CHAPTER VII.

LAST WARNING.

"If this ain't one hell of a post for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, may me next assignment be to grub all the worms in Alberta!"

Constable Mahaffy, beginning to be rotund and somewhat wrinkled in his permanently sun-reddened countenance, thought himself alone and was grumbling. This was a luxury in which he never would have indulged himself had he dreamed that Sergt. Jack, his O.C. for the day, month or year, was anywhere within hearing. But his ignorance was bliss, wherefore he continued to unburden his troubled soul to Poison, who feigned to listen and understand with all a hound's artistry.

"Why did they have to wish this on me?" Mahaffy asked the dog. "Me--me, Padraic Mahaffy, the fightingest policer of them great open spaces the writer-people talk about? Or do they call 'em open 'places'?" He growled at the dog and Poison, sympathetic canine, moaned in return.

"This here one sure is open enough," he went on with the hound's entire attention. "Not even a roof on the police house, and that a one-room shack with never a sign of a cell. And me playin' at bein' a carpenter. If I'd fallen for workin' with tools, I'd be over in them States makin' ten dollars a day. If I gets any more deals like this on', I'll buy out, be jabers, and I'll----"

From around the corner of the uncompleted cabin came Jack Childress. His appearance, unexpected, sent the one member of his detachment into complete silence.

The sergeant knew Padraic, one of a type of "Mounties" scattered through the Force, invaluable in their way, loyal, fearless in danger, but the sort of trooper who never would rise beyond lowly rank.

"So you're going to buy out, Paddy?" was his questioned greeting. "You're the last real man I'd have expected would leave a buddy cold."

"Don't mind me, Sarg," returned the crestfallen constable. "I was just amusin' the pup here. I'm one of the never-quits, even if I do beef about quittin' sometimes."

Childress was as easy going, when in command, as any N.C.O. in the service; he knew, liked and appreciated Paddy Mahaffy; in fact, he had asked to have that particular constable detailed to him on this Fire Weed case. But it seemed to him that the time had come for a bit of discipline.

"Just what, Pad, is the matter with this as a post of the Royal Mounted?" he demanded with a severity that the constable did not recognize as mock.

"In the first place, Sergeant----" began Mahaffy.

"This, right here, the 'Open A' Ranch of John Childress, Esq., is the first place," cut in the sergeant. "What's the matter with this as a post?"

Thus abruptly deprived of his beloved preambles, the constable literally was driven into the open.

"There's no roof on the post, for onct," he declared.

"And no rain in sight until September--why bother now with a roof? We may not be here when the rain comes."

The Irisher waggled his graying head. "An' as for that, where's there a sign of a uniform on me?"

"The overall and jumper becomes you, Padraic," insisted Childress. "You've got to show more cause than that to have your complaint considered."

"So, then, there's no Union Jack flyin', nor even a flag pole raised, and there's no letters whitewashed on rocks saying R.C.M.P., and I'm one of the finest whitewashers in the Scarlet."

"Can't you get the idea? This is a secret post--a mufti," Childress tried to explain. "We're under cover. Besides which, and moreover, what possible good could a uniform do you here on the Open A with not a woman in miles?"

The sergeant had put a question the constable might answer.

"Not a woman, is it?" he demanded. "How about the flame filly who's been hoverin' like a firefly about the edges of _our_ damn fool ranchlet?"

Here was news to Childress, although he had strong suspicion regarding the identity of the constable's "flame filly." If Bernice Gallegher had been spying the small ranch, he had not even caught enough sight of her to know the color of the pony she rode.

"You never reported her," accused the sergeant, his tone more severe than he usually used to men under his command.

"Nothing to report," countered the rubicund Irisher. "She stayed on her own land, as you mapped it to me on arrival, just as the dinge stayed on hers."

"The dinge?"

"Oh, the black-haired beauty who lives to the east of us. There's been two of them females riding the fences which ain't on this peanut which you say belongs to the Mounted. I'll tell Commissioner Jim, if ever I get before him again, not to send anybody down here without the scarlet."

The sergeant felt no chagrin that he had not sighted the women riders. After making camp, he had taken two trips away to bring in the small stock of horses that was to lend color to his pretense of ranching. Then he had been busy with the construction of what eventually would be a tight little log cabin. Practically all of the patroling had been done by the constable in the three weeks the two had been on the ranch. Of course, Padraic should have reported both instances, even though there had been no trespass; but then one could not expect perfection from a man who always would be a constable because of the limitations birth had put upon him.

