CHAPTER VIII.

THREAT OF DOUBT.

The Ethel Andress who rode this spring afternoon over the rolling prairie west of Witch River and the Rafter A home ranch was decidedly a different-looking being from the one who had romped headlong over the Whitefoot reservation a few weeks earlier into John Childress's rescue clutch. Her mount was a gaited mustang, vividly piebald in black and white, but scrubby in comparison with Princess, the sorrel thoroughbred, who remained in the stables back of the Strathconna town house. The English saddle which had won the sergeant's condemnation, had been supplanted by a seat of the "cow" variety.

Her black hair, which on that other occasion had streamed outrageously, to-day was concealed under a big, face-shading hat. Instead of a riding habit of the fashionable cut known to Ottawa tailors, she wore short-wool chaps over khaki breeches that clung to her knees and ballooned at her surprisingly shapely hips. A shirt of blue flannel, decorated with pearl buttons, and a loosely knotted silk neckerchief completed her costume.

Although at open-country running, the piebald mustang could have given fair Princess an even break, the young woman was satisfied to have the wiry little beast jog along at a fox trot, that easiest of gaits, which both rider and horse can endure for hours without fatigue. The widow had no definite destination and the easy pace suited her mood, which was one of mental readjustment.

What was she going to do with and about Tom Fitzrapp?

Since their sudden return to the ranch from Strathconna there had been several happenings. One had to do with further loss to the rustlers, duly reported to the fair owner after Fitzrapp's return from his first inspection ride over the lower ranch of the several that made up the Rafter holdings.

"How deep did they gouge us this time?" she had asked.

"Without making a count, I say in the neighborhood of fifty head," Fitzrapp had returned despondently. "But I nearly got them this time."

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

"If it had been an inch lower----" he had started on.

But she had held the far-away look in her dark eyes and continued gazing out over the valley. Too many times it had been nearly or almost. And Fitzrapp had reported too many narrow escapes.

The explosion had come later--the next morning. The handsome ranch manager had renewed his importunities that she forsake widowhood and become Mrs. Fitzrapp. When she had shown small--possibly less than usual--interest in his protestations of devotion, he had gone off in a huff to the corrals. At luncheon, for the Rafter A was the one ranch in the Fire Weed country at which dinner was served at night, he suggested an intention of running up to Strathconna for a horse race in which he was interested.

"If you go now, Tom," she had said, "you needn't bother coming back. I'd hate to see you killed on our range and, from past experiences, they seem more likely to get you than you to get any of them. Why don't you bring down a rustler now and then?"

Her uncle had been quick to Fitzrapp's defence. Rifles had a certain range of fire, and Tom never had been near enough, any more than had any of the rest of the outfit. She had better let him have a few days off and come back primed for the next raid.

But Fitzrapp had seen the danger flash in his employer's eyes. He had voiced a quiet, white-faced decision to remain on the range. Without the use of words, which would have been useless at the moment, he tried to tell her with his eyes that he was remaining to redeem himself.

As the piebald hoofed the prairie, up one roll of sward and down another, across a patch of the worthless fire weed from which the region took its name and over a more bountiful one of buffalo and grama grasses which made it valuable for grazing, Ethel Andress pondered a plan of her own. She had ridden many a mile working it out on other days. This plan in short was to bait the lower range--that nearest the international border--with her finest stock, enlist a band of gun-fighters, and, with herself in command, await the raid that she was certain would follow. The more she thought of this baited-trap idea the better she liked it.

But the particular object of her present sortie on horseback was that she might make up her mind regarding one Thomas Fitzrapp. For years, since childhood, in fact, it had been her habit to take to the saddle and the open range when serious problems of life required adjustment. It was on one such wild ride that she had decided to link her fortunes with Cliff Andress, only to have him respond to the Empire's call so soon afterward that she could scarcely realize they ever had been married. And almost as soon as he could cross the Atlantic, do a bit of training in England and get over to Flanders, she had found herself a widow.

