"I'll breeze over and see what it is those birds are about to hold a wake on," he suggested. "If you please, ride ahead and I'll overtake you when I've learned."
But Flame demurred. She would ride with him, her curiosity as well founded as his own. There was, it seemed, a cut-off trail in that direction which they could take that would bring them to the ranch-house as quickly as the track they were following.
Feeling that he still was under suspicion, Childress acquiesced; but a moment later had reason to regret that he had not insisted on his original proposition. The scene which they rode down upon was too horrible for freckled eyes to gaze upon, even though the owner was prairie-bred and hardened to the tragedies of the range. From his vantage of saddle seat upon a higher horse and his own greater height, he determined the situation before it came within her range of vision. Used as he was to horrors of the wild, the mere thought of what lay before them sickened him. Again he tried to spare her.
"You'd best not come any further, Miss Gallegher," he suggested, drawing rein. "I can attend to whatever is to be done."
"I'm no parlor pet," she declared. "I'm used to being in at the finish of anything that happens on this ranch. Ride on!"
This was one occasion when even a Russian realist well might spare the details. In the out-of-way bog hole lay a steer, its hide peeled from its back down to the mud-line, and still alive! The proof of the last was evident to both in the moving eyes and gritting teeth of the helpless, hopelessly tortured beast.
"Injin stuff," he muttered. "The fiends!"
"Some wandering Sioux from over the line wanting hides for moccasin soles," she amplified. "We caught a pair once red-handed and sent them up for killing live stock unlawfully. Now the reds try to escape by skinning the boggies alive. It was fear of something like this that brought me out to-day."
"One minute," said Childress with quick decision.
His revolver was out and a mercy-shot sounded. The steer was out of its misery.