"Looks regular enough," he remarked, slipping the warrant into his coat pocket. "So we aren't going to have a race—after all the trouble I've been put to?"
"Not to-day," returned the officer with a grin. "Not so's you'd notice the dust."
There seemed to awaken in Childress a sudden realization of his position. He jerked out the warrant and read it more carefully.
"Is this jolly little document based upon anything more stable than the information and belief of Mr. Thomas Fitzrapp, of Strathconna, the Rafter A Ranch and elsewhere?" he asked.
A thread of defiance in his tone caused Ethel Andress again to look at him searchingly. It seemed impossible that he could be what circumstances proved him to be.
"The warrant has substantial basis," said Maj. MacDonald. "Here for instance is a memorandum book, purporting to be the property of one Jack Childress. It is filled with rustling data and was picked up in the track of the last raid upon our stock."
Childress bowed recognition of the book. "I'll be glad to get you back, old stand-by, when the court is through with you. I dropped you that day I rode to the Rafter A to sign the terms of today's race. Fitzrapp must have picked you up and neglected to return you." He turned to the local officer. "Will you be kind enough to come over to the stables until we put up the horses and I get out of these riding clothes."
"I'll put an officer on guard of the horses," said the policeman as they walked off toward the stables.
None paid any attention to a gestured signal which Childress threw toward the grandstand. There it was picked up and understood by a slender little woman in a blue twill dress and dark mushroom hat. She left the seat which she had occupied alone and approached the group that waited beneath the starter's stand.
Ten minutes passed when came the return from the stables, a return that added to the day's total of surprises. The two who accompanied the local officer wore the brilliant parade uniforms of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—Childress with the trappings of a staff-sergeant, Mahaffy in the plainer suit of a trooper. Heavy revolvers bristled in ominous black from the hip holsters of each. They strode with the swank of long service, and the local policeman seemed entirely satisfied to toddle along in the rear.