"How did you ever come to invite Childress to visit the home ranch?" Fitzrapp's disturbed meditations finally forced the question.
"Why not? I asked him to the house up in Strathconna and there's been nothing proven against him since."
"But to open your door to one under such a cloud."
"You opened the door yourself, Fitzrapp, by challenging him to a gentleman's race," said the older man with an air of finality. "You needn't be around when he comes if you're so finical about your associates. I can show him your black and act as your representative in the matter of terms."
Fitzrapp's further grumblings were wisely mental and addressed to fate, which of late had been playing him sorry tricks. The one thing he had gained from the morning's effort was a renewed determination to press his suit for the hand of Ethel Andress with all the vigor he dared.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RUSTLED TO A FINISH.
Reclining on a steamer chair, Ethel Andress sat upon the porch of her log ranch house and gazed with an anxious expression down the wide valley toward the United States. From time to time she transferred her gaze to a scrap of paper, evidently torn from some memorandum book, which she held in her slender hand. The writing on it was hurried, but the chirography familiar. The intermittent repetition of the reading eventually attracted the attention of her uncle, who sat beside her in a rustic rocking-chair, pretending to be interested in the latest copy of an Ottawa newspaper that had reached Rafter A.
"Haven't you memorized Fitzrapp's message by this time?" he asked in a bantering tone. "You've read it through often enough since the Indian hiked home with it."
For answer, she read the note again, this time aloud: