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Title: The Lone Trail

Author: Luke Allan

Release date: April 13, 2022 [eBook #67823]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Herbert Jenkins Limited

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONE TRAIL ***

  THE
  LONE TRAIL


  BY
  LUKE ALLAN



  HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
  3 YORK STREET LONDON SW.1




  A
  HERBERT
  JENKINS'
  BOOK


  Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London




  CONTENTS

  I. THE MURDER AT THE T-INVERTED R
  II. MORTON STAMFORD: TENDERFOOT
  III. CORPORAL FAIRCLOTH ARRIVES
  IV. THE SHOTS FROM THE BUSHES
  V. DAKOTA RUNS AMOK
  VI. STAMFORD MAKES A DECISION
  VII. AT THE H-LAZY Z
  VIII. A LAMB AMONG THE LIONS
  IX. COCKNEY'S MYSTERIOUS RIDE
  X. STAMFORD'S SURPRISES COMMENCE
  XI. THE FOSSIL-HUNTERS
  XII. STAMFORD GOES FOSSIL-HUNTING
  XIII. THE CONSPIRACY
  XIV. RIDERS OF THE NIGHT
  XV. ONE MYSTERY LESS
  XVI. AN ADVENTURE IN THE MOONLIGHT
  XVII. THE HOWL OF STRANGE DOGS
  XVIII. A CATCH OF MORE THAN FISH
  XIX. TWO PAIRS
  XX. THE SECRET VALLEY
  XXI. THE RAFT IN THE CANYON
  XXII. PINK EYE AND THE ENGLISH SADDLE
  XXIII. PREPARATIONS TO FLIT
  XXIV. THE FIGHT IN THE RANCH-HOUSE
  XXV. COCKNEY'S STORY
  XXVI. THE CHASE AMONG THE CLIFFS
  XXVII. THE BATTLE OF THE CLIFFS




THE LONE TRAIL



CHAPTER I

THE MURDER AT THE T-INVERTED R

Inspector Barker, of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, raised his
frowning eyes from the weekly report he was scrawling, to watch
absent-mindedly the arrival of the Calgary express as it roared out
from the arches of the South Saskatchewan bridge and pulled up at the
station.

It was a morning ritual of the Inspector's.  Three hundred and
sixty-five days of the year, relatively at the same hour--if Rocky
Mountain slides, foothill floods, and prairie snowstorms
permitted--the same train broke in on the mid-forenoon dullness of
the "cow-town" of Medicine Hat; and the same pair of official eyes
followed it dully but with the determination of established
convention, clinging to it off and on during its twenty minutes' stop
for a fresh engine and supplies to carry it on its four days' run
eastward.

But on Mondays the transcontinental was favoured with a more
concentrated attention.  On that morning Inspector Barker prepared
his weekly report.  A pile of letters and staff reports scattered his
desk; a smaller pile, the morning's mail, was within reach of his
left hand.  His right clumsily clutched a fountain pen.  Thirty years
of strenuous Mounted Police duties, from Constable to Inspector,
during a period when Indians, rustlers, cattle-thieves, and the scum
of Europe and Eastern Canada, were held to a semblance of order only
by the stern hand of the "red-coats," had robbed his chirography of
any legibility it ever possessed.

His iron-grey hair was rumpled by frequent delvings of his left hand,
and the left needle of his waxed moustache was sadly out of line.
His tunic was open--he never removed it when on duty--more in
capitulation to mental than to physical discomfort, though Medicine
Hat can startle more records in July than in the depth of winter,
cold-blooded official reports to the contrary notwithstanding.  His
pipe lay cold beside the half-spilled tobacco pouch that always
adorned the corner of his blotting pad.

Over on the station platform before his window the crowd thinned.  A
man ran along the top of the cars with a hose, thrusting it into a
tiny trap-door, flicking up a slide in the nozzle, holding it a
moment till the tanks below filled, flicking the slide down again,
and then on to the next-trap door.  A butcher's boy with a heavy
basket on his arm scrambled down Main Street, crossed the track, and
galloped with shuffling feet along the platform to the diner.  The
conductor drew his watch, examined it critically, raised his hand,
and the fresh engine started noisily for its relief at the next
divisional point, Swift Current.

Any morning that the Inspector was on duty the arrival of the Calgary
express produced a similar scene in and out of the Police
barracks--except a few of the trimmings indicative of mental
irritation; any _Monday_ morning you would find trimmings and all.

Yet throughout the tangle of that summer's special Police task
Inspector Barker's mind reverted in his moments of leisure to the
passing of an innocent daily train.


He was lowering his eyes reluctantly to the completion of his weekly
irritation, when the desk telephone rang sharply, peremptorily.  He
jerked it to him.

"Yes, yes!"

"I'm sorry, sir, to have to report----"

"Drop the palaver, Faircloth!" snapped the Inspector.  "I take that
for granted."

"A murder was----"

"Hold on, hold on!  Hold the line a minute!"

The Inspector dropped the receiver, scrawled an illegible but
well-known "Barker, Inspector," at the bottom of the sheet before
him, jammed it into an envelope and sealed it.  At least he would
have a week of freedom for the task implied by Corporal Faircloth's
interrupted disclosure.

"Now!" he shouted into the telephone, one hand instinctively
buttoning his tunic to more official formality.

Faircloth restarted:

"Last night, shortly after midnight, at the T-Inverted R----"

"Bite it off, for Heaven's sake!" broke in the Inspector.  "Who, and
how, and by whom?"

"Billy Windover--shot--cattle-thieves!" the Corporal chipped off.

For just the fraction of a second Inspector Barker waited.  Then:

"Well?  Nothing more?"

The Division knew that tone.

"Two hours before we were informed," apologised the Corporal.
"Trouble on the telephone line.  Followed the trail--they got the
cattle as well--till lost it in fresh tracks of the round-ups."

The Inspector laughed shortly.

"Did you expect a paper-chase trail?"

The Corporal made no reply.  Usually it took him a sentence or two to
remember the Inspector's impatience, but for the particular interview
concerned he observed the training well when he did recall it.

"Why didn't you telephone right away?  Why did you give the trail up?
Oh, damn it, wait!"

For a moment or two the only sound in the barracks office was the
buzzing of the flits on the dirty window glass.  Thereafter he was
himself.

"Any strangers seen out there in the last couple of days?  Any
cowboys off their beats?"

"No time yet to enquire, sir."

"Get Aspee and Hughes out immediately.  Did the tracks lead toward
the Cypress Hills?"

"No, sir."

"Hm-m-m!"

"A bit north-east--far as we could follow."

The Inspector paused.  "What's your plan?"

"Going to scurry round--to look for the cattle."

It came with just a suggestion of defiance, as if the speaker were a
little ashamed of the sound of it but was prepared to defend it.  The
Inspector laughed.

"God bless you!" he mocked.  "How did you think of it?"

"The very cattle themselves," Faircloth persisted.  "It happens----"

The Inspector's laugh became less pleasant.  "And you think----"

"Pardon, sir; but it isn't quite as silly as it sounds.  I know this
particular herd almost as well as their own punchers--and I think I
know something of brands."

"Lad, your optimism is contagious--but this dairy-maid tracking is
such a new stunt in the Force.  When you come across Co-Bossie and
Spot give them my compliments and ask them to drop in some
afternoon----"

He sickened of his own banter.

"Get Aspee and Hughes out immediately," he rasped.  "Remain yourself
within reach of the phone for fifteen minutes.  I'll have a campaign
then....  Do you happen to recall that this is the third case of
cattle-stealing in your district in a month? ... By the way, know
anything about dogs--tracking dogs?  I expect a couple of rippers
from down East in a day or two.  I'll get them out to you.  See what
you've let the Force sink to!  Now hustle!"

He slammed the receiver into its place and sank back in his chair,
chin resting on breast.  A constable, receiving no reply to his
knock, opened the back door softly--and closed it again more softly.
He knew that attitude of his chief.




CHAPTER II

MORTON STAMFORD: TENDERFOOT

Corporal Faircloth hung up the telephone receiver and strolled to the
door, still bridling at the Inspector's ridicule.  For several
minutes he stood looking thoughtfully out on the familiar prairie
scene, where not another spot of human life or habitation was visible
as far as the dark line of hills to the south-east.  But an
incongruous telephone line, stretching a zigzag course of rough poles
away into the south-eastern distance, told of isolated ranch-houses
cuddled in far-away valleys.

A dark spot moved into view over a southern rise and crept along the
top.  Faircloth instinctively seized a pair of field-glasses from a
case hanging beside the door and focused them on the distant rider,
then, content, dropped them dreamily back.  Away off there lay Dead
Dogie Coulee, just now, he knew, full of cattle.

The telephone behind him rang, and he hastened to it, trying to
compose himself for the Inspector's orders.  But it was not Inspector
Barker.

"Hello, Faircloth!" called a laughing voice.  "How's the Cypress
Hills hermitage?"

"Oh, Stamford!"  Faircloth was thinking rapidly.  "What's the little
editor got on his mind now?  Make it brief: I'm expecting the
Inspector to call up."

"Why has who been murdered by whom?"

Faircloth laughed.  "The brevity of it deserves more than I can tell
you.  Who told you--anything?"

"The Inspector."

"Then why not get it all from him?"

Stamford chuckled into the telephone at the other end.

"I got the impression that my arrival at the barracks was
inopportune.  The extent of the particulars I got was a particular
request to betake myself elsewhere.  I betook.  I came to a friend."

"And the friend must fail you.  You're too hopeful for the West,
Stamford.  I'd tell you all I dare--you know that.  No, not a bit of
use pleading."

"Then," said Stamford, "permit me to tell you to your face that when
next I see you I'll----"

Faircloth cut him short with a laugh.  "No threats to the Police,
little man.  I'll tell you what I'll do.  On Thursday I'm coming to
town for the Dunmore Junction cattle shipping.  By the way, as a
tenderfoot you should see it.  Drive along out and hear the latest.
Bye-bye!  I'm busy."

* * * * *

Dunmore Junction, bald, bleak and barren, four miles from Medicine
Hat, consisted of nothing more than a railway station, a freight
shed, and a commodious freight yard, marking the connecting point of
the Crow's Nest branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway with the main
line.  It could not well be more and remain the principal shipping
station for the vast herds that roamed the prairies for eighty miles
from Medicine Hat.  The open spaces about the Junction were necessary
for the herding of the steers awaiting their call to the shipping
stockades.  Even the station staff lived in Medicine Hat, the shifts
changing with the arrival and passage of the trains to town.

Thither Morton Stamford, editor of the _Journal_, directed the only
trustworthy horse in town and a good-enough buggy.  As a new
experience he could not afford to miss the cattle shipping, though
the following day was publication day.

