She shook her head.
"The artist was inspired to decorate my forehead with a horseshoe surrounding a Lazy G. Neat idea, wasn't it?"
The girl flushed with indignation over the outrage which these men of the Gallegher outfit had contemplated. "I'm ashamed of them. You'd been branded as a horse thief for life, whether you are——"
"Whether guilty or not," he completed for her, playing his whimsical grin.
"I wasn't going to say that," she protested, but it was evident that a dwindling possibility of his guilt still lingered in her mind. "Come, what is the secret you want me to keep? What is the idea that you got from the interrupted branding?"
"We won't call it a secret," he said, "but a surprise for you—if the idea works out."
Flame did not answer at once. Her horse evidently needed all her attention, though the beast seemed to be behaving. He looked closely to see if she was pouting, but could identify no such expression. When she spoke again it was upon an unrelated subject and she kept the conversation thus until they made the home corrals.
There they found a puncher sitting straddle the top rail, braiding a horsehair rope—one that would serve as a saddle ornament on his trips to town, rather than as a practical implement of the range. He took charge of the captured cayuse and the retrieved hide, while Flame and the sergeant unsaddled their mounts and stabled them. Then they walked toward the larger of a cluster of log cabins, looking out upon a small lake which evidently had determined the location of the home ranch.
"Reckon we'll find dad out on the front porch," said the girl as they proceeded. "He's laid up with a bad leg, which isn't hurt as much as his pride. An outlaw caught him napping the other day and he hasn't been saddle-fit since. If he isn't exactly friendly, first off, blame it on his injured feelings. He's not as young as he once was, but he still wonders how that horse ever managed to throw him, and wondering, he grumbles and growls."
Childress had no difficulty in identifying the three buildings of the group—one as cook-shack; the second, a bunk-house for the men; the third and most pretentious, the home of the owner and of Flame. Together they rounded the corner of the latter structure, although they might have gone through to the front porch, the doors standing open for a spring airing. Possibly, he thought, she did not care for the responsibility of asking a suspect, even one she had saved from disfigurement, to enter the Gallegher "mansion" until the head of the house had passed upon him. But once around the corner, the young woman stopped short. Standing out front with reins dropped were two saddle horses.