. To prove that there was nothing "over-night" about the situation, proud boosters took the stranger to the fork where Rowdy River met the Placid. There for more than a century the Hudson's Bay Company had maintained a trading post. The log walls of this still stood, considered as the town's most sacred relic, although the tremendously expanded business of the supply concern now was conducted from a three-story brick building at a prominent crossroads--pardon, at a prominent intersection of wide, paved streets. Strathconna was no toadstool. Strathconna was phenomenal. Strathconna deserved all the adjectives that might be coupled with a city. In addition, its skirts were draped with the grounds and race-track of the "Provincial Fair Association for the Breeding of Better Horses."

In Canada's Wonderland there are a dozen new towns quite like, and quite as ambitious as Strathconna--new as a Christmas gift clock and ticking as vigorously. With five years of Arctic patrol immediately behind, to Sergt. Jack Childress the town was sufficiently vital. He was disinclined to dispute the claims of its most ardent booster. It seemed to him that he had been but a moment out of the Frozen North. His visit to Ottawa, where, at the Mounted Police headquarters on Rideau Street, he had delivered a prisoner of international importance, seemed like a dream. So brief was it that he had not even crossed the bridge to Hull, the factory city in the "wet" province of Quebec which is the near-Broadway of the Dominion capitol and only five minutes away.

"One last detail, Jack," the commissioner of the Royal had suggested. "I know you've earned a rest, but this Fire Weed game has me puzzled. Take it and solve it and I can promise you an inspectorship."

They had been friends for years in the M.P. service and the fact that the one had risen to the topmost rank that The Force possesses had not changed their Jack-and-Jim intimacy. The commissioner envied Childress the years on the French battlefront, and the sergeant, returned to his old service, would have disputed with his competent fists any one who dared say that Jim Maltby's promotion had not been earned.

Early this afternoon, after parting from Major MacDonald, Childress had at last found a stable among many garages and negotiated a stall-without-bath for Silver. In many ways he was satisfied with the ride into town, having managed to ask more questions than he had answered. Evidently Poison did not understand that he was to remain at the stable with the wonder horse. Two blocks away from the barn Childress had found the hound at heel and had been forced to execute a personally conducted return of the beast.

Despite the fact that his time was limited, the scene at the intersection of King and Prince Streets, the hub of this self-nominated metropolis, held him for a time, an interested, wondering spectator. After years of sledding with dogs or behind reindeer broken to harness, he felt a certain thrill in watching automobiles, taxicabs and horse traffic struggle with electric cars for road room on the well-paved street. He found an eddy in the jostling throng of pedestrians and looked his lonely fill, marveling that the traffic officer, a municipal man, was able to keep from under.

The sidewalk crowd was the personification of bustle and particularly striking in its cosmopolitan qualities. Englishmen in loose-hanging tweeds rubbed elbows with the motley throng; the Whitefoot brave, his black hair in a ribbon tied braid, shuffled along in moccasined feet, followed by his squaw wrapped in a gaudy blanket; a Chinese with a basket of laundry upon his shoulder narrowly escaped collision with a Japanese truck farmer who staggered under the weight of his load of tubers; Canadians and Americans, indistinguishable in their similarity of feature and garb and gait; nor wanting were the disabled ex-service men, some still in uniform and on the crutches of continuing pain. Indeed, this was a world's melting pot on a smaller scale than he had noticed in Paris, London, New York, Montreal or Chicago.

But here in Strathconna, the self-styled "City Where Dreams Come True," he missed the hopeless faces that had so impressed him in other similar crowds, for here every countenance appeared expectant. It seemed to be a city of buoyant youth, yet it was a city and therefore not for him. Already he felt a return of the stifling sensation that always came to him with paved streets and towering walls of brick and stone. He was eager to return to the open country, to throw his leg across saddle leather and feel under him the easy pace of Silver skimming the prairie. He rejoiced that two days at most should see the end of the business which called forth his present visit to town. Life in cities was all right for those who liked it, he reflected, but activity of another sort appealed more to him.

