ACROSS MEDICINE LINE.
An inanimate monument of whitewashed stones glistened in the moonlight as though each boulder was of pure platinum.
Not much to enthuse about, especially were you the one who had helped in its erection in the years of your youth; yet sight of it gripped John Childress, sergeant of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, much in the same way as Miss Liberty, down in New York harbor, takes hold of the immigrant entering the alleged promised land. For the moment he forgot that he had ever had a part in long-ago boundary-line marking. A touch of spur, a lunge of willing horse and he was on—he was across "Medicine Line," thus giving, as did the non-com in his thoughts, the Indian name to that more-or-less mythical smear which separates all King George's American acres from all of Uncle Sam's.
Childress was riding a draw in the hills which gave from the States into the Fire Weed Country of Canada's marvelous West. He wore the scarletblue-gold uniform that knows no stain. The horse he rode, a gray stallion whose coat glistened like silver in the moonlight, might have looked white under sun-glare, but in any light he was somebody's horse.
At the heels of the gray tailed a brindle hound. Poison was his name— just that all may know his disgrace and have it over with. Childress had bought the horse down in Missoula, when his service mount had gone painfully lame from the hard riding of a scouting trip on the star-spangled side of that mythical boundary line. Poison, the pup, who had grown to believe that the big gray and he were kennel-mates, had followed along, in that faithfulness of beast to beast which passeth human understanding. The sergeant possessed no bill-of-sale for or to the dog. Repeatedly, in his severest regimental manner, he had ordered the queer-looking canine home. But always a snort from the silver beast had countermanded orders. At that, after closer inspection of Poison, the sergeant decided none would make pursuit for recovery.
Although Luna was silvering that she'd be gone and night-dark soon would be there, Childress was not hurrying into the Fire Weed Country. To be sure, there were ranch-houses where he might have spent a comfortable night, but, no matter how soft the bed, he must have suffered because of his uniform. Give him just a week or two, a visit to a cache already made, and he'd be as plain a looking citizen as ever forked a horse. He was going into mufti, the penalty for secret service in the "Royal." To-night he meant to skirt the region, seeing no one of the local ranchmen. But he was coming back a plain cow-punch in an effort to solve the problem of stock that must have been exceedingly sick to drift so regularly across "Medicine Line."
Childress was a mile beyond the border when the hit-hit-hit of a horse coming at race-track speed caused him to draw rein and wheel the silver bulk of his mount across the trail. Came at once a whine from Poison.
"What's the matter, pup?" he asked, as the hound lofted himself against the stirrup. "Do you think they've missed you over in the States and are needing sausage-meat?"
Poison, perhaps realizing his limitations, did not say.
"Don't worry, brute," he said laughing. "You're an alien now and The Force'll look after you."
As Poison licked the man's rein-tired hand, there came streaking through the moonlight what looked to be a slender lad astride a rangy bay. The horse had gone lame in its right forefoot, but was making speed despite any handicap of pain.
"Pull up a bit, kid!" Childress shouted in time to prevent being run down by any blind rush. "What's the moonlit hurry."
The bay slid to a stop, almost within touch of the silver and scarlet apparition which blocked the narrow trail.
"Let me pass—let me pass!" The cry was in a treble that pronounced the rider either exceeding young, or something else again.
"Sure, you can pass," said Childress. "I don't own this trail. But you might tell me just what's the all-fired hurry?"
At the moment a fleck of cloud shrugged one side of the moon, putting all the silver spot-light upon the uniformed sergeant.
"A Mountie!" cried the rider. "Thank God for a Mountie!"
"No desire to deny the uniform of the service," said the sergeant. "What can I do for you, son?"
For answer, a concealing hat of black felt was swept off and hung upon the saddle. The cloud took itself still farther from out the orbit of the moon, which then played all its light upon the reddest strands of braided hair that ever a girl wrapped around her head. Such was the trust of the uniform that, honestly worn, never has failed woman, beast or mere man.
"Son!" laughed Childress. "One on me. What can I do for you, sister, that you're willing to thank God about in advance?"
The boy-clad girl plunged. "I'm Bernice Gallegher from the Lazy G Ranch. Some of that damn Yankee bunch down at Crow's Nest has been running off our stock. Thought I could get away with the boy stuff. One of our old punchers, the darned renegade, recognized me and chased me out."
She paused for breath. Sergt. Childress waited anxiously for her next word. The Crow's Nest renegades over in Montana and their particular connection with the rustling of stock out of Fire Weed was the detail which would take him into mufti in the next few days.
