At the entrance gulch, through which the only wagon road winds its way into the dreary upland, so well called "bad," there dwells a small rancher who finds it worth while to keep within the law. His chief source of income, on which he pays no tax, is to signal the approach of strangers, particularly officers of the State or Federal government. A flag which he can raise or lower without leaving his front porch sends the alarm to the outlaw nest. The system may be old-fashioned, but it has not yet been discarded either for the telephone or the radio. Telephone wires can be cut by a posse that really is in earnest about paying the Nest a surprise visit and radio communication is, as yet, too much of a mystery to interest these border folk as a safeguard.
It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon when Sergeant Jack rode up to the out-guard ranch house. From his previous visit to Montana he had learned enough about Crow's Nest to understand the method of safe approach. The bandage had disappeared from his forehead; written there in lines of fire was the horseshoe brand of disgrace.
Lounging, as was his wont, in a sway-backed chair built by stretching an undressed hide upon a proper arrangement of saplings, loafed the outguard—a long-nosed, lanky, unshaven mountaineer. At his feet, in half slumber, lay a couple of nondescript hounds, reputed to be efficient guardians, so far as alarm was concerned, of the entrance gulch at night. In the scraggly front yard a boy of nine or ten years was playing as best he might with no mate to make up a real game. In the open door of the shack a slovenly woman appeared, evidently the wife and mother, drawn from some household task by the noise of the horse's approach.
"Greetings and salutations, friend," was the sergeant's opening. "Is everything sitting pretty up at the Nest?" His hat was tilted low over his forehead, concealing the informative scar.
"That there all depends on who yuh are and what yuh want," returned the man on the porch without moving a muscle of his elongated frame. "I'm Doc Chase, ranchman and honest. I don't pay no attention what goes on up there. Who're yuh?"
Childress removed his Stetson, disclosing the tell-tale wound which already was beginning to look like a scar.
Chase started up in his chair, then sank back again, as though the effort was painful.
"They got yuh, eh?" he remarked. "Wonder they let yuh get away, Childress, with just a brand, considering the Strathconna Breeders has put an alive-or-dead on you."
"How did you know my name?" the sergeant demanded.
"Don't know your real name—only the one you've borrowed from somebody in the Mounted. Recognized yuh from the description on the bill and the picture. What was the matter with your gun that yuh let 'em treat yuh like a maverick?"