The range was a study in green and yellow this day that Sergeant Jack Childress set out, despite warning, to ride to the home of the Flame. The visit was part of the program he had mapped for himself—an intensive and personal study of all resident ranchers in the hope that something might "drop" to show collusion, if such existed, in the mystery of the "lifted" horse bands. Silver, the magnificent, snorted at part of the going, that which lay through the weed no animal is known to eat, even under the most pressing conditions.
Of this little green plant there was enough in evidence to give name to the range, but it served rather as a frame to rich growths of buffalo and other grasses. Had it been everywhere, the stockmen would have foraged somewhere else.
Other names has this parasite—snakeweed, turpentine weed and, to the scientist, Guttierrazia. It generally grows to a height of ten inches, and is a bushy plant with small yellow flowers, never red ones. The colorful name of fireweed comes from the fact that in the winter the plant dries and the flowers bear little white seeds filled with a resinous substance which makes it burn like tinder.
With eyes accustomed to the wonders of the sub-Arctic, the "bark" of sun dogs and the colorful sheen of Northern Lights, the "Mountie" paid little attention to this comparatively drab scenery. He did make note that he was near the undrawn line which, with occasional "monuments" of stone, marks the boundary between the Dominion and the States. It occurred to him as strange that the fireweed stopped on the side of the beaver and that the timber began on the leagues of the eagle. He had foraged into that American forest for logs with which to build the walls of the shack that Mahaffy resented as no post for even a sergeant-constable detachment of the Royal Mounted. And he realized the possibilities of concealment and cover that lay among the pines for the pestiferous stock-raiding gang. He intended to go there again and for more than timber, unless the rustlers earlier came to him. But he was not hurrying that or any other detail of this run-'em-down game to which he had been particularly assigned. Hurried raids on both sides of the border had in the past failed signally, netted no prisoners and stopped not a drop of the leakage from Canadian ranches. His plan of campaign was slow in its tempo, but he hoped it would be sure. That it might be dangerous to the official pair engaged in it was not worth consideration; assignments in the service which were not dangerous were hopelessly monotonous, as he well could testify.
On the farther side of a long roll of prairie, he rode into a marshy section unusual to the region. It was one that would have required the services of "bog riders," from March until the end of May when cows are weak, had the range been devoted to cattle. But the sergeant was sure that he was on the Gallegher ranch which, like the Rafter A, specialized in horses whose sense of danger is so acute as to make it unnecessary to guard them from quicksand danger. It was with surprise, therefore, that he sighted presently a lone puncher trying to drag a bogged-down cow to safety. With the idea of aiding the Samaritan of the Plains, he changed his course and put Silver into a gallop.
While still some distance away he recognized the bog-rider as Flame Gallegher, and on approach saw that she had her rope around a situation that was somewhat beyond her.
"Hold up a moment, Miss Gallegher," he called. "You'll break that cow's neck before you get her out that way."
Evidently she had been so intent upon her rescue work that she had not heard the approach, the stallion's hoofs padding softly upon the buffalo turf. She checked her cayuse and looked up, flushing vividly on recognition.
"You!" she cried. "You and the silver beast riding our range in broad daylight?"
"Why not?" he asked. "My visit is friendly enough. Merely a get-acquainted call upon your father."