The widow Andress arose from the table with sudden decision. "My mind's made up," she said. "I'm fed up on the bright lights of Strathconna. It's a bit early to quit you, Uncle Ivan, but I'm going back to the ranch Monday.... And another thing is settled," she went on after a pause for breath, "the next time there's a raid from the States, I'm going to be in the saddle."
CHAPTER VII.
LAST WARNING.
"If this ain't one hell of a post for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, may me next assignment be to grub all the worms in Alberta!"
Constable Mahaffy, beginning to be rotund and somewhat wrinkled in his permanently sun-reddened countenance, thought himself alone and was grumbling. This was a luxury in which he never would have indulged himself had he dreamed that Sergt. Jack, his O.C. for the day, month or year, was anywhere within hearing. But his ignorance was bliss, wherefore he continued to unburden his troubled soul to Poison, who feigned to listen and understand with all a hound's artistry.
"Why did they have to wish this on me?" Mahaffy asked the dog. "Me—me, Padraic Mahaffy, the fightingest policer of them great open spaces the writer-people talk about? Or do they call 'em open 'places'?" He growled at the dog and Poison, sympathetic canine, moaned in return.
"This here one sure is open enough," he went on with the hound's entire attention. "Not even a roof on the police house, and that a one-room shack with never a sign of a cell. And me playin' at bein' a carpenter. If I'd fallen for workin' with tools, I'd be over in them States makin' ten dollars a day. If I gets any more deals like this on', I'll buy out, be jabers, and I'll——"
From around the corner of the uncompleted cabin came Jack Childress. His appearance, unexpected, sent the one member of his detachment into complete silence.
The sergeant knew Padraic, one of a type of "Mounties" scattered through the Force, invaluable in their way, loyal, fearless in danger, but the sort of trooper who never would rise beyond lowly rank.
"So you're going to buy out, Paddy?" was his questioned greeting. "You're the last real man I'd have expected would leave a buddy cold."