Morton Stamford was a tenderfoot.  What was more deplorable from his
point of view, he looked it.  He was small, fair-haired, mild and
inoffensive of manner, and from stiff hat to cloth-topped boots was
stamped as a fresh arrival from "the cent-belt," as Western Canada
termed the petty East where the five-cent piece was not the minimum
of exchange.

Two months ago he had dropped from the train at the town of the funny
name, attracted as much by the name as by the advertisement in _The
Toronto Globe_.  When he had succeeded in steeling himself to the
general atmosphere of disdain and suspicion, as well as to the rival
occupancy of his room at the hotel, he discovered sufficient
enthusiasm left to inspect the newspaper he had come to look over.
And, having decided that the introduction of modified Eastern methods
would be profitable, he had come to terms with the disgusted English
proprietor whose stubborn adherence to the best traditions of _The
Times_ and _The Telegraph_ "back home" had, at the end of his
resources, convinced him that Huddersfield or Heaven was his home,
not the riotous, undignified, unappreciative Canadian West.

Already Stamford had seen more of the real life of the West than many
an old-timer citizen of Medicine Hat.  Such portions of a spring
round-up as were within range of a buckboard, a bucking contest, and
limited visits to four ranches had almost made him an authority on
Stetsons, chaps, and cowboy slang.  He simply doted on cowboys,
without discrimination.  He loved the Mounted Police, too, who had
quickly discovered in him a soul above steers and bronchos; and at
his fingertips was a motley assortment of stories of doubtful and
certain unauthenticity that painted the future in rosy colours of
excited hope just round the corner.

He was small of stature, but imagination and a capacity for thrills
are not corporally circumscribed.

When he arrived, Dunmore Junction was no longer lonely.  Within two
miles of the station platform was more life than Medicine Hat had
seen since the buffalo drifted drearily to other hunting-grounds
before the civilisation of the rancher and the barbarism of gory
hunters.  Out there in the rolling folds of the prairie two thousand
head were looking for the last time on their limitless pastures, kept
under control by a cloud of cowboys, in herds as distinct as possible
according to ownership.  Scarcely a steer was visible, but at
intervals a wildly riding cowboy dashed from a coulee in pursuit of
protest against the extended restraint.

Back of the station, where his livery horse was tied with the care
and insecurity of a tenderfoot, a dozen bronchos dozed, a few tied to
the rail, most merely with reins thrown to the ground.  About
Stamford the platform was alive with lounging cowboys in every style
of cowboy dress; and among them the station-master and his staff, a
couple of brakesmen from the shunting-engine crew, and three or four
ranchers--scarcely distinguishable from their own punchers
to-day--were more alertly eyeing the preparations for the coming task.

For two days it would continue.  During that time several score of
cowboys would sleep and eat on the prairie, fed from their own
mess-wagons, with here and there a bed-wagon, though in the semi-arid
belt about Medicine Hat there was little danger of rain from June to
September.

It was a Red Deer River shipment.  The thin line of ranchers along
the Red Deer, sixty miles to the north of Medicine Hat, had combined,
but most of the herd belonged to "Cockney" Aikens, of the H-Lazy Z
ranch.

Stamford recognised Aikens immediately.  Only a blind man would fail
at least to see him.

Cockney Aikens, his nickname derived from an aggressive English
origin he did his best to flaunt, stood well over six feet without
his riding boots, his big frame wrapped in a wealth of muscle no
amount of careless indolence could conceal.  Handsome, graceful in
spite of his lazy movements, he seemed to have gone to brawn.  Laughs
came easily to his lips, and the noise of them made other sounds
pause to listen.  "Cockney" was to him a compliment; if anyone
implied otherwise he was careful--and wise--to conceal it.

"Hello, you little tenderfoot!" he called, as Stamford wound humbly
and unseen through the indifferent wall of Stetson hats, flannel
shirts, and leather or hairy chaps that blocked the end of the
platform.  "Where's that girl I advertised for?"

Stamford grinned.

"You're an optimist, Cockney.  Just as I get some innocent female
rounded up to clean your boots, grill a coyote steak, and wield a
branding iron between times, she finds out the semi-lunar location of
that unearthly ranch of yours.  I warned you that the _Journal_ might
find the missing link, a mother-in-law, or the street address of a
Cypress Hills wolf, but a 'general' for the Red Deer--impossible!"

"About all I see for it," growled Cockney, "is to kidnap one--unless
you open your eyes to the only possible use for a man of your
dimensions and come out to wash my dishes yourself.  I'll pay you as
much as you can hope to make from that mangy sheet of yours--a more
honourable living than robbing a struggling rancher of two shillings
for a hopeless ad."

Stamford solemnly produced a large leather purse and extracted a coin
from the cash department.

"Here, you overgrown sponge!  I figure that ad cost me a quarter in
setting, make-up, run, and paper--a shilling, if you can understand
no other values.  Here's the other quarter.  But bear in mind
this--if you take it I'll show you up.  I'll camp on your trail, rout
out your past crimes, and publish them to the last drop of blood.  I
feel sure you've committed burglary, murder, or arson somewhere in
your dark career; and, besides, you're an arrant bully."

Though Stamford knew as much--or as little--of Cockney Aikens' past
as the rest of Medicine Hat, and the big rancher's merry and
spendthrift ways belied suspicion of irritation at the loss of "two
shillings," the blatant exaggeration of the editor failed somehow to
carry off the banter lightly.  Cockney's face went grim, and a
strange silence fell along the platform.

Then Cockney himself smothered it by a physical retort.  Reaching
over, he seized Stamford's shoulders and lifted him by the coat at
arm's length until their faces were on a level.

"If I had this much added to my stature," blustered the editor, in
affected fury, vainly striking out his short arms at the face
opposite, "I'd punch you on the nose."

"If you were this size," grinned Aikens, "I mightn't take liberties.
Just the same," he added, with a ring of boyish disappointment in his
voice, "it would be one h--l of a fight.  You've got the white
matter, I guess, but I'm just spoiling for a rough-and-tumble.  I
haven't had what you might call exercise since--" he flushed through
his tan, "--oh, for a long time."

It so happened that everyone, including Cockney, was thinking of the
"exercise" he had once, largely at the expense of the police, town
and Mounted; and the memory of it to the one most concerned was not
sweet.

A long line of cattle cars rolled quietly down the track before the
corrals, a brakesman on the top keeping up a steady signalling to the
engine.  When the first two cars were opposite the gangways from the
two loading stockades, his hand shot out and the train came to a
violent halt.  Almost instantly the gates at the bottom of the
gangways opened and two lines of steers from the crowded,
white-fenced pens rushed up the slope to the open doors of the cars.

The lounging cowboys sprang to life.  Throwing themselves in excited
abandon on their bronchos behind the station, they tore across the
tracks and disappeared in the folds of the prairie, shouting,
cracking their quirts, laughing taunts at each other, to reappear a
few minutes later, little less noisy, behind a small herd of
galloping cattle headed for the emptying outer stockades.

It was a scene of blazing life and colour, clamorous, swift,
kaleidoscopic.  Stamford's eyes blazed.  The East seemed such a dull
spot in his past.  He thought with a cynical smile of how unfitted he
was, by nature and acquirement, for a life so deliciously thrilling.

Cockney struck his hands together explosively.

"There's good old beef for good old England, my boy!"

"If you don't mind, Cockney," Stamford grimaced, "would you give me
warning when you have those thunder-claps in mind?  You jar me out of
focus, mentally and optically....  I wish we had some of that 'good
old beef' down at my hotel.  I often wonder where the West gets the
beef it eats."

"Get a herd of your own, man.  I didn't know as much about ranching
when I started as you do.  There's a million miles of grazing land
out about the Red Deer yet."

Stamford made a wry smile.  He drew out the large purse and counted
three dollar bills and sixty cents in silver.

"Would that start me?" he asked.  "Guess I'd have to steal the herd."

"Lots have done that before you," said Cockney, staring over the
prairie.

A loose-limbed cowboy, whose chaps seemed to be about to slip over
his hips, had drifted over from the stockades as they talked.

"Yes," he exclaimed, slapping Cockney on the back, "good old beef for
England, and good old gold for you!"

The jeer in the tone might have passed, Stamford felt sure, but the
slap on the back was another matter.  He understood Englishmen rather
well, Aikens in particular, and he knew that even the King would
require a winning smile to gild such familiarity.

Aikens stiffened.

"Once or twice, Dakota," he warned quietly.  "I've _looked_ what I
thought of this particular form of playfulness; now I've _told_ you.
The natural progression is the laying on of hands--and that'll come
next."  He turned his back.

Dakota Fraley, foreman of the H-Lazy Z and part owner, tried to laugh
it away, but he did not move.

Stamford was apparently absorbed in the procession of steers up the
gangways.

"Aren't they a bit thin, Cockney?  A month or two more on the ranges
would have rounded them out a bit, eh?"

"There are thousands more out there getting the extra month or two,"
returned Cockney, with an expansive gesture.

Dakota laughed.

"Somebody musta told him," he said to Stamford.  "He don't see the
herds twice a year."

"Why should I?" demanded Aikens lightly.  "You know all about them.
Why do you think I gave you a share in the H-Lazy Z?"

Stamford was unnecessarily embarrassed at the scene.  He knew about
both men what was generally known.  Cockney Aikens was a
good-natured, irresponsible fellow, completely ignorant of ranching
and as little concerned to learn, quick of temper as of smile, with
an unfortunate passion for gambling and a reckless thirst that was
sullying his reputation.  Dakota Fraley was a cowboy, by instincts
and training, with the untypical addition of a reputation as a "bad
actor."  Though there was nothing more definitely disreputable known
about him than unconcealed disregard for law and order, a few
instances of cynical brutality made even ranchers sometimes forget
what a profitable enterprise he had made of the H-Lazy Z.

The association of the two men was inexplicable, except for the fact
that Aikens, arriving four years earlier from none knew where, with
no qualifications for a rancher but the money to start a herd, was
just the sort of tenderfoot to swallow Dakota holus-bolus as part of
the operation--and then to sit back with the conviction that he had
done his share.

A few, including the Mounted Police, knew something of Dakota's past,
but in a country where a man's present is all that matters, the story
that might have been told died from lack of interest.  In a general
way it was common knowledge that Dakota had drifted over from the
States, a born cow-puncher, broncho-buster, and prairie-man; and at
his heels had come a motley assortment of kindred spirits whom Dakota
had rounded up as his outfit at the H-Lazy Z.  No one could say that
the results in cold cash had not justified him.

Dakota stood flipping his quirt against his chaps, a slight frown on
his forehead but a forced smirk on his lips.