That Childress was personally interested either in the blonde or the brunette neighbor was a possibility that the sergeant cared not to admit even to himself. What had a "Mountie," even a staff-sergeant of the Force, to do with interest in women? The constable could have told him "nawthin'," even though he lived clean, had a tidy bit set by in one of the many branches of the Bank of Canada, and possessed a heart big as all outdoors. His lot was to see that the Dominion's police work was well done, wherever and however impossible such work might be.

So he let the belated report of this two-sided feminine inspection pass as a matter of small importance. But instead of going himself, he sent the constable in their spring wagon on a twenty-mile drive to the nearest railroad town for certain supplies of which they stood in need.

"And remember, Padraic, to forget that you've ever had any contact with the Royal Mounted," was the chief's parting instruction. "Don't admit even that you've ever been arrested by one of the Scarlet."

"That I niver have, and ye know the same!" bristled Mahaffy. "Me record's as clean as a hound's tooth. Are there any detachment of us at Beaver Ford?"

"No detachment. Maybe a constable on smuggling duty, but he'll be one of the new rookies and very much in uniform. Small chance of his recognizing an old alderbush like you. If you must talk, talk horse; you just might get a line on something. This case is something like a cat in that there's no telling which way the darned thing's going to jump."

To prove the sergeant right came another sample of the unexpected less than half an hour after Constable Padraic Mahaffy had driven away from the ranch. The gender of this surprise was feminine and burst, like the flame she was, around a corner of the cabin. Hammering at the task of fitting a mail-order window frame into an opening in the wall of the unroofed structure, Childress had not heard the soft pad-pad approach of her horse.

From his awkward position astride the window opening, he scrambled to a more comfortable one on the prairie turf, his whimsical, one-cornered smile offering greeting the while.

"Welcome to the Open A, Miss Gallegher," he cried with genuine heartiness, confident that having failed to place him that day in Strathconna she never would be able to do so here on his own ranch.

"To you belongs the distinction of being our first visitor. Drop rein on your cayuse and I'll see what I can supply in the way of a tea party."

Unless he had a poor memory for horseflesh, the so-called cayuse was the same bay that had gone lame crossing "Medicine Line" that first memorable moonlit evening.

"I came for no party--tea or otherwise," she said, her big freckle eyes bearing steadily upon him and never a trace of smile about the lips which knew no coloring but that of the health which comes from life in the open. "And this hawse is no cayuse," she continued, working backward on the items in his salutation. "Were I a bit more interested, I might be wondering if I really was your first visitor. What do you mean by 'Open A'?"

She wore to-day a riding suit of brownish stuff that toned with her uncovered hair as though by a painter's touch. She made no move to accept his invitation to alight, but with her question threw one youthful leg over the horn of her saddle and stared down at him, calculation admixed with interest. The sergeant recognized the worn riding boots that had shown beneath her black skirt that day in Strathconna. To-day, on the range, there was no skirt. After first glance in the great openness of the Fire Weed country, he was inclined to modify his earlier verdict that she "might have been prettier." She looked pretty enough out here on the prairie, hatless, with a complexion which, except for those provocative freckles, seemed to defy the down-blazing sun.

Childress was impressed, although he should not have been. Her refusal to drop rein and 'lite was a rebuff that approached insult in the etiquette of the Canadian West. However, he answered her question. "Open A is the name of my ranch."

The suggestion of cynicism, noted in town, that seemed so uncharacteristic, returned to her gentle lips and serious eyes.

"You've a nerve to call a single section a ranch," she declared. "But I was asking why the 'Open' and why the 'A'?"

The sergeant told himself that she was more a woman and less a girl than he had thought. He realized that there must be some object other than mere curiosity behind her visit. In several ways the discovery pleased him. With a child, even a child in breeches and perched provocatively upon a horse that was "not a cayuse," he must need be careful. Concerning a woman grown, he need be only polite.

"From the artistry with which you drape your own, I'd imagine you are saddle-wise to brands. 'Open A' happens to be mine. You might call it a 'V' turned upside down. And there probably are some who will say that it is appropriate, as this particular section of your scorn presents an open way to America--the States."