There seemed no doubt about Fitzrapp's interest. It had been as gentle as a mother's in the first tragic days. Once taken on to manage the ranch he had behaved beyond question until the raids on the Rafter A beauties began. Since, she had wondered why he always got shot at and never seemed to shoot back, just as she could not understand why Fitzrapp, graduate of Sandhurst, had been unable to see service when every able-bodied citizen in Canada was up and ready to go. True, he had done excellent work training recruits at one of the big camps outside Quebec, but---- There was that big BUT!

Ethel had just been emerging from widowhood at the time of his arrival on the ranch which she had been forced to take over. At once he had become an admirer. This devotion had endured and strengthened with the years, so that, although she often laughed at it, she had grown to rely upon it as well as to feel flattered about it.

A man of Fitzrapp's education and experience was rare in her social life. His easy manner gave him an appeal that other men of her somewhat limited acquaintance lacked. Although not positively handsome, as was her uncle, considering his age, Thomas Fitzrapp had a commanding presence, and expressive, deep-set brown eyes. Growing into womanhood, she had become more certain of her admirer's personal value, and, by comparison with other men, found in him graces that compelled her appreciative consideration.

Under the circumstances Blackandwhite, the cayuse, was left largely to his own devices, which, in this instance, considered only setting his own pace and "boxing" his own compass. The widow, concerned with her mental inquest on the suitor who had disappointed about the raid, continued that investigation of herself and of him.

Certainly Tom Fitzrapp always had been most kind to her; tolerant of her whims, which she knew had been many; considerate of her feelings, which were not near the surface, and respectful toward her opinions, which were decided.

The pronounced fault of jealousy which Fitzrapp lately had developed pleased more than it annoyed her. When brought to task for this, he always assured her that it would disappear once she had given him an affirmative answer to his persisting question. But this answer she postponed, keeping him in the equivocal position of being neither refused nor accepted. Most men would have considered this treatment unfair. Under the circumstances, she was impressed by his personal optimism.

On various counts in the past she had been impatient with Tom Fitzrapp, but these had been trivial. This afternoon she could not be cheerful, feeling a real disappointment--the disappointment that had forced her drastic action of "either go to your horse race in Strathconna and don't come back, or stay here and help capture these pesky bandits."

Still rankled in her mind the ranch manager's lack of courage in this latest brush with the rustlers. It would have required more than a bullet hole in her hat to stop the widow, had she found herself within gun range of the thieves. Had Tom come home with a broken shoulder, or even a clipped ear, her temper would have been more tolerant. As it was he was nearly out of the ranch romance, so far as she was concerned.

Just then the piebald took a hand--just as she was about to tell all the Fire Weed world what she thought of Mr. Thomas Fitzrapp. The horse stopped and pawed the ground with his right forefoot, as if the shoe hurt him, then turned around in inquiry.

"My goodness, hawse, I believe you've an inkling what I've been thinking about all this ride. What's the answer?"

Ethel Andress looked into the horse's eyes, but saw that they held no fear, although she knew that the eyes of a horse reflect more of alarm than do those of a dog when alarm there is. "What do you want me to look at?" she asked the beast companionably.

The answer was down in the cup of the hills--that most beautiful stallion she ever had seen. Her filly had told her something and something she was not ready to meet. But the decision was taken out of her hands. The silver beast had issued his call and there was no human woman powerful enough to keep the equine twain apart. Ethel knew when she had lost control of her mount and this time she had. Eventually the piebald would descend into the cup, carrying her to a second meeting with the mysterious man from the States, that is unless he had sold the pride and joy of his heart.

But for the moment she was able to postpone the descent. She realized that she had ridden across the range and to the edge of the low bluff upon which the railroad surveyors had put their brand and where any time now the wire fences of settlers might be found. Anything but a happy thought--settlers and wire fences--to a stock woman!