"Running me out of the Nest wasn't enough," went on the girl whose mane looked like flaming gold in the moonlight. "I went to the nearest county-seat of that State they call Montana. The Nesters followed, charged me with horse stealing, although this poor beast has been mine since he was a colt. They got up a posse of roughs that stood in. Been chasing me all afternoon—running me ragged. They're right behind me now, and my horse is all in. Any wonder I thanked the good God for meeting up with a Mountie?"
Years of training in emergency had made Childress a man of instant decision. For no part of a second did he doubt the girl's story. And there came confirmation thereof in the distant thud of many hoofs. To get the flame-haired youngling out of danger zone became his first consideration.
"We'll swap horses," he suggested, swinging from the silver beast's saddle. "Off that bay, miss, and on your way. Meet me at Soda Springs anytime to-morrow and we'll trade back."
The girl tried to obey. But evidently there had been too much previous strain. As she kicked a boyish leg over the saddle horn, she collapsed in his arms—absolutely out, in a dead faint.
With suddenly terrified tenderness the sergeant—known throughout The Force as absolutely "hard boiled"—held her from any possibility of a fall. The flame head fell against his chest, pillowed upon the honor ribbons which, through luck and utter unconsciousness of death-fear, he had brought back from the World War. Her lips were parted, her eyes closed. But he noticed, as his arms tightened about her and he leaned to utter anxious words into the fragrance of her hair, that a rich, healthful color began to spread upward into the creamy-tan of her cheeks. Recent years in Arctic patrol, where Eskimo squaws didn't know how to pass out of any picture except from over-feeding on blubber, hadn't sharpened his experience, but he would have taken King's oath that no fainting girl ever looked so much like a blush-rose at dawn.
"Bernice!" he demanded, remembering the name she had given.
As suddenly as she had passed did she snap out of the faint. There was a more or less spasmodic hold upon him as she caught herself together.
"Mount the silver beast—quick!" he directed.
"But, sergeant, there are five of them!" she cried. "I counted, looking back from the top of the hill, just the other side of the boundary."
"You heard me, girl," he snarled, a tone that few had dared disobey. "Make a dust away from here."
Bernice Gallegher watched his square-shouldered back, upon the scarlet coat on which the moon was playing so vividly, as he strode down the road to face, single-handed, the wild, rough-riding quintet who had followed the supposed boy, intent upon a necktie-party. For no fraction of a second had she thought of accepting his generous offer—considered making a "dust" away from her Providence-sent protector. Like a streak, she took after him.
The galloping horses of the outlaw posse pounded nearer and nearer. Sergt. Childress set himself squarely in the road, ready for King's-name confrontation. The pad-pad of the girl's rushing feet caused him to turn.
"You—here?" he grumbled, as though disbelieving that his order had been disobeyed. "Thought I told you—"
"Two guns are better than one against five," she said, panting. "It's my battle you're fighting and I've the right to help you shoot it out." From somewhere about her boy clothes she whipped an automatic.
"Too late," the sergeant groaned, as he saw the lead rider of the posse top the rise of Medicine Line. "Too late for a get-away. Behind me, woman!"
Childress would have made a perfect target as he stood mid-trail, the moon multiplying the brilliance of his uniform. But the weird light also showed the raiders what he was. Perhaps some of the band had felt the steel of the Mounted before. At any rate, his sharp "Who goes?" brought the girl's pursuers to a stop.
"We're chasing a hawse thief," drawled one of the interlopers, possibly the leader. "Let us pass an' we'll get him."
"Describe the stolen horse and the man you're after," said Childress. "The Mounted will get him for you."
There was momentary discussion in tones too low to carry to the ears of the uniformed obstruction.
"Come along with the description, if you're serious," prodded the sergeant.
"At him and over him, boys," someone of the five suggested. "Mounties never shoot first, you know."
Five horsemen lined up abreast, completely filling the trail. Touches of spurs must have ground the sergeant, and the girl behind him, into the dust, but neither of the two flinched.
With the heel of his boot Childress cut a line across the roadway. Doubting if any of the Americans could see, in the uncertain light, what he was about, the trooper explained.
"I've dragged a dead-line. Just try to cross it—any one, or all, of you— and learn that a Mountie shoots, perhaps not first, but always last."
"Hell!" growled one of the night riders.
"'Tain't worth the risk," advised another.
Childress waited, gun in hand, until patience ceased to be one of his virtues. "You're on Canadian soil, gents. The prospect isn't favorable for any crop of armed invasion. Better head back home before you start something you can't fertilize. Otherwise I'll have to take you in charge."
"We're five to one," suggested the leader.
"Five to two," corrected a shrill voice from behind the sergeant. "Come to it, you cowardly Crows!"