"It _is_ early," he explained to Stamford, "but the prices is good
now--good enough to pay to ship.  They'll come down, shore thing--and
it saves in outfit, thinning out the herds."

"If that gang of toughs we keep about the H-Lazy Z aren't enough to
handle twice our herds," observed Cockney, "then I know nothing about
ranching."

"You've shore said it right that time, boss," jeered Dakota.  "You
don't."

"We've the biggest outfit on the Red Deer."

Dakota faced him squarely with angry eyes.

"Say, who's running that end of the H-Lazy Z?"

Cockney's head turned slowly, and Dakota decided to modify tone and
language.

"Ain't I getting result?  That's all that counts, ain't it?"

All Stamford's experience warned him that they would be at each
other's throats in a moment, but his Western life had been too
limited to allow for the greater licence where emotions crowd so
close to the surface.

He was relieved when both men turned toward the dusty black trail
down the grade to Medicine Hat, from which came the soft pad of a
cantering horse.

A stodgy little broncho was loping easily along, a woman seated
astride its broad back.  At such a distance Stamford's only
impression was of a perfect equestrienne, mingled with some surprise
that a woman should appear in such a scene.  Then he became aware of
her perfect physique, an overflowing vitality, and an intense
pleasure in the very act of riding.  It attracted him strangely, for
modesty of stature had all his life imposed an undue modesty of
manner in his relationship with the other sex.  The uncouth shouts of
the cowboys, the rumbling trample of the cattle up the gangways and
in the sand-strewn cars, the threatened explosion of the past minute,
sank into the background of his mind as he watched.

The longer the silence in his little group, the more the approaching
woman looked to him like a studio arrangement that must utterly fail,
in the incongruity of its essential parts, to melt into a natural
picture.  It was impossible to fit her into that background of
untilled hills, dead grass, barren waste, though there could never be
awkwardness where she was concerned.

Cockney Aikens raised his head with a jerk and stared, frowning in a
puzzled way.

Dakota merely glanced at the supple rider and transferred his eyes to
Cockney's lace.

"Here's your Yankee, Mr. Aikens," he grinned, and lounged across the
tracks to the loading pens, laughing as he went.

The look on Cockney's face warned Stamford to silence, but he trotted
to the end of the platform and offered his hand to assist the woman
to alight.  With a quick flick of her body she stood beside him,
rewarding him with a gentle smile as she rearranged her skirts.

"Thank you.  Matana will stand by herself."

Her eyes had scarcely paused on Stamford before passing on to the big
rancher.  Aikens had not moved.  With lowered head he was staring at
her.  She stooped in some confusion and brushed her skirt to smoother
lines about her limbs.  Then her head went up, and with a nervous
laugh she moved swiftly along the platform.

"Mary, what are you doing here?"

"I got tired waiting out there, Jim," she pouted.  "It's so lonesome."

Her voice was appealing, yet charged with a nervous independence.
Cockney's reply was to stare down on her for a few moments, and turn
his back without another word and follow Dakota to the loading cars.

Never had Stamford longed so intensely for the physique to squeeze an
apology from a bully's throat, but the greater desire to hide from
the hurt wife what he was thinking made him turn to her with a smile.

"These must be trying days to the shippers--ah--Mrs. Aikens, isn't
it?  I suppose you've had breakfast?  I have, I believe, a bit of
chewing gum in my pocket."

"I stopped in town for breakfast," she replied dully, her eyes on the
big man climbing lazily to the roof of one of the cars before the
gangways.  "When I need more I'll go out to our mess-wagon.  It'll be
out there somewhere with the cattle."

"They've just commenced loading," Stamford went on eagerly.  "This is
my first experience.  You see, I'm the sample tenderfoot in this
district.  I believe," he added, with a whimsical smile, "I've been
that ever since I came."

Her eyes were on him now, and Stamford saw a gleaming smile, behind
which lay an ever-gnawing worry.

"You seem to enjoy the distinction so well as to be jealous already
of your successor," she said.

"It has its advantages, especially to an editor.  It gives me access
to the sources of news----"

"Thrusts them at you, in fact," she smiled.

"I trust my news sense culls out the wheat."

"I read the _Journal_," she told him slyly.

"That's the first encouragement I've had since my arrival.  Might I
give such commendation a fitting place on the front page?"

"Since your arrival," she returned lightly, "the _Journal_ has surely
added a new zest to local existence."

He extracted an enormous notebook from a capacious pocket.

"I must make a note of that," he said.  "My friends will probably be
seeking an epitaph for me shortly.  You see, this week I start to
collect two months' bills.  If I survive that I've announced my
intention of learning to ride--rather _starting_ to learn.  If an
indulgent Providence still leaves me on earth, there remains the fare
at the Provincial Hotel to seal my fate.  Any one of the three, I'm
told, is enough to make a man wonder what his friends may select for
his tombstone."

Her laugh tinkled spontaneously, so that Cockney rolled over on his
elbow to look at her, and a couple of cowboys peeped shyly round the
end of the cars and ducked to cover when they realised they were seen.

"A course in ranch-life is what you need, Mr. Stamford.  It's only a
case of nerves.  At the H-Lazy Z, for instance, we have air that
can't be beaten, food that will certainly sustain--even salads now
and then--and there are a million square miles of soft grass to fall
on.  Let the collecting out to someone who totes a gun."

"The suggestion is so good," he replied solemnly, "that I take it as
an invitation.  When the worst threatens, I'll remember the H-Lazy
Z--and its--ah--charming mistress."

"Right-o!" she laughed.

"That's your husband speaking," he said.  "I suppose living with even
an Englishman is contagious."

Her face suddenly went wistful.

"Yes," she agreed absent-mindedly.

Stamford thought he had never before heard so much in a single
innocent word.




CHAPTER III

CORPORAL FAIRCLOTH ARRIVES

As the loading fell to a routine it quickened its pace.  Every seven
or eight minutes the two loaded cars were replaced by empty ones
whose floors had already been strewn with sand.  When the outer yards
emptied their live freight into the loading pens, the cowboys whose
duty it was galloped off into the low hills for more.  Sometimes
Dakota Fraley rode with them, but for the most part he busied himself
hastening the loading operations.

Brand-Inspector West, small, wiry-haired, nervous, with worry in his
eyes and a semi-apologetic manner he tried in vain to conceal, had
much to struggle against in the performance of his duty.  Wherever he
got he was in the way, principally Dakota's.  From the edge of the
gangways near the car doors Dakota brushed him unceremoniously; on
the stockade fence near the gangways he was a nuisance to the
prodders.  Here and there he darted, peering through the bars,
reaching over the railing of the gangways, snatching hasty glances at
the jumbled herds in the outer pens, as inefficient as he was
conscientious.

Cockney Aikens lounged on the roof of the loading cars, where he
overlooked everything, moving lazily from car to car as they filled
and were shunted back.  He saw the bewildered efforts of the
brand-inspector, and his eyes followed Dakota from place to place,
altering their focus sometimes to the pens and gangways below him.
As the largest shipper, his foreman, Dakota Fraley, had charge of the
operations, and all but a couple of the cowboys about the yards were
from the H-Lazy Z outfit.

Mrs. Aikens and Stamford crossed the tracks and stationed themselves
near the gangways.

Many of the cattle were of Texan breed, their long white horns
swaying awkwardly up the gangways to catch now and then in car door
or fence, momentarily holding up the line.  The faster the loading
moved, the more disturbing these breaks in the swing of the work.  A
tremendous steer, its horns projecting over the gangway railing,
lumbered up the slope and paused at the car door, doubting the width
of the opening.  At a vicious prod from Dakota it dashed forward,
jammed the point of one horn in the side of the car, withdrew it, and
in a panic drove the other horn in the other side.

The line behind, a solid mass, jammed tighter and tighter.  Two
cowboys leaped to Dakota's assistance, but the steer only closed its
eyes to their blows and stood braced.

Cockney, looking down at first with some amusement, saw what was
happening back in the gangway and heaved himself upright.  Dropping
to the side of the gangway, he tossed Dakota and another cowboy to
the ground and reached a hand across to either horn.  Without
apparent effort he forced the steer's head sideways so that its horns
ran diagonally with the opening, and, swinging a leg over the
railing, kicked the brute forward into the car.

Catching Stamford's admiring gaze he paused only long enough to
thrust an unlit cigarette between his lips, before sidling down the
outside of the railing to the stockade.  There the brand-inspector
had stubbornly installed himself, refusing to make way for the
prodders and protesting at the speed of the loading.  Cockney,
holding to the railing with one hand, reached across the backs of the
cattle and lifted the little man clear over the gangway, depositing
him laughingly on the ground.

"Such a little fellow," he bantered, "yet so much in the way!"

He winked at Stamford and his wife.

West exploded in a typical volley of Western oaths.  Cockney waved a
finger at him.

"Oh, fie, West!  And before ladies!  Mary, that's not part of his
duties.  It's only an accomplishment that has gained him more
notoriety than his official capacity.  He wants to give the
impression of guarding the Great West from cattle-thieving and
rustling."  He pointed to West's flaming face.  "That's not anger.
West never gets mad.  It's shame at losing control before ladies."

West's hat came off with a sweeping bow to Mrs. Aikens.

"We don't expect ladies at these little affairs," he apologised.  "At
the same time"--turning to Cockney--"I must insist on being permitted
to do my duty--else I'll order the loading to stop."

Dakota came blustering under the gangway.

"West's got his job to do, Mr. Aikens.  Let him alone."

Cockney lolled against the railing, looking with twisted lips down
into Dakota's sullen eyes.

"Shall I lift him up where he can see everything, Dakota, and protect
him from your bullying?"

Something about it made Dakota's eyes drop.

"Don't mind him, West," soothed the foreman.  "You come over here and
stand on the fence.  As long as you don't get in the way about the
gangways you're all right."

Stamford failed to see how any one on the fence, except at the
gangways, could see more of the cattle than their backs.

Cockney Aikens watched Dakota thoughtfully as the latter pulled
himself to the other gangway.  Then he climbed to his old perch on
the roof and lay on his elbow without lighting his cigarette.  And
Mary Aikens watched her husband.

"Poor West!" sympathised Stamford.  "He leads a dog's life.  I can
feel for small men."

He saw she was not listening.  "I was saying----"

"I'm afraid I wasn't listening, Mr. Stamford," she said
apologetically.  "What were you saying?"

"I don't believe I remember.  I never say much worth while."

"It wasn't--that," she explained uncomfortably.

Stamford yielded to her embarrassment.  "West and your husband should
change jobs."

A gust of laughter broke from her lips.  It startled him, but he went
on:

"I don't think Dakota Fraley would stop Cockney Aikens----"

"Do you think Dakota was doing it purposely?"

