"Guess I'm tired, dad," she said. "Had a hard time with a bogged-down cow to-day. Got her out, but she'll lose her calf."
"Hell's tinklers, Fireworks," the parent responded heartily, "don't let a cow and a possible calf silence the joy of your Circle G. I'll stake you to another if this bogged bossy don't get back on her feet. You're taking raising of cattle too seriously for one who shouldn't have anything on her mind but a young horse band of her own. Cheer up!"
"A horse band, yes!" she exclaimed. "And have everybody in the province say you'd staked me to it. This idea of raising cattle was my own, and because everybody knows you wouldn't be troubled with 'em. You might have given me a range that didn't have bogs and quicksand; horses know enough to keep out of trouble. I'm tired out—think I'll turn in."
And turn in she did, but with her window open and her ears wide in the hope—for fear that a probable rogue of the range on a great silver horse would ride into the enemy's camp and might need her protection. To herself, she admitted that she did not savey this attractive gent of the saddle who called himself Jack Childress.
CHAPTER XI.
DID HE DARE?
Childress had chosen to search the east side of the butte because he thought that the avenue of escape most likely to be followed by the heartless skinner, whether he be an Indian, as Flame seemed confident, or one of the white renegades who infested the timber region south of the international line. He wasted no time seeking a hoof-print trail, but kept Silver at speed, using his eyes for an intensive search ahead and to either side. There was no reward while he skimmed the prairie, but he pushed on regardless of the fact that he must have crossed the boundary. So incensed was he over the outrage and so intent on bringing the perpetrator back to the Gallegher girl that he was willing for once to write his own extradition ticket.
Almost had he given up hope when, through a rift in the scraggly forest, he saw a mounted figure ahead of him. Silver always had speed in reserve and now was called upon to expend it. They were gaining rapidly when chance or caution caused the quarry to turn in his saddle. Proof of guilt came whistling back in a rifle bullet so hastily fired that it did no harm. At the distance, the sergeant could not tell whether his assailant was red or white, but that no longer mattered. The silver horse was urged to greater speed and at no small risk, for the going had become rocky and was anything but a race track.
Noisily his horse rounded a bend in the trail and just in time to show the man ahead spring from his saddle and disappear into the thick cover of trail-side brush. Marking with his eye the spot of digression, Childress pushed on to it and pulled his own mount.
The growth he found there—a patch of vicious-looking devil's-clubs—would have convinced him that something was wrong even if no warning shot had been fired. No sane man, unless pressed for concealment, would submit himself to such a crown and robe of thorns. A branch slashed from the outermost stalk told the sergeant two more things: He had not mistaken the point of disappearance, and his quarry, so anxious to avoid inspection, was equipped either with an ax or a skinning knife, probably the latter, in view of that horror back on the ranch.