On various counts in the past she had been impatient with Tom Fitzrapp, but these had been trivial. This afternoon she could not be cheerful, feeling a real disappointment—the disappointment that had forced her drastic action of "either go to your horse race in Strathconna and don't come back, or stay here and help capture these pesky bandits."
Still rankled in her mind the ranch manager's lack of courage in this latest brush with the rustlers. It would have required more than a bullet hole in her hat to stop the widow, had she found herself within gun range of the thieves. Had Tom come home with a broken shoulder, or even a clipped ear, her temper would have been more tolerant. As it was he was nearly out of the ranch romance, so far as she was concerned.
Just then the piebald took a hand—just as she was about to tell all the Fire Weed world what she thought of Mr. Thomas Fitzrapp. The horse stopped and pawed the ground with his right forefoot, as if the shoe hurt him, then turned around in inquiry.
"My goodness, hawse, I believe you've an inkling what I've been thinking about all this ride. What's the answer?"
Ethel Andress looked into the horse's eyes, but saw that they held no fear, although she knew that the eyes of a horse reflect more of alarm than do those of a dog when alarm there is. "What do you want me to look at?" she asked the beast companionably.
The answer was down in the cup of the hills—that most beautiful stallion she ever had seen. Her filly had told her something and something she was not ready to meet. But the decision was taken out of her hands. The silver beast had issued his call and there was no human woman powerful enough to keep the equine twain apart. Ethel knew when she had lost control of her mount and this time she had. Eventually the piebald would descend into the cup, carrying her to a second meeting with the mysterious man from the States, that is unless he had sold the pride and joy of his heart.
But for the moment she was able to postpone the descent. She realized that she had ridden across the range and to the edge of the low bluff upon which the railroad surveyors had put their brand and where any time now the wire fences of settlers might be found. Anything but a happy thought—settlers and wire fences—to a stock woman!
Looking down at the foot of the bluff, she made a startling discovery. Settlers must have come already! Else what was the meaning of that rough log shelter that was rising just below her stand on the bank of a small creek; of the canvas corral and the presence of a small band of horses grazing as peacefully as though they were at home there? Nothing of the sort had she noticed on her previous rides that Spring about the edge of the cup.
"Looks like the end of the range," she predicted dismally. And to think that the rescuer who had intrigued her, the handsome and strangely reserved American should lead the invasion so long predicted by her own uncle and echoed by the gentleman who had been her husband!
She looked again at the animal picketed near the half-complete cabin. Undoubtedly it was the silver stallion she had ridden in her final spurt to be first at the death of the coyote hunt. There was no mistaking the neck arching gracefully from oblique shoulders, the superb carriage of the head without breaking the line of curvature from withers to foretop; the round barrel that carried full back to the hips, and the full sweep of the high-carried tail. She looked with eyes trained to equine appraisal, and had not the slightest doubt of her recognition.