Stamford stared.  "I didn't think of that.  Perhaps----  But why
should he----"

"Of course," she laughed, "why should he?"

"Your husband would make an admirable brand-inspector, and West's
size would be no handicap to a rancher."

"Jim isn't a rancher; he wasn't born with the first qualification....
I don't believe that's to his discredit, do you?"

She was challenging him with her eyes, facing him squarely.

"Cockney Aikens possesses the greatest qualification of all," he
replied, "--the capacity for picking the right man to boss the
job--and the right woman to make such a job on the Red Deer
endurable."

"That is very eastern of you, Mr. Stamford," she smiled.  "I have
known the social life that sort of thing springs from."  Her face
went dreamy.  "The right man, you say--yes--perhaps he has
picked--the right man.  I suppose--that is a qualification."

Stamford felt constrained once more to change the subject.

From the corner of his eye he saw Cockney suddenly raise himself and
look away to the hills.  Stamford turned in the same direction.

A Mounted Policeman was seated motionless on his horse on the crest
of a rise, looking down on the station yard.  For only a moment
Cockney looked, then slid from the roof to the gangway railing, a
frown on his handsome face.  At the same instant Dakota dropped from
the fence surrounding the stockade and whispered to a companion, and
the two sauntered away round the corner of the cattle pens.

A moment later Cockney sauntered carelessly after them and peered
away into the Saskatoonberry and bulberry bushes that filled a coulee
extending from close to the tracks.  In long strides he retraced his
steps, crossed the tracks to his horse behind the station, and loped
off over the prairie toward the herd-filled coulees.




CHAPTER IV

THE SHOTS FROM THE BUSHES

Presently the policeman gathered up his reins and came on, casting
his eyes about him.  While still some distance away, Stamford
recognised Corporal Faircloth, his favourite in the local Force.

Their friendship was closer than the ordinary, especially in the
West.  A couple of months earlier, within a week of Stamford's
arrival, the tenderfoot had yielded to the tug of the clear prairie
evening and launched himself thoughtlessly on the great stretches of
soft moonlight that looked so brilliant from the town, but altered
every guide where landmarks were few.  So effectively did he tear
himself from the rude haunts of men that when he thought of bed he
had not the least idea in which direction to seek it.  It was an
early lesson in the supreme helplessness of being lost on the prairie.

A dim light in the eastern sky was tinging the moonlight when a
Mounted Policeman came on him seated hopelessly beside the Trail.
Corporal Faircloth was riding in through the night from Medicine
Lodge.  From that meeting had sprung a friendship that helped to fill
a want that now and then oppressed the editor in the unconventional
and thoughtless friendships of the prairie.  What a bearing the new
companionship would have on his future never entered his head.

Now the Corporal rode slowly along the side of the stockades, staring
into the four filled yards, and jogged across the track to leave his
horse with the others.  Returning on foot, he stopped a moment to
greet the two spectators before mounting the gangways.

For a few minutes he stood on the fence, moving from gangway to
gangway, making way for the cowboys in their work, but always keeping
the operations under his eye.  The brand-inspector studied him with
covert envy, as the Corporal climbed along the outside of a gangway
and placed himself close to one of the car doors.  At intervals he
strained forward to examine a passing steer, and for an obviously
unsatisfied two minutes he lay at length on the roof, head extended
over the gangway.

All the time Mary Aikens' eyes followed him as they had her husband a
few minutes before.

Suddenly he dropped to the ground and hurried to the stockade fence.
For what seemed hours to Stamford's rioting imagination he peered
through the heavy rails, restrained excitement in every move.  A
couple of cowboys moved away, conversing in whispers.

With equally sudden purpose the Policeman climbed the fence, at the
same time shouting to West, who, having found a post from which he
had not been ousted for five minutes, obeyed reluctantly.

At that moment two rifle shots snapped from the shrub-filled coulee.

Corporal Faircloth straightened up on the fence, and dropped limply
outside the pens.

Instantly every cowboy sank to cover, reaching for his gun.  Only
little Brand-Inspector West scorned danger.  He leaped across to the
fallen Policeman and raised his head.

The thing had happened so suddenly that Stamford was too bewildered
to move, until the woman at his side dashed beneath the gangways to
West's assistance.  Stamford turned and ran across the tracks to the
station telephone.

As he reached the platform a third shot cut the silence that had
fallen about the stockades.  Stamford could see the cowboys lying
close to the pens glance anxiously about for trace of the third
mysterious bullet, and then questioningly to each other.  A pair of
leather-chapped fellows squirmed round the corner, revolvers poised,
and, crouching low, rushed the shrubbery from which the shots had
come.

By the time Stamford was back at the tragic group Corporal
Faircloth's eyes were opening--such hopeless eyes.  He smiled up into
the woman's face and seemed suddenly to remember what had happened.

"Tell the Inspector--stop----"

A gush of blood stilled his tongue for ever.

Stamford, staring incredulously into the face of his dead friend,
grated his teeth, tears dropping down his cheeks.

"By God!" he hissed.  "By God!" he repeated, gripping his fists.  It
was as if he were taking an oath of vengeance.

Mary Aikens turned her wet eyes up to his with a shudder and burst
into violent sobbing.

A dozen cowboys, galloping up with the next herd for the stockades,
dashed into the coulee, Dakota Fraley most eager of all.  Stamford
bent to the body of his murdered friend, and they carried him
mournfully over the tracks to the station platform.

As they laid him down on the rough planks, his poor blind eyes turned
to the sky he had worked under in every season with the glorious
conscientiousness of the Mounted Police, a silent group of cowboys,
hats in hand, crept across the tracks, bearing another body.

Back in the coulee they had come on him, one of themselves, Kid
Loveridge, of the H-Lazy Z outfit, shot through the neck.  Only one
rifle had they found--for they carried rifles only on special work on
the prairie--and it lay beside Kid's limp hand, an empty cartridge
near.

Round the corner of the stockades Dakota Fraley dashed, pulling up as
the second procession laid its burden beside the dead body of the
Corporal.  He leaned over and looked into the bloodless face of his
comrade, seemingly dazed.  Then he bit his lip and shifted his head,
struggling to face down the grief and horror of it with the grimness
fostered in the life he knew best.

"Who did it?" he demanded fiercely.  "Who murdered the Kid?"

His revolver was clenched in his hand, pointing skyward.  They only
looked at him sadly and sympathetically.

"The Kid!" he whimpered, his lip trembling.

Brand-Inspector West spoke:

"Back in that coulee two rifle shots and one pistol shot.  We've
found only one empty rifle cartridge, a Winchester."

That was the problem that faced the Police when they
arrived--Sergeant Prior and Constable Woolsey--riding like mad up the
steep trail from Medicine Hat.  Not five minutes behind them came
Inspector Barker on a light engine, having commandeered it in the
station yards as a quicker means of transportation, and as an
ambulance for the Corporal, whose death Stamford had not telephoned.

For hours the Policemen ranged the hills, searching, searching.  If
they found any clue they said nothing of it, but the Inspector's face
was ominously grave.

They told their stories, but in the crowding tragedy of it much was
omitted, much of no consequence included.  Dakota Fraley swore before
them that he himself would find the murderer of Kid Loveridge, if the
Police failed.

"The Kid and I," he burst out, "went along together there just before
the shooting to where we'd left our horses, and there wasn't a
blessed sign of anyone.  The Kid struck back for our own bunch, and I
climbed the rise to join the drivers.  Nobody out there seemed to
hear the shots, what with the shouting and the rush of the cattle....
And--and there's the Kid!"  His face twisted, ana he struggled to
hide it with a curse.

Inspector Barker listened without a word.

"Why was Loveridge carrying a rifle?"

"I didn't know he was.  I don't believe it's his."

"That's easily proved," said the Inspector.  Dakota said nothing more.

Cockney Aikens had ridden in with the Police from their search.  He
reported that Kid Loveridge had never reached the H-Lazy Z outfit, of
course; but his replies were sullen and brief, and Inspector Barker
did not press him.  At the end Cockney addressed his wife.

"This is less than ever a place for a woman.  Go in to town now.
I'll be spending the night at the Provincial."

She flinched before the tone of command.

"I'd rather stay here, Jim.  I'm not tired.  I can get enough to eat
at the mess-wagon till you're ready to come with me."

"Best go to town, Mrs. Aikens," Dakota broke in.  "We haven't much to
spare out there.  The boys'll be hungry."

She frowned slightly on him, surprised as much as annoyed.  Cockney,
too, was watching the foreman.

"Yes, Mary," he said.  "I'll be in during the afternoon."

"You shore might as well go too, boss," began Dakota.  "There ain't
nothing you'd be----"

"Mind your own damn business, Dakota!" Cockney exploded furiously.

Stamford, riding back the down trail to Medicine Hat, was so wrapped
in the mystery of the double murder that he forgot next day was
publication day.  That night his sleep was broken in the cramped
little bedroom in the Provincial.  When the last form was on the
press and everything ready for the newsboys and the mailing, he hired
again the unimpeachable horse and good enough buggy and drove out to
Dunmore Junction.

The last cars were facing the gangways.  A cloud of cowboys was
clustered about the stockades, wearily watching the thinning lines
move up the gangways, their desultory conversation constantly
reverting to the tragedies of the previous day.  A thousand times
they had reviewed and discussed every phase of it, but the excitement
still clung.

Dakota Fraley, raw of temper and untidier than ever, was making
notes.  With a sigh of relief he snapped the notebook shut and looked
out over the prairie.  From the low hills was streaming down a line
of rocking wagons, their drivers lashing the horses and shouting
defiance at each other.

The ranchers from the Red Deer were grouped at one gangway comparing
notes--all except Cockney Aikens, who was lolling on a station bench,
smoking hard, speaking to no one.  He seemed to have aged during the
night; in his eyes was a gaunt, wild look, and his clothes were
seedy.  Stamford read the record of one man's night in town.

The wagons rattled up.  Dakota singled one out, stopped it with a
peremptory wave, and engaged the driver in low conversation.
Stamford moved carelessly nearer.  The driver was expostulating,
pleading--Dakota obdurate.

"You'll take the north trail right here, see?" he jerked, pointing to
where a dim break in the dead grass announced the direct trail to the
Red Deer, avoiding the town.

"An' ain't I to have no time in town?" whined the driver.  "It ain't
my fault that----"  His voice sank away.

"You've had two nights of it already.  Now git that wagon away as
fast as you know how."

The last picture in Stamford's mind of the Red Deer shipping was a
stream of swaying wagons rattling down the deep trail to town to the
cheers and whip-cracking of their drivers.  And off to the north one
lone wagon rolled silently and slowly northward over the dead grass
toward the lonely stretches of the Red Deer.  And Stamford wondered.