Childress groaned inwardly at this unexpected intervention. Why couldn't women stay where they were put? Yet, perhaps, the shrilled invitation turned the tide of conflict. A moment's hesitation and the ropecarriers from the States turned their horses and trotted away into the night.
"To whom am I indebted?" asked Bernice as they walked back to their waiting mounts.
"Suppose we set it down to Lady Luck and your own nerve, young woman."
She might have pouted had there been any chance of his seeing the same in the flickering light. "But my father, when I tell him about it tonight, will wish to write a letter to headquarters commending your bravery."
Childress chuckled. "Child, they wouldn't know what to do with that up at Ottawa. If your father wants to do a real favor to the Dominion, you might tell him, for the Mounted, to do his own tracing of rustled stock and to keep you at home where you doubtless belong."
Childress busied himself quickly with an examination of the bay horse's injured hoof.
"You're something of a brute, aren't you?" suggested Bernice.
He pretended not to hear. "Your horse," he said, "will carry you home if you don't crowd him. I'll camp trail-side, right here, so you needn't fear any change of mind on the part of your friends from over the border. Good night!"
The accent put upon this last decided the girl.
"Sergeant Brave but Impossible," she said, as she swung herself into the saddle, snapped a salute and was gone, for once in her flaming life obeying a man's orders.
When he had spread his slicker and persuaded the pup, Poison, to serve as pillow, Sergt. Jack Childress thanked the Lord that Canada grew such women. He drifted into slumber still wondering would this boy-girl of the range recognize him when clad in mufti. Important it was that she should not.
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!
CHAPTER III.
IN THE WRONG PARTY.
The smile of Jack Childress was one of the famous smiles of the Royal Mounted, but it was not in evidence this brilliant morning of early spring. His attempt to save the girl had been really, honestly gallant, and he held nothing against her attitude. He had blundered, but the look she gave him on riding away astride Silver showed that she understood his intention and more, thanked him for trying, even though his try was a miss.
He started to stalk the sorrel, cropping grass nearby, evidently content at being relieved of the responsibility of the chase, now that she had no rider aboard. In this effort he was successful, thanks to his skill with the rope. Crawling up hand-over-hand, he closed in on the horse and repaired the broken rein.
The situation amused him. A "Mountie" with his string around another person's "hawse" in a land where autos still are "sniffy things" and the
equine is one of man's most treasured possessions! And this at a time when a horse stealing band, presumedly from the States, had been so perniciously active on the ranges along the International border!
Of course, he was safe enough in the circumstance of the young woman having borrowed Silver, a horse whose shoulder-brand he felt confident none of the Strathconna riders would recognize. Yet his hold upon the sorrel gave him an odd feeling, and his expression was grave as he realized that his misunderstanding of the girl's danger had been a tactical error.
To enter the provincial metropolis in such spread-eagle fashion had been furthest from his intention. He was unobtrusive by nature and particularly so by calling, when not in the scarlet of dress-parade. The occasion of this visit, moreover, commanded particular caution. Yet here he was advertising himself and his presence in a most spectacular manner; first by attempting to rescue a lovely creature of the local hunt club when it seemed she neither required nor desired saving, and then by loaning her his unusual mount that she might ride the chase to its finish.
He gazed across the reservation's sweep to the point where the hounds had surrounded an exceedingly tired coyote. The horse nearest the pack was his own gray, and the hair of the daring girl rider again was streaming straight out behind her as she held a firm seat on his over-large saddle and steered with a tight rein.
"Come what may," he murmured reflection, "she'll be in at the finish despite my blunder." But his smile was forced as he added to the filly: "Reckon, Princess, I can pay the piper for this unexpected dance."
Poison, the hound dog, was just that to the coyotes and would finish this one in short order. Served the pirate of the West as it deserved—miserable preyer on small lambs and even older ewes, raider of chicken coops and panhandler at the cattleman's expense when it finds a calf lying under the shelter of some bush where it has been left while its mother grazes or hoofs to water. Yes, the coyote would get just deserts.
But when Childress viewed closely the features of one of the males of the hunting party—this a moment later—he feared that he might be
overcharged for the "dance." Unless the description given him was at fault, the oncomer was the particular man of the Strathconna region whom he least desired to meet.
That florid complexion, that aquiline nose above a short-cropped, sandy mustache, that somewhat rotund but powerful figure and the red blaze of a scar on the left cheek—all would seem to introduce to his expert eyes a certain Thomas Fitzrapp, manager of the well-stocked Fire Weed Ranch, thirty miles nearer the International boundary, the horses of which wore the Rafter A of the Andress brand—a half-diamond above the initial letter.
