"You're right on a couple of counts," she slashed back. "I'd not have bothered had it been only your beating me out by a nose at the railroad land-office. And there isn't a reason in the world why I should bother about you. But my father——"
"So, your father——"
"Can't abide rustlers or the suspicion of the same," she went on with more warmth than had heated her earlier speech. "He's more hot-headed than his daughter. Liable to shoot somebody and get himself nearly shot-up or in trouble with those pesky Mounted Police. I don't want him to need standing trial if a warning in time can eliminate trouble. I wish you'd mount your wonder horse and ride right out of the picture. If our outfit don't get you, the Rafter A will. They're riding herd on you, as close as we are. I've seen it myself. You haven't a chance to get away with anything less than murder, and you don't look exactly like a—a——"
He smiled at her that whimsical grin that had carried him in and out of so many tight holes. At last he was positively sure that she had not connected him with the Scarlet of that border night when she had disobeyed his gruff orders so flagrantly. It was "the man of it" that he couldn't look behind the woman mask and know the truth. As for himself he might have made anonymity's riffle—but how did he expect to get away unremembered with a horse like Silver and Poison, the dog? "Go on and say it—I don't look like a murderer," he urged. "You can't realize how you've disappointed me in having only a filial object for this visit. I'll think over the warning and ride to report after due consideration."
"At your own risk if that horse of yours ever puts hoof on the Gallegher Ranch!" she exclaimed.
If the prairie had not been dustless, he could not have seen her for "smoke."
CHAPTER VIII.
THREAT OF DOUBT.
The Ethel Andress who rode this spring afternoon over the rolling prairie west of Witch River and the Rafter A home ranch was decidedly a different-looking being from the one who had romped headlong over the Whitefoot reservation a few weeks earlier into John Childress's rescue clutch. Her mount was a gaited mustang, vividly piebald in black and white, but scrubby in comparison with Princess, the sorrel thoroughbred, who remained in the stables back of the Strathconna town house. The English saddle which had won the sergeant's condemnation, had been supplanted by a seat of the "cow" variety.
Her black hair, which on that other occasion had streamed outrageously, to-day was concealed under a big, face-shading hat. Instead of a riding habit of the fashionable cut known to Ottawa tailors, she wore short-wool chaps over khaki breeches that clung to her knees and ballooned at her surprisingly shapely hips. A shirt of blue flannel, decorated with pearl buttons, and a loosely knotted silk neckerchief completed her costume.