Several members of The Force wearing the brilliant uniforms of the "Mountie" off duty, passed by with the crowd. Two of them, with whom he had served on desperate cases, came so near that he could have touched their shoulders by reaching out with one of his long arms. As he was in civilian clothes, following the invariable rule of the Force, there was no recognition, and he gave no sign, such being the nature of his mission.

At the Chateau Royal, one of those Canadian masterpieces of hotel construction several score of rooms too large for Strathconna's present demands, he found quarters for himself. His "John Childress" was registered as inconspicuously as possible and his address set down as "Harve, Montana," the last place in the United States in which he had spent any time on the present investigation.

Despite his modesty, he did not escape the local boosters, particularly the realtors who had everything to offer from corner lots to factory sites and "suburban estates with homes built to live." It was nearly impossible for him to persuade them that he was not an investor. Almost was he sorry that he had not risked acceptance of Ivan MacDonald's invitation to dine with the "family," a bid that marked the end of their ride together. At last, in self-defence, he went to a motion-picture theater, the key of his hotel room in his pocket. On return he made his entry so inconspicuous that the cards of four boosters who were awaiting him in the lobby were not delivered until he came down to breakfast in the morning.

Ten o'clock found Childress at the local office of the Maple Leaf Midland Railroad, a substantial building constructed of a stone that glistened like galena and came from one of the quarries along the line of the road that held an enormous land-grant acreage. Here, again, Childress encountered the "metropolitan" idea. In an ornate foyer an attendant, caparisoned with all the glory of an Oriental diplomat, assured him that they--doubtless meaning his company--had everything in stock from ready-made farms to cow ranges. Childress was directed to the "Department of Natural Resources" on the second floor.

Request brought forth a detailed map of the southern portion of the province. After some comparison between the map and the notes which his memorandum book held, he located the Fire Weed Range, and a particular section bearing the railroad's ownership mark. This adjoined the extensive holdings of the Rafter A Ranch, touched on its western side the Gallegher Range and was not too far from the border for the purpose the sergeant had in view. That this parcel had remained unclaimed by either the Andress or the Gallegher interests seemed surprising and the best piece of professional luck that had come to Childress since his return from gathering Arctic "weather reports" and Eskimo murderers in the subnormal temperature of Frozen Solid Land.

"Guess that six hundred and forty acres ought to answer," Childress mused, after an inspection of certain other vacant sections. "At least, I'll be in the way of the somebodies who are raising all this mysterious rustling hell. Wonder why the Andress or Gallegher interests didn't pick it up? I wonder?"

He gained the attention of a land agent behind the glass-topped counter and found him at once courteously attentive on remarking that he had heard the railroad was offering ready-made farms.

"Greatest idea ever worked out for the settler without considerable capital," declared the agent, with that assured belief that is seldom found except in realtors and missionaries. "Suppose you're situated so that you cannot wait to erect your home and farm buildings even with the help of the two thousand dollar loan that is offered on our other proposition. And suppose again that it is necessary for you to farm and make a living practically the day you start in western Canada. Then you do want one of our ready-mades--a four-room dwelling, a barn for eight head of stock, well dug and pump installed, farm fenced, and gates in place, fifty acres turned over by tractor plow and twenty years to pay." The agent beamed upon him.

John Childress did not lack response, seeming at once to catch some of the other's enthusiasm. "That sure does sound attractive," he said.

"You've had agricultural experience?"

"Might admit that," returned Childress, remembering his experiments with wheat, potatoes, onions and the ever-hardy radish at one of his last posts in the sub-Arctic.

"Married, of course?"

A look so surprised as to seem bashful came into Childress' face. "Married--eh? Not that any one could prove, I hope!"

The Maple Leaf Midland's land agent looked indignant. "Then you don't want a ready-made farm, young man. They are sold only to married men and are designed particularly for the comfort of families."

But he did not turn entirely away, this fatherly agent. He merely nodded to a young woman who had entered the office and was waiting at the map-spread counter. This nod said that he welcomed her and that she would be next to receive his attention. The sergeant looked up hastily, his attention attracted as much by the nervous tapping of the newcomer's fingers as by the railway man's momentary abstraction. He caught a glimpse of the "next" homeseeker.