CHAPTER V

DAKOTA RUNS AMOK

Cattle shipping, as any other event that collected cowboys, was a
time of some anxiety in Medicine Hat.  Stores closed early, citizens
with any claim to being old-timers--and that was the leading ambition
locally--retired unobtrusively to their homes, and even the bars,
which stood to profit materially from the visit of lively young
bloods whose veins had been swelling for months without outlet--or
inlet--contemplated the occasion with misgiving amounting almost to
trepidation.

The daily life of the West in those days, especially the part of it
that dealt with law enforcement, was sufficient training in itself to
arouse something like indifference to ordinary perils.  Still,
everything considered, it was well not to be associated with the
maintenance of peace when broad-brimmed sombreros and sheepskin,
angora, or leather chaps careered down Main or Toronto Streets on
bronchos that seemed as appreciative of the excitement as their
riders themselves.

At such time it was no matter of regret among the Mounted Police that
the policing of incorporated towns in the Canadian West was in an
equivocal position to which they bowed.  According to the strict
interpretation of the law, the jurisdiction of the Mounted Police was
without geographical limits within the prairie provinces; but no town
policeman would admit that such a reading was not blind prejudice.
Thus it came to pass, to avoid endless squabbling and overlapping,
that the red-coats confined their attention to the great stretches
where man was seldom seen breaking the law--until such time as the
town police, in shamefaced recognition of their physical limitations,
called in their better known brethren.

When the cowboys ran amok in town, he was a tenderfoot red-coat who
envied the town policeman his monopoly.

There is little inherently bad about the cowboy.  Normally he is
fairer, more gallant and honest than the ruck of Westerners who have
gone West with their eyes blinded by dollars.  Often a shocking
cold-bloodedness marks his revenge or anger, but it is usually frank
and fair, according to his lights, a development of the hard life he
lives.

Out there on the prairie no house is locked.  There, where the
nearest neighbour may be hours of hard riding distant, no decent
woman need be afraid.

But lope the same gallant, honest cowboys into town in a group of a
fine evening, and it is best to be where they aren't.  To them town
is the visible epitome of all they contemn: luxury, inexperience,
flaccidity, nervousness; the source of that impending peril, the
farmer.  Town has its uses, the admissible ones being the amusement
and accommodation of visiting ranchers and their outfits.

And one of the readiest amusements, and usually the cheapest, is
impressing the townsman.

Dakota Fraley and his gang were peculiarly trained to enjoy this form
of amusement.  Over in Montana, where they came from, the law was
less confining--a mere matter of solitary sheriffs, probably
recruited from among themselves after the excitement of punching
palled.  This side of the border it was more relentless, depending
upon straight-shooting, fearless, hardriding, uniformed officials who
scorned the assistance of posses and were only the human
representatives of an overwhelming force that could not be stayed by
a thousand rifles or reputations.  To have a chance to break loose in
such a tight-laced country was like rolling out a pent-up oath when
the parson's back is turned.

Dakota and his mates hated Canada, as a burglar hates an electric
alarm, because a flesh-and-blood gunman hadn't a chance.  They hated
the townsman especially because of his insulting confidence in the
protection of the law.

Most of all they hated the Mounted Police.

When the last steer had lumbered up the gangway and been locked in
the last car, Dakota and his companions lingered on the trail to
town.  They knew their unpopularity with the other outfits and
resented it.  The Mounted Police knew, in the course of their
intimate investigations into the past of everyone who ever came West,
that this feeling was no novelty to Dakota's comrades.  They were
almost as unpopular in their own country.  Indeed, under adequate
pressure Inspector Barker might have told an interesting story of the
reason for Dakota's change of climate.

On South Railway Street the H-Lazy Z outfit pulled up.  Here were the
most bars, and since these were crowded they split into small groups
and divided their patronage.  The Royal, the Commercial, the
European, the Cosmopolitan were treated impartially, for they all
served equally potent liquid.  Disregardful of toes and elbows and
prior rights, they dived into the crowds and for fifteen minutes kept
the perspiring dope-slingers busy on recklessly juggled concoctions.

From Inspector Barker's window across the tracks four Mounted
Policemen sighed; they read the story of the night ahead, without
being within sight of the labels on the bottles.

After that a breathing space of ominous quiet, for the cowboys were
gorgeously hungry after two days of mess-wagon fare.

Every hotel in town was prepared, though they had nothing to fear but
hunger.  Not one of the cowboys was likely to impose in the
dining-room.  They might, within the last two minutes, have been
shooting up the town, filling themselves on rot-gut, cursing each
other and everything else with fraternal abandon or fighting with the
ruthlessness of fiends.  In the dining-room they became more formal
than the freshest "remittance-man" from "back home."  They might
hanker to seize their soup plates and gulp the contents into
impatient throats, but they genteelly spooned it up, tilting it
daintily to the last drop.  They might tackle poached eggs with a
knife, but they contemplated their comparative failure with gravity
and patience.  They never smiled or spoke above a whisper; and before
they appeared at the table each and every one had stood in line in
the hotel lavatory for a turn at the common brush and
comb--unchained, because there was no danger of theft.

As befitted his rank, Dakota selected the Provincial, taking with him
his crony, Alkali Sam.  They would meet the others in the
market-place after "dinner"--for the Provincial alone, run by a
venturesome and popular Englishman, insisted on that untimely
designation for its night meal.

Having introduced to their plated interiors all the liquid
refreshment the remainder of the evening's entertainment could handle
with steady aim, they recalled the assignation.  Thither they
repaired, solemnly studying legs and hands to verify their good
judgment, nevertheless exhilarated by anticipation.

In the market-place Bean Slade, Muck Norsley, General Jones, the
Dude, and a few lesser lights of the H-Lazy Z outfit, together with
kindred spirits from other ranches, were impatiently cursing the
wasted time, with the bars still open and their thirst unquenched.
When the foreman arrived they cursed him and his companion with
unaffected impartiality, tightened the cinches, rubbed the noses of
their mounts, and climbed to the saddles.

When they dashed through the narrow exit to Toronto Street the fun
was on.

Dakota struck straight for the Provincial opposite--a brilliant idea
that staggered them all.

Now, the front door of the Provincial was attainable only by climbing
fourteen steep steps and crossing a deep verandah.  The height
enabled loungers to expectorate in comfort over the railing to the
sidewalk without inconveniencing themselves, and to some extent
discouraged the visits of the too heavily loaded, who naturally
gravitated to the more accessible bar door, situated lower down the
street and on the street level.

Those fourteen steps had acquired a reputation that subdued the
wildest spirits--like a Mounted Policeman's uniform.  But one of
Dakota's favourite amusements back in Montana--a stereotyped one in a
cow country--was to ride through the saloon doors.  To-night he was
in the precise humour for shocking convention.  Accordingly eight
confirmed loungers were much scandalised by the nose of Dakota's
horse thrusting itself in their midst.

Judas--Dakota's own name for his mount, because, as he said, you
never know when he's going to sell you--lowered his head in response
to the swift lash of Dakota's quirt, fixed his eyes on the centre
step of the flight and ate up the climb in two leaps, drawing up with
a slide as nose and neck protruded through the front door.  Thereupon
Dakota gently urged him into the rotunda, dodging the chandelier, and
pulled up before the dining-room door, where he leaned forward,
Stetson in hand, to see what the diners were making of it.

Somewhat subdued by the simplicity of the proceeding and the
loneliness of the adventure, he lay back on Judas' rump to negotiate
the descent, and a bit shamefacedly rejoined his companions in the
street.

Perhaps it was to cover his embarrassment that he opened the night's
performance without loss of time.

Whirling Judas on his hind legs, he dashed spurs into him and roared
down Toronto Street, shooting into the air as he went, with eight or
ten shrieking, shooting companions behind him.

At the corner of South Railway Street the gas-lamp caught his eye.  A
quick shot scattered the globe, but Medicine Hat's gas, that gushed
from an unlimited sea of natural supply six hundred feet down in the
earth, continued to blink at him from an undamaged mantle.

"Thunder!" he snorted.  "I must be drunk."

The next shot re-established his self-confidence.

Someone beside him banged a bullet through the transom of a store
entrance, another brought down fragments of a telephone insulator,
and two or three, catching sight of an open window, imprinted their
valentines on the ceiling beyond.

Every door was closed and bolted, not for fear of looting--no cowboy
would stoop to that--but in instinctive exclusion of lawlessness.  So
that the few caught on the street had no way of escape.  Dakota
recognised it first.  Two or three well-directed shots into the
pavement about their feet invariably drove pedestrians back against
the wall, hands raised, a mere act of polite acceptance of the fact
that the cowboys owned the town.

Two women scurried in a panic for a locked door, screamed, and turned
blanched faces to the terror.  Dakota raised his arm, shouted, and on
the instant every mouth closed, every finger was held.  With doffed
Stetsons, guns pointing to the sky, a band of dare-devil cow-punchers
trotted meekly past the terrified women, bowing as they went, and
twenty yards beyond broke loose with redoubled vigour.

At the corner of Main Street every eye flicked across the tracks to
the barracks, but things seemed lifeless there.

Up a deserted Main Street they blazed their way.  A couple of small
store windows "holed" before them, one, struck at an angle, falling
to pieces.  More gas lights went dark.

Morton Stamford, busy in his scrubby little office on the weekly
accounts of publication day, heard the shooting and threw up his
window to watch the cowboys thunder past.  When Dakota whirled in his
saddle and sent a bullet on either side of his head, Stamford
cudgelled his panicky brain for a reasonable and dignified excuse for
retirement from the limelight.  Failing to find one, he stuck there,
with his head through the window.  After the clamour had passed on
into Main Street he carefully traced the bullets through the
partition to the outer office and tried to hoke them as souvenirs
from the brick wall with a paper knife.  Then he tiptoed to the
window and, standing well back, pulled it down and locked it, though
by that time the shooting had dimmed away.

Thrilled with the incident, Stamford hastily planned a letter to an
old newspaper friend down East who could make use of vivid little
bits like that, with sundry touches of imagination that would be
certain to rouse an Eastern outcry.  He could draw pictures like that
any time he wanted, and his friends back East had long since decided
that he was either a fool or a hero.

Suddenly he remembered that he had not dined.  It was then he became
aware of a revival of the clamour in another direction.  And as it
did not seem to be coming to him, he went out to it.  On Toronto
Street he stood for a minute to locate the disturbance, but, hunger
getting the better of his curiosity, he began to trot toward the
Provincial Hotel.

Round the corner above him careened the cowboys into Toronto Street,
now lifeless save for the little figure of Morton Stamford hurrying
to dinner.

