The long arm of the Mounted

by James French Dorrance

"Aversion to pulling a trigger is one of several things I don't understand about Tom Fitzrapp," said Ethel thoughtfully. "I wonder if he's gun shy. I've long been convinced that Season's Greetings is an old four-flusher, although he looks capable of any atrocity. They've both had chances at these horse thieves before, but we never hear of any casualty list. Sometimes I'm afraid that Tom is too soft-hearted for a real man."

"Men aren't what they used to be, Ethel," the pioneer replied. "Even the Indians and most half-breeds of to-day are more streaked with yellow than red. When I was young—— Well, I'm not too old to show them yet. If the boys come back this time without a scalp, I'm going down into Montana after the scoundrels myself."

The weeks had passed swiftly since the men of Ethel Andress' outfit had returned empty-handed from their raid on the Open A. Despite her hatred of rustlers, the widow had not found it in her heart to grieve that the evidence of stolen horses was wanting. For one thing, she was not displeased that Thomas Fitzrapp should occasionally be disturbed from the pedestal of self-sufficiency upon which she thought him too prone to climb. Again, as her relative and her ranch manager had enforced the handicap of her sex by insisting that she remain at home, a proceeding which she always resented, she was glad that their sortie had proved a failure.

With a fresh tingling of nerves, she recalled now her surprise when John Childress had ridden into the yard a few days after the raid, and gravely saluted her as she sat alone on the porch. She still felt that her uncle or Fitzrapp might have warned her that the stranger was expected. But this they had not done, and she had been forced to make the best of her least becoming frock and a disarray of the hair that was far from what she would have wished. She had set down to his credit the fact that he seemed not to notice these defects in the least, but had spent an hour with her in animated converse, until the return of the men revealed the real reason behind his call.

Although Fitzrapp had hinted as openly as he dared that they could dispense with her presence, she had sat through the business session, youthfully thrilled at the thought of a race between these two men. She had found herself comparing them as they sat on either side of the desk at which the major was drawing up an agreement for the contest, and she decided that they would be well matched for a race of another sort had it not been for the handicap of suspicion under which the stranger labored.

The business ended, she had been rather pleased at the way in which he declined her uncle's invitation to have supper with them. His excuse had been that ranch duties called him, but she had gained and retained the impression that the refusal was but the outcropping of a well-bred instinct not to dine at their table while he was under the slightest suspicion.

In the succeeding weeks she had twice met him on the open range and exchanged a few words with him, but on neither occasion had the situation held anything to lend weight to Fitzrapp's continuing suspicion that he was the real leader of the rustlers. For that reason she had said nothing about the meetings on returning to the home ranch. She was quite sure that she was "the master of her soul," accountable to no man and equally convinced that she would be very certain of her own heart and mind before she permitted any change in the state of widowed blessedness.

One of these range meetings with the ranchman of mystery had possessed an angle which disturbed her in spite of herself. In her hard riding for exercise and relief from ranch monotony, she had passed the boundaries of her own range onto that of Sam Gallegher. Emerging from a coulee she had come suddenly 'upon Childress, and riding with him was Flame of Fire Weed. Their stirrups brushed and they were in close converse. Had there been suitable cover at hand she would have taken refuge and permitted them to pass. As there was no chance of getting out of sight, she had ridden up and made the best of it. And she had rather admired that girl of Gallegher's that day. Flame, she decided, was fast budding into the fullness of her womanhood, and would soon be able to hold her own in any company. The way she had kept their brief trail-side conversation angling around the fact that her "dad" had heard from the commissioner of the Royal Mounted and that an inspector on special detail would soon be at work on their troubles had been really a masterpiece of self-possession and social tact.

Only a week before had occurred the momentous incident of her second visit to the Open A. One of her women friends from Strathconna was paying her a visit, and they had started out in the buckboard for a long prairie drive. They were discussing where they should go when Childress and his one-section ranch had come to mind. Her story regarding him had been sufficiently tinted with romance to excite the curiosity of her visitor, so that the heads of the gray team had been turned toward the basin. Fancifully, they had pretended that they were members of a posse running down a band of desperate horse thieves, and they had worked themselves into quite a gay mood by the time they sighted his cabin.

Childress was so frankly glad to see them, and so insistent that they should accept his hospitality to the extent of an improvised luncheon, that they had left the buckboard and spent a merry hour over a meal which he served on the top of an empty packing box in the shadow of the cabin's overhang. A can-opener was responsible for most of the menu, but two large rainbow trout, caught that very morning in the near-by stream, served as a delicious piece de resistance. The widow's guest had been quite captivated, and repeatedly declared on the drive back to the Rafter Ranch that she could never believe him a horse thief. Indeed, Ethel herself had reached the decision that she should require absolutely convincing proof of his guilt before believing.