Looking down at the foot of the bluff, she made a startling discovery. Settlers must have come already! Else what was the meaning of that rough log shelter that was rising just below her stand on the bank of a small creek; of the canvas corral and the presence of a small band of horses grazing as peacefully as though they were at home there? Nothing of the sort had she noticed on her previous rides that Spring about the edge of the cup.

"Looks like the end of the range," she predicted dismally. And to think that the rescuer who had intrigued her, the handsome and strangely reserved American should lead the invasion so long predicted by her own uncle and echoed by the gentleman who had been her husband!

She looked again at the animal picketed near the half-complete cabin. Undoubtedly it was the silver stallion she had ridden in her final spurt to be first at the death of the coyote hunt. There was no mistaking the neck arching gracefully from oblique shoulders, the superb carriage of the head without breaking the line of curvature from withers to foretop; the round barrel that carried full back to the hips, and the full sweep of the high-carried tail. She looked with eyes trained to equine appraisal, and had not the slightest doubt of her recognition.

Two men left the unroofed cabin as she watched, and walked toward the corral, the smaller carrying a saddle and bridle. The taller one, who walked with a long stride and played with the loop of his rope she saw at a glance was Childress who should have been anywhere else but there on the border range, unless----

Remembrance gripped her. Fitzrapp had seen him in Strathconna with Flame Gallegher. This cup which he seemed to have occupied, was a buffer between the Rafter A and the Gallegher ranch. What was the connection? Tom suspected the owner of the silver horse to be leader of the rustlers; could it be possible that the Galleghers were concerned in the stealing and that the man who called himself Childress was there at Gallegher instigation? Until that moment she had held Fitzrapp's reiterated suspicions as groundless and merely an outgrowth of his own jealousy. Was it possible that Tom was right and that this upstanding young American who said he had come from Montana really was the head of the rustling band? If so, he could scarcely have found a likelier place as a base of operations.

Claim to a ranchhold there would be a reasonable excuse for his presence on the range; the location offered every opportunity for spying on the Rafter horse bands and a ready refuge in case raiding plans miscarried. What a discovery she had stumbled upon! And what fools they had been, they of the Rafter outfit, not to have learned that this particular section was open to purchase from the railroad people!

Ethel watched the men as they crossed to the corral, her mind still busy with this new problem. She knew that a canvas corral was impenetrable to the most obstinate outlaw, and was the best fence for breaking purposes. Even before the pair entered the enclosure, she suspected what was on hand--that the roan beast, moving so restlessly inside, was going to feel saddle girths, possibly for the first time.

Mrs. Andress was in doubt as to her immediate course. Had she been convinced that Childress was the rustler Fitzrapp believed him to be, she would have hurried away to round up her outfit and give the battle in which she longed to be a participant. But she had no proof of his guilt, and could take no definite action on mere suspicion.

Then she remembered Childress's frank-looking eyes and his resourcefulness when he thought her in danger that morning on the Indian reservation, and she knew that she was far from convinced. Horse-thieves might not look the part, as the men of Rafter A agreed, but she felt that Childress could not act such a rôle. A desire to see him and talk to him grew upon her, and finally won her decision. She'd yield to the filly, which probably would have thrown her and gone for a visit to the silver beast whether or no.

She would ride down to the canvas corral, and if the stranger confirmed her first impression, she would warn him of the danger that hung over anyone under suspicion in the vicinity of the Fire Weed range. Indeed, she was not certain but that she would warn him of peril in any event. If he was a rustler, and she succeeded in frightening him away, the result would be the same as though she and her outfit fought him off. Danger would be spared them both, and she felt that she owed him something for his intentions up at Whitefoot.

For just a moment she wavered, remembering what Fitzrapp had reported seeing at the Chateau Royal. She had no love to lose for the Gallegher girl. But she banished the thought as utterly outside the question, so far as she was concerned. She would warn him; but first, from this reserved seat on the bald bluff, after restraining her mount, she would see how he handled a recalcitrant horse.