Dakota saw him.  It was nothing short of insult, this indifferent
little tenderfoot waggling his legs down the street before them.
Stamford was only half way to safety when Dakota whirled up behind
him on the sidewalk and, expecting him to duck to the shelter of a
doorway, wheeled off to one side only in time to escape riding him
down.  Judas' sides brushed Stamford's shoulder, so near a thing was
it for the editor.

In a flash Dakota was around, and three shots in quick succession
close to Stamford's feet were sufficient to warn any but the rankest
tenderfoot what was expected of him.  A fourth removed his stiff hat.
The next struck the edge of his boot sole.  Something told him he was
dangerously unconventional.  He looked up with a smile into the faces
of the crowding cowboys.

"You don't seem to like me, Dakota."

"Like you, you little sawed-off!  Never paid so much 'tention to a
tenderfoot in my born days afore.  I fair love you.  Same time, I'd
like to see you back again that wall and h'ist your hands.  These is
our streets to-night."

Stamford continued to grin about him.

"I was just on my way to dinner, Dakota," he said, and stooped to
pick up his hat.

"You won't need any--ever!" yelled Dakota furiously, reaching for his
second gun.

But certain slow processes in the brain of the solitary town
policeman had evolved the decision that the town's peace was being
breached at last.  From the shadow of an adjacent doorway he stepped
and seized Judas' bridle.

"Stop it, Dakota!  You get right away home.  There's a good-sized
bill against you already.  There'll be another not so easy to pay if
you don't vamoose."

But Dakota's anger was riding the crest of his liberal potations; and
anyway this was only the town policeman.  Clubbing his gun, he leaned
over Judas' neck and struck.  As he did so, he was bumped into on the
off side and in the effort to retain his seat the gun dropped to the
sidewalk.

"Cut that out, Dakota, you tarnation ijut!" growled Bean Slade.
"This ain't no skull-crackin' holiday.  Neither it ain't Montany.
Not by a damn sight!" he added, with sudden excitement, pointing down
the street with his quirt.

Round the corner from South Railway Street four Mounted Police were
riding nonchalantly.

Dakota looked from the red town-uniforms of the Police to the little
figure hurrying up the Provincial steps.  But the sudden burst of
life behind him decided him for discretion.  Up the street, faster
than they had ridden in their orgy, a group of satisfied cowboys tore.

Medicine Hat reopened its windows.  The loungers reappeared on the
Provincial verandah.  Evening strollers returned to the streets.
Inspector Barker locked his office door and went home to a tardy
supper.


Three days later a khaki-coated Policeman loped up to the cook-house
door of the H-Lazy Z, stooped to look inside, and spoke:

"Dakota, I want you."

Six cowpunchers gasped.  Dakota opened his mouth and closed it
without speaking, but his face reddened.

"Come here!"

Dakota stumbled to his feet and came to the doorway.  Constable
Hughes handed him a blue paper and waited for the reading.  Dakota's
anger flamed.  With an oath he tore the paper in two--but as the two
parts separated, his hands stayed.

"Now you're coming with me, Dakota Fraley!"

The Policeman dismounted without haste and stepped up to the
part-owner of the best paying ranch in the Medicine Hat district, the
boss of the toughest outfit of cowpunchers in Western Canada.

"Well, this is one h--l of a country!" growled Dakota, putting on his
Stetson and starting for the stables.

"It _might_ be," said Hughes.




CHAPTER VI

STAMFORD MAKES A DECISION

Morton Stamford sat in his office staring at a blank sheet of copy
paper.  Already he was an hour behind his schedule for the day, and
the compositors upstairs had sent down twice for copy.  According to
schedule this was his morning for preparing the week's editorials,
but, though the town bell would announce noon in less than half an
hour, he had not yet written a word.

What he should like to say he dare not.  A certain diffidence,
impelled by his Western experiences, held his pen from an attack on
the Mounted Police.  Back East as a newspaperman he had worked in so
closely with the local police that he knew their every move in the
development of their cases.  Yet in the ten days since the murder of
his friend, Corporal Faircloth, the Mounted Police seemed to have
done nothing.  Stamford knew of no clue, no sleuthing, and only vague
suspicions.  As a dignified newspaperman there was deep within him an
instinct that he should, therefore, accept it as evidence of official
inertia.

As a newspaperman, too, he had struggled to arrive at definite
deductions as to the murderer, only to be confronted with a blank
wall that drove him to the beginning again to reconstruct his case.
It was the dead body of Kid Loveridge that upset all his
calculations.  The Kid's reputation was more along the line of
proving him a murderer than the murdered, and that there was any
connection between the Corporal and one of the wildest cowboys in
Western Canada was impossible.

Hitting in and out of his conjectures were the forms of Cockney
Aikens and Dakota Fraley, two men apparently as antagonistic in
inclinations as they were intimate in business interests.  Cockney's
careless, good-natured ways appealed to him in a way that denied
belief in inherent badness.  Yet he had gathered the impression
during the Police investigations on the spot that the big Englishman
was not outside their suspicions.  He resented that.  Cockney was a
friend of his.  If the Police were working on that line he was
prepared to stake----

His ruminations were interrupted by the opening of the door to the
outer office, and the clumsy tramp of a heavy man.  For a moment he
waited for the familiar tap on his own door.  All Medicine Hat knew
where to find him.  Not hearing the expected summons, he went out.

A great hulk of a stranger was standing in the middle of the office,
feet braced, peering about him through large horn spectacles.  His
shoulders were stooped, his hands limp and awkward, his whole
attitude and appearance more than hinting at anæmia and flabbiness.
On his long black hair was perched a ludicrously small stiff hat; and
he wore a high white collar and loose black bow tie, a suit built in
a factory, and a pair of "health" boots that could not possibly
possess any other attraction.

He seemed entirely oblivious of Stamford's presence, continuing to
stare about at the untidy arrangement of tables and chairs, and over
the partition that separated the office from the "job" room.  He was
interested; also he was accustomed to concentrating.

Stamford wanted most to laugh.  The fellow filled the office with
such an air of innocent curiosity that he felt no resentment at his
own small share in the scene.

Someone laughed from the doorway, and Stamford started.  It was such
a merry, chuckling sort of laugh, so much in line with just the
feeling Stamford himself had, that, though the laugh was a woman's,
he vaguely thought of some uncanny echo that repeated what was in his
mind.

When he turned to the doorway he was more doubtful than ever of the
reality of the scene.  A girl stood there--a beautiful girl--Stamford
realised that first of all.  Under her soft felt hat, with a sprig of
flowers slanting nattily up toward the back, a fluffy bit of dark
brown hair protruded.  Stamford saw that next.  He had a curious
feeling that it would be nice to touch--and he flushed at the
entrance of such unaccustomed thoughts.

She was looking at him, quizzically, still laughing.  One little step
forward she took.

"Amos," she said, and in the tone was the indulgence of a mother,
though the man was years her senior, "Amos, don't you think you two
had better meet?  This is my brother Professor Amos Bulkeley, of the
Smithsonian Institute," she said, turning to Stamford.

Her brother swept his big frame about with the cheeriest of smiles
and extended his hand.

"You're the local editor, I suppose," he said, in a gentle voice.
"We've come to you for help--naturally.  Appealing to a newspaper for
help is a habit we all have, from politicians up to ordinary
burglars."

"So long as you're not collecting," grinned Stamford, "my resources
are at your command.  My week's accounts show that last week my
charity expenses were seven dollars and twenty-five cents.  To date
that's about my net income per week."

"It's only information we're collecting," explained the girl.
"We----"

"Excuse me, dear."  Her brother stopped her sternly.  "You haven't
yet met Mr.--Mr.----"

"Morton Stamford," said the editor.

"Mr. Stamford, my dear.  Mr. Stamford, this is my sister Isabel, as
yet possessing the same ultimate name as myself.  But there's still
hope."

"I'm certain of it," murmured Stamford over her hand.

"Ahem!" said the Professor.  "That's not starting badly."

"If you imply by that that we're to see more of each other----" began
Stamford gallantly--and went crimson with wonder at the strange
things his tongue was saying.

"Ahem again!" said the Professor slyly.  "Isabel, I have always
thought, has such a strange effect----"

"I'm sure Mr. Stamford has other uses for his time, Amos, and so have
we."  Isabel Bulkeley was blushing a little herself.

"I forgot," apologised the Professor.  "This is strictly business.
I'm here--_we_'re here in the interests of the Smithsonian Institute.
You may not suspect it, but you have history embedded in you--in the
form of fossils that should have disappeared when your much-removed
grandpa was scuttling through the tree-tops by his tail.  I'm in
hopes that the geanticlinal discoveries of my predecessors among the
argillaceous cliffs of the Red Deer River will support my contention
that somewhere the course of the river to the north of you may yield
up the secrets of the Triassic, or at least the Jurassic stage of the
Mesozoic period.  Perhaps the Palæozoic.  Who knows?"

"I confess _I_ don't," said Stamford.  "In fact, except that you seem
to be using the language my mother taught me, I wouldn't know what
you're talking about, were it not that I happen to be aware of the
palæontological discoveries on the Red Deer.  But that was three
hundred miles west of here."

"I'm anxious to get beyond their tracks," said the Professor.  "It
was the New York fellows worked there--our deadly rivals.  I contend
that the Red Deer River did not in those days boast of circumscribed
summer resorts.  Why, a megatherium could lunch at Red Deer town and
dine in Medicine Hat--at least the one _I_ want to find could."

"And how can I help you?" asked Stamford.

"We don't know a thing--how we get there, where we can stay, what we
can do."

"At last," sighed Stamford, "there's a tenderer tenderfoot than
myself.  For two long months I've been the baby of the Western
family.  Now I'm ousted from the cradle."

The Professor examined his own huge body doubtfully.

"How big's this cradle?" he asked.

"It'll hold you and your sister," replied Stamford gallantly.  "But
the man you want to see is Inspector Barker.  In the West it's
different: you don't consult the newspaper, but the Mounted Police."

He tapped a bell, and the "devil" stumbled down from the
composing-room overhead.

"Give these to Arthurs," Stamford ordered, grabbing a handful of
clippings from the pigeon-hole.  "They'll keep him busy.  I'll be out
for a while.  Watch the office till Smith comes back."

"I'm taking you down to the barracks myself," he explained to his
visitors.  "The Inspector might suspect you of ulterior motives.  I
confess," he added whimsically, "that you're different enough to
justify it."

Inspector Barker and the editor of the _Journal_ were on the best of
terms.  In Stamford's little body was all the romance of men
physically unfitted to play a part in the pictures of their
imagination; he had a scalp that tingled easily.  And the Inspector
had experiences to tell that would tingle any scalp not
fossilised--as well as little reluctance about clothing his
experiences with what might have happened.  It wasn't often he was
free to let himself loose to such an appreciative audience whose
ideas could expand several sizes in response to a good yarn.