Had the sergeant's own mount been in hand, he would have postponed the meeting indefinitely by trusting to Silver's speed. As he could not race away on a horse belonging to a strange young woman, he decided to brazen out the encounter and, if necessary, revise his Strathconna program. Without troubling to readjust stirrup straps, he flung into the girl's saddle and rode toward the hunting party, which by now was surrounding the pack.
Fitzrapp, approaching at speed, hailed him sharply, with an arrogance of tone that added a last touch to the mental description which the Mountie held of the man he did not wish to meet. He was answered with a glance and a noncommittal "Howdy, stranger!"
"Where do you think you're riding with Mrs. Andress' saddler?" came indignant demand.
Lids narrowed over the eyes of the man in mufti as he surveyed the questioner, fashionably clad in a riding suit of gray whipcord. Andress? The name removed any possible doubt as to the identity of the querulous horseman. But at Regina division headquarters, when he had received his secret service assignment to the Fire Weed country no one had said anything about the lady of the ranch being married. Certainly he was stumbling upon personages this morning!
"Who might you be and why do you question me?" Childress asked, the usual good-nature of his tone dulled by the other's arrogance.
"I'm Thomas Fitzrapp, master of hounds on this hunt into which you've inserted yourself."
"Inserted myself is correct, Mr. Fitzrapp, and I've a suspicion that I don't fit any better than a round peg does into a square hole. None the less I'm riding this filly to her owner that I may swap back for my own beast who happens to be stirruped more to the comfort of my legs. Can't see that anyone should object to that, not even the lady's husband."
Fitzrapp flicked his ivory-handled crop against one of his shining boots, at loss just how to handle this interloper.
"Mrs. Andress is a widow, sir, and somewhat under my protection." He offered this bit of news gratuitously. "Your accent tells me that you're from the States."
The mouth of Childress twitched whimsically. He had been in the United States and recently, but he was not "from" there in the sense meant by the assured master-of-hounds. He grasped the opportunity to cover his connection with "The Force" by an equivocal return.
"I haven't noticed much difference in accent either side of the line," he said. "Shall we join the bunch?"
Childress was not asking permission, not on this any-man's range. He did not wait for answer, but headed toward the hunters.
Their arrival found old Poison offsetting his lack of straight breeding by a strength of character that was causing considerable tumult among the hounds. The Strathconna fashion-folk hunted with a cross between the Russian wolfhound and the English grayhound, swift runners, quick at turning, but not always eager to kill. Gladly had Poison taken upon himself, it seemed, the right to toss the coyote. Then, moved by jealousy, the blooded pack had attempted to take the "brush" away from him.
By the time the sergeant arrived, the police dog had put three of them hors de combat, and was holding the rest at safe distance by threat of savage fangs. None of the men riders had cared to dispute the strange
canine's right of possession on behalf of Mrs. Andress, who was clamoring for her prize as the first human in at the death.
"Me and mine sure are interfering with this hunt, folks," cried Childress as he reined the mare and sprang to the prairie sod.
He strode toward his dog, who began an indeterminate, equivocal wagging of his tail. "You darned old scoundrel!" he began, in a tone that only pretended to chide. "Can't you get it through your peaked roof that we're not invited to this party? Give me that wolf!"
The blow he sent Poison's way was accepted by that discriminating beast as a caress, and the dead coyote promptly was surrendered. Picking up a thirty-five pound specimen of the prairie pest, Childress turned toward the young woman, who still sat his horse and had just finished parking her disordered hair. Old Poison slouched at his heels, casting defiant glances from side to side at the other dogs.
"Here's your trophy, Mrs. Andress," he said, removing his Stetson. "Let me apologize again and in behalf of the three of us for breaking into your hunt."
Her smiling return reminded him of the wiles of widows. "I can forgive you all," she said. "I haven't a doubt that you acted with the best intention, and this silver beauty of yours certainly gave me a flying finish. If you'll help me out of your outrageous saddle, we'll call it quits!"
As Childress gallantly handed her down, a fine-looking old gentleman with pointed beard swung nimbly from the back of a big bay gelding and approached with outstretched hand.
"Let me introduce myself," he began, "I am Ivan MacDonald, cast by fate in the rôle of uncle to this young hoyden. I've warned her repeatedly that this Indian reservation isn't a race course, even though it never has been cursed with barbed wire. I've begged her to be content with a nimble-hoofed cayuse instead of that spindle-shanked thoroughbred, and I hoped I had made some impression upon her. But to-day, through some excess of spirit, she got away from me—from all of us—and raced off after that little wolf
