The girl stamped a small work-worn riding-boot in the dust. “I wish—I wish all the horses were dead! I wish we had to start all over again. I won’t go, so there! I’ll talk to him; he’ll say yes; you see——”
She left him and hurried towards the house, a slim figure of health and lightness in a short, dun-coloured riding-skirt and dilapidated soft felt hat.
Dode Sinclair watched her go.
“Nothing short of a miracle will make him say that,” he mused.
And he was right.
For the next week the grass flats below the Gilchrist ranch echoed with the thunder of galloping hoofs and the shrill whinnying of mare and foal. From every point of the compass horses flowed into the valley, with distended nostrils and untrimmed manes and tails streaming in the wind. Some had never yet seen a house, and at sight of the low line of pine-log stables and corrals turned tail and fled in terror, until overtaken and headed back by tireless riders on steaming mounts.
On the final day Joyce Gilchrist helped her father to mount the old piebald cayune that he loved, and rode down with him to inspect the herd. Dode Sinclair saw them coming and turned swiftly on his companion, a lean wire of a man in the unpretentious, workmanlike uniform of the North-West Mounted Police.
“Here they come,” he said in a voice harsh with apprehension. “If you don’t want to see an old man drop dead—an old man that’s done more for you fellers than any one on the range—take your men and horses into that stable.”
The policeman followed his glance and saw two black dots moving slowly down the trail.
“He’s got to know,” he said sternly.