But it was plain enough that Professor Bulkeley was more susceptible,
less inclined to question the reasonableness of the wildest yarn.
The Inspector received him and his sister with generous hand, and a
smile that took them to his heart.  And their summer plans only added
to his eagerness.  This was something new in an extended experience
popularly considered to have covered every possible phase of Western
life.

"All the way from Washington, D.C., eh?  Special visit to our
benighted town, eh?  Flattered is too mild a word.  Bringing your
sister adds the last drop to our overfull bucket of gratitude."

"Isabel," asked the Professor gravely, "did he put it as nicely as
Mr. Stamford, d'ye think?"

The Inspector gurgled into his moustache, but Stamford was annoyed.

"You'll stay at the Double Bar-O," said the Inspector, getting down
to business.  "I think that'll give you a good centre to work from.
Westward is only the H-Lazy Z.  I don't think you'd care to stop
there.  Cockney Aikens is a queer fish.  You mightn't understand him."

Stamford, in thought, came valiantly to Cockney's support.  He was
certain the Police had ideas about the big rancher that they did not
care to disclose.

"'The Double-Bar-O!'" repeated the Professor.  "What is it--a hotel?"

Stamford and the Inspector laughed.

"A ranch," explained the latter.  "My dear man, your nearest hotel,
when you get to the Red Deer, is over there on South Railway Street."

"But will they--will they take us in?"

"Professor Bulkeley," said the Inspector proudly, "this is Western
Canada.  You can lift the latch of any ranch in the country, any day,
any time, and there's a plate and a bed for you as long as you wish
to remain."

"But--ah--the pay?  How much--about how much----"

"The only thing I forgot," interrupted the Inspector, "is to warn you
that your welcome is limited to the period during which you don't
mention pay."

"But we're strangers----"

"That's the only excuse for your suggestion.  There are no strangers
in the West in that sense of the word."

"So hospitable--so generous--so utterly natural!" beamed the
Professor to his sister.  "I suppose there's a livery here--with a
nice buggy and a gentle horse that I can rent for two or three
months."

Inspector Barker stroked his moustache thoughtfully.

"There are liveries--yes--but they won't let you have a horse for
that long."  He looked up suddenly.  "Let me supply you.  I've a
couple of horses out there eating their heads off.  It's cheaper for
us to hire the few times we need them.  But for goodness' sake, leave
the buggy out.  This is not a country for driving--not if you can
ride.  But perhaps your sister----"

"Isabel," declared the Professor proudly, "is a centauress."  He
added with a deprecatory grin: "I've never been on a horse in my
life."

"Amos is going to learn some day," said Isabel hopefully.  "Aren't
you, Amos?  Perhaps this is his chance--out on the boundless prairie."

"Miss Bulkeley," Stamford warned, "I wouldn't speak of the prairie as
boundless.  They'll think you're a poetess--and try to unload on you
a parcel of worthless real estate.  We're just hungry for people like
that out here.  But," he added dryly, "I don't believe they'll
succeed."

"Is it a compliment, Mr. Stamford?" she asked gaily.

"No," he replied solemnly, "it's the truth."

"How ingenuous!  How simple and sweet and natural!" gushed the
Professor.  And the little editor bemoaned his lack of inches.

"Ah, man, man!" teased the Inspector, when brother and sister were
gone, the cumbersome Professor passing before the window a foot
behind his quick-stepping sister.  "In the West it's always Spring.
A country that hasn't women enough to go round----"

"What in blazes are you driving at----"

"I didn't think it was in you, Stamford.  I'm delighted to see
something of the gallant again; I thought the West had lost it all
these many years--or never had it.  The poor Corporal had traces of
it----  Ah!" as Stamford frowned, "I thought you had something
heavier than a pretty girl on your mind when you called.  Now, let's
have it."

Stamford brought his fist down on the desk.

"Who murdered Corporal Faircloth?"

Inspector Barker readjusted the ink-well.

"If you don't mind, my boy, keep your thumping for your own desk.  I
have this one reserved."

Stamford, stubborn as small men can be, threw himself into a chair,
his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

"In ten days--what have you done?  That's what I want to know.  What
are you planning to do?  I'm going to sit here till you tell me."

The Inspector frowned, then smiled grimly.

"We close at six.  Those who stay later--spend the night in there."
He indicated the door leading to the cells.

Stamford's scowl drifted into a shamefaced shaking of the head.

"You don't seem to realise that your third in command was foully
murdered, almost under your very nose!  You don't----"

"Listen, Stamford!  Did you ever hear of a murdered Mounted Policeman
unavenged?  Did you ever know the Mounted Police to drop the
chase--even for shooting an antelope out of season?"

"But you've done nothing--nothing."

"We don't report to the _Journal_--it's not in the regulations."

"And there's Billy Windover," Stamford stormed on.  "You haven't
discovered his murderer."

"Wrap them in the same parcel----"  The Inspector stopped abruptly.

"But I thought you suspected Cockney Aikens."

The Inspector turned on him fiercely.  "Who said we suspected
him--anyone?  Stamford, Faircloth was your friend; he was not only my
friend for five years but my third in command for two.  Don't you
think you'd better consult an oculist?  We _always_
suspect--everyone."

"Then why didn't you round up the whole gang that day?"

"Including yourself and Mrs. Aikens, Inspector West, four ranchers,
sixty cowboys----"

"But I----"

"Yes, I know.  Same with the others.  It isn't always the obvious
that explains.  Suppose we'd arrested Cockney--or anyone at that
time, where would have been our proof?  We didn't even find the
rifles--except Kid Loveridge's.  Clues don't grow on bulberry bushes
in a country where everyone can shoot--and so many do."

Stamford was thinking rapidly.  The repetition of Cockney's name
seemed to confirm his suspicions of the direction of the Police
search.

"The thing has got a bit too much for my nerves--or something," he
declared abruptly.  "I've got to get away from it for a time--take a
holiday.  In reality it was to tell you that I came down."

"It isn't in the Police regulations, you know."

"Perhaps not, but I wanted you to know in case--in case anything
happened."

"Nothing will happen--if you mind your own business."

But Stamford did not seem to hear; he was examining himself in a
broken-framed mirror above the desk.

"I need bucking up.  Meals--change of air--new methods and
manners--something doesn't agree with me.  I can't sleep."

"Never mind explaining," grunted the Inspector.  "I'm not interested
in your health.  Here's West now.  I've an appointment with him."

"By the way, West," he said, as the brand-inspector entered, "the
local scribe is enquiring why we didn't arrest the whole countryside
for Faircloth's murder that day."

West smiled in some confusion.

The Inspector laughed mirthlessly.  "Yes, West, you're as critical as
he.  But if you--or Stamford here--had given me that day the details
you've remembered since, other things might have happened."

"But I knew--I saw everything!" stammered Stamford.

"And told so little," snapped the Inspector.  "So many after-thoughts
are too late!"

He waved Stamford out.  As the editor passed through the door he
turned.

"Honest now, Inspector, whom do you suspect?"

But the Inspector was already talking to the brand-inspector.

The door closed--and opened again to admit Stamford's head.

"By the way, Inspector, I didn't tell you where I was going to take
my holiday."

"You don't need to.  The H-Lazy Z's as good as anywhere.  Tell the
Professor--if you see him; the Double Bar-O's only ten miles
away--that I'm of the opinion that the schistosity of the
stratification in the flexure of the Cretaceous period exposed
thereabouts will simplify his investigations--or words to that
effect.  Give my love to his sister."

When the door closed again the Inspector ruminated.  Then he
scribbled a message to the police back at Stamford's Ontario home and
called a constable to despatch it.

"West," he said, wheeling suddenly on the brand-inspector, "you don't
happen in your wanderings to have come across two large dogs new to
the district--part Russian wolf, part greyhound, I believe?  A week
ago they were under lock and key in the barracks corral.  One night
they disappeared.  Nobody seems to have seen or even heard them
go--and they were wild as wolves, with a howl that would shame a
husky on a Labrador island on a moonlight night."

"Hm-m-m!" grunted the brand-inspector.  "Large tracking dogs in the
Police corral--deductions obvious."

"I don't care a hang for deductions.  It's the dogs I want obvious.
I was depending on them to run down these measly cattle-thieves
who've been fooling my men all year.  I thought maybe a good hound or
two----"

"So did the cattle-thieves apparently," laughed West.

"Therefrom comes one interesting deduction; the cattle-thieves are
local.  But the stealing is too persistent and small to be otherwise."

"And now, I suppose, you'll get another pair to track the first?"

"No-o," replied the Inspector cheerfully.  "It only makes another
mystery to solve.  At one time this looked like being a dull summer."




CHAPTER VII

AT THE H-LAZY Z

Cockney Aikens was striding up and down the little gravel walk before
the ranch-house--the walk that Mary herself had built from the loose
rock of the river-bed--his hands thrust deep in his pockets.  Mary,
raising her head sadly from her work to peer at him through the
window, read the symptoms.  So did the cluster of grinning cowboys
from the darkened depths of the cookhouse.

Presently Cockney stopped in his stride to stare off over the valley
to the opposite cliff, his eyes returning slowly to the trail and
away up it toward town, sixty miles away.

Muck Norsley, from far back in the cook-house, looked through the
window, watch in hand.

"Yer winning, Gin'ral, o.k.  Jest about seventeen minutes now, I
reckon, and he'll be saddling--unless he has to black his boots and
crease his pants."

Cockney turned suddenly, kicked two innocent stones into the grass,
and pushed open the ranch-house door.

"Mary, I'm off to town."

He spoke roughly.  She lifted the sock she was darning and set it on
the table.

"You'll take me this time, won't you, Jim?"

"Haven't you enough here to keep you busy?"  He would not meet her
eyes.  "A fellow don't want a woman tagging after him every time he
goes to town."

"He doesn't have her," she replied with quiet dignity.

She might have told him that one of the troubles was that she had
_too much_ to do about the H-Lazy Z.  Most of her married life had
been a drudgery, girls refusing to drown themselves in the isolation
of the Red Deer--sixty miles from town, without a living soul
between, and the nearest ranch ten miles to the east.  Westward was
nothing but wilds for further than anyone had travelled.

A tear squeezed into her eyes.  He saw her struggling to hold it
back, and hastily retreated outside.

The H-Lazy Z ranch may not have been quite equal to its reputation in
a district where not a dozen citizens had ever visited it, but it
could boast of luxuries--especially its ranch-house--that few other
ranches considered worth the trouble and expense.  This ranch-house
was a two-story structure of numerous and ample rooms, erected by one
with money to spare and English ideas of expenditure.