"And the brand itself is not so difficultly different from the Widow Andress' Rafter A," she said significantly. "In her brand the 'A' stands on its feet and has a peaked roof over it, which is more than your joke of a cabin boasts. A wise newcomer would have selected a less suggestive letter. I'm glad dad's brand is 'Lazy G,' even though it does seem to put us on our backs."

Her comment, which might be considered "range stuff" of the first order, was the first inkling that had come to him that his selection of a name for his property might be ill-considered. There was a possibility of brand-blotting between "Open A" and "Rafter A." Unlike as sounded the names when spoken, the plucking of some hair could lead to interesting possibilities. Already Flame Gallegher had grasped this fact, it seemed.

Already she was suspicious, but not, love the King! along the line of his real identity which must have disclosed, prematurely, the reason for his being in Fire Weed.

"Meaning just what--your 'brand not so difficultly different'?" he demanded in self-defence.

"Meaning that I rode in here to-day to give you one last warning," she returned, the freckle-eyes flashing, as her long, slim fingers threw back her flagrant hair.

"You've heard of brand-blotting," she went on. "Well, the boys of the range have figured out several brands that could, with skill, be blotted into your 'Open A.' It's evident that you don't mean to settle down as a granger; that you can make a living here raising stock on a single section is an obvious impossibility. The answer seems plain."

"To you?" he asked with a sudden show of concern. His interest was growing in this vivid young witch of the Fire Weed whose nose was bridged with freckles and whose verbal fire was as straight as the leaden one of his own Colts. He disliked the idea that she should think him a horse thief, even though that rôle was behind his taking root on the little gateway ranch. And how much easier the situation must have become had he dared remind her that once, not long since, he first had met her fleeing a horse-thief charge!

The girl did not answer at once. But there was a rather cynical twist to her lips as she arranged herself into a more comfortable seat on her over-large stock saddle.

"It don't matter what Flame Gallegher thinks," she remarked with more deliberation than was her wont. "I'll confess to an honest-to-goodness liking for you, Mr. Childress. Not one of those first-sight affairs, but just a man-to-man regard that----" She broke off suddenly. The suggestion of cynicism, that seemed so uncharacteristic, was forced back to her gentle lips and serious eyes. "Hell's bells!" she chided herself. "I'm getting kittenish in my old age. What I came to tell you and what I now do tell you, so help me God, is that if you or any one else cares a darn for the integrity of your hide, stranger, you'd better get it out of here. The boys have made up their mind to 'liminate you. And that's the warning I came to deliver. Take it or leave it."

He was forced to smile at her "in my old age" remark. If she "aged" more than twenty-two he was a poor guesser. As for being "kittenish," he almost wished she had been.

"They sent you--the eliminating boys?" he asked.

"I'm not the sort to be sent, as you'd realize if you weren't such a greener with women."

"Then what's the real motive behind to-day's overture? Greener that I am, I'll venture realizing that you did not do it as a trick to get me off this section. And I'm not conceited enough to hope that you rode here out of pity for me. Then--why the warning?"

"You're right on a couple of counts," she slashed back. "I'd not have bothered had it been only your beating me out by a nose at the railroad land-office. And there isn't a reason in the world why I should bother about you. But my father----"

"So, your father----"

"Can't abide rustlers or the suspicion of the same," she went on with more warmth than had heated her earlier speech. "He's more hot-headed than his daughter. Liable to shoot somebody and get himself nearly shot-up or in trouble with those pesky Mounted Police. I don't want him to need standing trial if a warning in time can eliminate trouble. I wish you'd mount your wonder horse and ride right out of the picture. If our outfit don't get you, the Rafter A will. They're riding herd on you, as close as we are. I've seen it myself. You haven't a chance to get away with anything less than murder, and you don't look exactly like a--a----"

He smiled at her that whimsical grin that had carried him in and out of so many tight holes. At last he was positively sure that she had not connected him with the Scarlet of that border night when she had disobeyed his gruff orders so flagrantly. It was "the man of it" that he couldn't look behind the woman mask and know the truth. As for himself he might have made anonymity's riffle--but how did he expect to get away unremembered with a horse like Silver and Poison, the dog? "Go on and say it--I don't look like a murderer," he urged. "You can't realize how you've disappointed me in having only a filial object for this visit. I'll think over the warning and ride to report after due consideration."

"At your own risk if that horse of yours ever puts hoof on the Gallegher Ranch!" she exclaimed.

If the prairie had not been dustless, he could not have seen her for "smoke."