Childress chuckled. "Child, they wouldn't know what to do with that up at Ottawa. If your father wants to do a real favor to the Dominion, you might tell him, for the Mounted, to do his own tracing of rustled stock and to keep you at home where you doubtless belong."
Childress busied himself quickly with an examination of the bay horse's injured hoof.
"You're something of a brute, aren't you?" suggested Bernice.
He pretended not to hear. "Your horse," he said, "will carry you home if you don't crowd him. I'll camp trail-side, right here, so you needn't fear any change of mind on the part of your friends from over the border. Good night!"
The accent put upon this last decided the girl.
"Sergeant Brave but Impossible," she said, as she swung herself into the saddle, snapped a salute and was gone, for once in her flaming life obeying a man's orders.
When he had spread his slicker and persuaded the pup, Poison, to serve as pillow, Sergt. Jack Childress thanked the Lord that Canada grew such women. He drifted into slumber still wondering would this boy-girl of the range recognize him when clad in mufti. Important it was that she should not.
CHAPTER II.
RESCUE UNWELCOME.
The hammer of hoofs came faintly to the ear of a khaki-clad rider who forked a rangy gray stallion. A light touch of gauntleted hand upon the rein halted the animal. Steel-colored eyes swept the rolling prairie, still bronzed in its winter overcoat. But even with his unusual height full-raised in the stirrups, he failed to discover the disturbance of the prevailing quiet. The contour of this particular section of the Canadian West was secretive, and he concluded that the noise must come from beyond the rise which fronted him.