The woman was young--scarcely more than a girl. She was tall and angular. Her face was flushed, possibly from the exertion of climbing the stairs in a hurry, but not enough to hide the freckles that bridged her impudently cut nose. Her eyes looked like two of the freckles enlarged, vivified, carefully rounded and placed, so brown and solemn they were. Her hair was the sort that oftenest comes with such eyes, the color of flame, soft and very thick, as shown by the braided coronet exposed by her back-thrown felt hat.

Quite a good deal to take in at a glance; but there are glances and glances. Childress was trained to seeing much with his wide-range eyes. He was impressed--with a feeling that he should hurry his own transaction to save the flame lady any unnecessary impatience.

But the fatherly land clerk was addressing him.

"I should say, from the looks of you though, that you soon could remedy that marriage deficiency. There's nothing like trying. As a married man myself, I recommend the state, which needn't be what some call it--a condition of servitude for the male."

With a sense of bashful alarm, the sergeant saw him glance at the woman of marvelous hair. This became as near fright as he ever allowed himself to get when he realized that the unknown in the black riding togs must have heard and was finding difficulty in concealing beams of amusement. Childress, except for a prisoner or two who wore skirts, had enjoyed little experience with the sex he considered "dangerous." To him, romance was somewhere in the future--over the ridge ahead--after he had made good in the scarlet service to which he had committed so many of his active years--something perhaps to be snatched up, if he were lucky, just before the decline set in.

"The only woman I ever thought enough of to marry--" began Childress, and then stopped.

"Ask her again, son," put in the paternal clerk.

"Was already married," the sergeant went on. "Isn't there any way I can get hold of this section"--pointing out the one he had selected--"without hitching into double harness?"

The land agent raised bushy gray brows at this request for an entire section which in Canadian land measurement represents six hundred and forty acres. He explained that the largest of the ready-made farms were but half that acreage; but he could sell him one section--or two, for that matter--on terms of one-twentieth cash and the balance in nineteen annual payments.

"This for me then," said Childress with decision, and he indicated the location he desired.

"For your own satisfaction, we require a personal inspection of the land you propose to buy before you buy it." The agent seemed somewhat puzzled by this unusual client.

"Inspected it on my way from the border," Childress explained. "If it don't turn the trick for me, I don't know of a vacant section that will. In the beginning, I'll graze stock instead of cultivating. What's the initial payment?"

The land agent's eyes blinked at the easiest customer he had handled in many a day. Then he recited other requirements: occupation within six months of date of purchase; railroad reservation of all minerals, gas and petroleum; unencumbered ownership of stock if maintained in lieu of cultivation. But to all these provisos the sergeant nodded ready agreement, handed over the first payment and edged down the counter while waiting for his receipt that the flame lady might have her turn at the maps.

His face wore a satisfied expression over what he considered a good morning's work. The section of Dominion land was to serve, of course, as a cover for his professional activities in the Fire Weed country. "Nobody can raise serious objection to a man hanging around his own individual property and keeping his eyes open," he mused. "And these acres are going to be Jack Childress' ranch for the next year at least. Afterward--well, it will be a tough break if the 'case' lasts into a second payment."

An exclamation from the fair land-seeker who had followed him at the counter startled the sergeant from his musing.

"Too late!" she cried. "Do you mean that I'm too late--that the section has been taken up just this minute?" There was anguish in every word of the cry and query.

He looked up to see the flame woman frowning at him.

"Some folks have too much luck," she declared in a voice the bitterness of which seemed calculated to reach his ears.

The voice did reach them and the vibration of the protest set those members burning.

"The ink's not dry on the transfer; perhaps--" the land agent began, then beckoned to him.

Not at once did the sergeant respond. From the first the voice of the woman applicant had puzzled him. Now, with a flash as of fire, the truth dawned upon him. Here was the Gallegher girl who had stood behind him in that Medicine Line clash with the outlaws from Crow's Nest. Praise be to moonlight--she seemed to have not the faintest recollection of any previous meeting!