He looked up to see the flame woman frowning at him.
"Some folks have too much luck," she declared in a voice the bitterness of which seemed calculated to reach his ears.
The voice did reach them and the vibration of the protest set those members burning.
"The ink's not dry on the transfer; perhaps—" the land agent began, then beckoned to him.
Not at once did the sergeant respond. From the first the voice of the woman applicant had puzzled him. Now, with a flash as of fire, the truth dawned upon him. Here was the Gallegher girl who had stood behind him in that Medicine Line clash with the outlaws from Crow's Nest. Praise be to moonlight—she seemed to have not the faintest recollection of any previous meeting!
CHAPTER VI.
SEALED LIPS.
Sergeant Jack Childress found himself in an exceedingly difficult position, but one from which there seemed no honorable escape. The transfer papers to the section he had claimed were not yet returned from the official desk to which they had been taken for signature. He could not leave the land office without them, even had it been in his nature to run from trouble.
No great strain on the imagination was required to account for the land agent's unspoken summons. Probably he, too, had felt the pathos in the flame lady's voice. The sergeant was about to be asked to select another section, thus adding his own meed of tribute to the chivalry of the West.
Had it been a man who wished to contest his luck in the ranch lottery, Childress would have welcomed the issue. But a woman—so young a woman, with such dangerous hair, brought draft upon a sort of courage he seldom had been called upon to use.