When Cockney Aikens selected his wife in a mid-Western American town
on one of the many unreasonable and indefinite trips he made in those
days to distant parts, he insisted on leaving her at her own home
until he had built for her a residence his uncertain conscience told
him was fit for a woman.

In those days Mary Aikens wanted her Jim more than _any_ house but
Cockney was obdurate, with a stubbornness that hurt her lovesick
heart early in their married life.  He had won her rapidly, with his
big, joyous, reckless ways, and his pictures of the life in the
Canadian West.  With four years to look back on since she left the
Eastern seminary, her little body crammed with romance, his pictures
were all the more alluring from the monotonous similarity and
repetition of the letters of her late schoolmates, each of whom,
according to her own story, had captured the one and only sample of
real American manhood.

When a girl's friends write month after month of home magnificence
that radiates largely round the conventional "carriage and pair" that
is the dream of schoolgirls, a whole ranch of horses and cattle looks
like the earmarks of a fairy prince, especially when they belong to
such a stunning big chap as Jim Aikens.

Mary Aikens often looked back on those days now with a sad smile.
Jim was still the stunning big chap--at times.  At other times----
But that was the effect of Western haze.  In the two years of their
married life she had never become really acquainted with her husband.
At the very moment--it happened again and again--when the sympathy
she craved was lifting the latch, Jim Aikens kicked it from the door
with brutal foot and rode madly off on the southern trail on one of
his periodical sprees in town.

The ranch-house stood half way down a long slope that stretched
northward to the Red Deer River.  A half-mile away, across a valley
that might have been a garden in a wilderness, rose a sheer line of
jagged cliffs, before which ran the tumbling river.  Up and down the
stream, on both sides of it, sometimes crowding the current,
sometimes set back of a deep valley filled with weirdly protuberant
mounds of rock from about which the soft clays had been washed by the
rains and currents of ages, the cliffs were repeated.  Only at long
intervals did the banks slope to the river as they did before the
H-Lazy Z ranch buildings, and that only on the southern shore.
Elsewhere the Red Deer rushed through hundreds of miles of a
hundred-and-fifty-foot canyon.

Two hundred yards from the house--Dakota Fraley had insisted on the
distance--the cook-house, bunk-house, stables and corrals began, and
spread out over the eastern end of the valley in conventional
disarray, the bottom corral touching the rough beach that there lined
the river.  Dakota had no stomach for skirts about the place,
especially the kind he imagined his wild master would bring.  In that
he failed to understand Cockney.

Before the ranch-house door Dakota met his partner retreating from
Mary's tears.  Behind the foreman two or three cowboys lounged in the
open doorway.  Three others rolled off toward the stables.

Cockney stood still, watching them with lowering eyes.

"Why the samhill, Dakota, do we need such a bunch of roughnecks about
the place?" he exploded.  "Every time I see them they make me think
of a gang of Whitechapel foreigners fresh from Russia, or Hungary, or
Poland.  If they hadn't guns on their hips, there'd be knives in
their bootlegs or stilettos up their sleeves."

Dakota laughed in a nasty way.

"Best bunch of cowpunchers in Alberta--in America, for that matter.
Look at the ranch they've made for you."

Cockney made a wry face.  "Gad!  I could do without some of the
dollars for cheerier countenances about me.  They look as if they'd
murdered their mothers and were looking for the rest of the family."

"What's it matter to you," Dakota growled, "so long's they fix you up
for your gambling and boozing?  You better cut butting in on
personnel.  That's _my_ third of the partnership."

Cockney was in a vile humour--that always came with his craving for
town; and his wife's wet eyes had not improved matters.

"Don't forget, Dakota," he said, with deadly calmness, "it's only a
third.  I provided all the capital."

"And don't _you_ forget, _Mister_ Aikens, that I purvided all the
experience--and I'm still purviding it, far's anyone can notice--and
all the work and the worry.  You better go and get drunk.  We don't
need you.  We got _real_ work to do."

Cockney restrained himself.

"What are you on now?" he enquired.

Dakota's eyes fell.  He turned about and looked back toward the
cook-house.

"Oh, nothing special; just the usual rush.  This time it's a lot of
riding, looking up a bunch of mavericks that uv been kicking up the
devil.  Missed 'em in the round-up and they've got chirpy."

"You're sure they're ours?"

Dakota swung on him angrily.

"What the h--l you mean?  Think I'm rustling?  _Shore_ they're ours.
They've gone rampaging down Irvine way with a little bunch of steers
that broke from the nighthawks a couple of days ago."

"Be away long?"

"Four or five days, I guess.  You needn't worry your head.  You
couldn't help none."

Cockney made no reply, though he winced a little at the sneer.

"Off to town, I see," jeered Dakota.  "Best place for you--when you
feel that way.  Taking the missus?"

Cockney remained silent, thinking.

"Or are you leaving her to us?"

Without moving his feet, Cockney's great fist shot out and caught the
side of Dakota's head.  As his back struck the prairie the cowboy
reached for his gun, but Cockney was on him with a bound, wrenching
one gun from his hand and another from a loose pocket in his chaps.
With one hand he lifted Dakota to his feet and released him.

"I don't like the way you speak of my wife," he thundered.

Dakota, helpless and a little cowed without his guns, glared his fury.

"It's as good as you _treat_ her," he snarled.

Cockney started.

"She's my wife," he said, with a new dignity.

"I don't know what you was brung up to, but in this country we'd
think that something to _show_, not just to talk about."

"Don't let me hear you talking about her," warned Cockney, "or anyone
else," he added, raising his voice and looking over Dakota's shoulder
to the cook-house.

He tossed the guns contemptuously at Dakota's feet and wheeled about.
The cowboy muttered oaths at his retreating back, and rubbed the
cords of his neck where the strain of the blow had come.

Mary Aikens had seen nothing of the incident--her eyes were too wet.
With a dead weight at her heart she sank her head in her arms on the
table and let the tears flow.

Cockney came on her that way and softly retreated, drawing the door
gently behind him.  After a few noisy crunches among the gravel and a
preliminary kick to the outside step, he took a long breath and
entered.  She was darning then, her head held low.  He passed quickly
through to the bedroom door, but there he stopped, and, without
turning, stood with his hand on the knob.  Then he disappeared.  Ten
minutes later he reappeared in town attire.

In Cockney Aikens' ways were so many strange conventions that his
friends had ceased to marvel at them.  One of them was the formality
of his dress for his visits to Medicine Hat.  His boots were soft,
light-soled, and natty, with drab cloth tops, like nothing ever seen
on the prairie before; his socks silken, with white clocks.  A
delicate grey suit enclosed his huge frame in graceful lines that
betrayed their Bond Street origin.  His collar was a straight white
upstanding affair with delicately rounded corners, and his cravat
Irish poplin or barathea--always one of these silks, the former with
a coloured diagonal stripe, the latter adorned with clusters of
flowers.  Above it all rested a light grey hat.  From his breast
pocket peeped the tips of chamois gloves, and on one little finger
was a curious ring of triple cameos.

Mary Aikens always gasped when she saw him thus.  It was thus she had
learned to love him, thus he had turned the heads of half the girls
of the northern United States towns from Seattle to Duluth.  For
Cockney Aikens wore his clothes as one accustomed to them.  One suit
he always kept in town at his tailor's, pressed and cleaned, changing
at each visit.

His wife drew a sharp breath, forgetting that she was staring at him
with uplifted hand.  The evil temper had left his face with his
leather chaps and neckerchief.  He regarded her with an embarrassed
twist to his face.

"Better get into your grey," he said, looking anywhere but into her
eyes.  "I'll be ready for you in fifteen minutes."

"Oh, Jim!"

That was all.  She dropped her darning on the table and fled
ecstatically to the bedroom.  And big Cockney Aikens picked up the
ball of darning wool and kissed it furtively.

By the time he was back from the stables with a lively team hitched
to a buggy, she was almost dressed, and a suitcase stood packed
outside the bedroom door.  He drew a second suitcase from beneath the
bed and began to fill it with his ranch clothes.  She watched him,
surprised.

"Why, Jim, what are you taking those for?"

He muttered something about going to do some riding perhaps, and
snapped the catches, hurrying out with the suitcase to the buggy.

Mary bustled to the kitchen and began to lay various tins on the
table.  A side of bacon she wrapped up and suspended from a hook in
the ceiling.  When she was finished she stood back and struck off a
list on her fingers:

"Bacon, flour, cheese, oatmeal, matches--there, I forgot the matches
again."

He laughed.

"Lord, Mary, you're still expecting visitors to this corner of the
moon!"

She tilted her head.  "You never know.  We couldn't leave the house
with nothing to eat in it.  Some day--perhaps----  We _should_ have
visitors----"  She ended the sentence by a noisy clustering of the
tins, and ran to her suitcase.

He took it from her hand and carried it out.  One of the horses was
trying to get back into the buggy, but he quieted it with masterful
hand.  With one foot on the step she paused.

"Why--that's Pink Eye!  He's never been harnessed before, has he?"

"I've been breaking him to it.  Good time to try him out on a long
trip like this.  He'll have the spirit taken out of him in that sixty
miles--seventy by the Double Bar-O.  We're going across there first.
Maybe Cherry Gerard would like to come too; you may be lonesome."

"I don't want Cherry, Jim," she pouted.

He lifted her in and took his seat beside her before he replied:

"It's possible I'll be leaving you for a couple of days in there."

She was looking straight ahead without a word of what was in her
mind.  But as the horses galloped madly up the sloping trail to the
east her spirits rose, and she laughed exultantly.

"Seventy miles won't tire Pink Eye," she gurgled.  "He's steel."

Dakota, standing before the door of the cook-house, watched them go,
scorning to reply to Mary Aikens' waving hand.  It was Bean Slade,
emerging hastily from the interior of the shack, who returned it, as
Pink Eye and his mate tore along the indistinct eastern trail over
the edge of the prairie above.

"Hoorah!" shouted Dakota, when the moving speck had vanished over the
ridge.

"Hoorah!" responded a half-dozen voices; and the Dude and Alkali
seized each other for a musicless dance.

"Dassent leave her t'yore tender mercies, Dakota, ole sport," chaffed
Alkali.  "Yo're a reg'lar lady-killer, that's what yo are."

"Oh, I dunno," grunted the Dude jealously, buttoning the loose front
of his brilliant vest.  "There's others."

"Go 'long with you, Dude," jeered General.  "She never looks at you.
Jest about two days o' Dakota's slippery manners, and the missus ud
be shore climbing his neck."

Bean Slade unwound his lanky legs from a chair and spat through the
doorway.

"Yer a tarnation liar, Gin'ral.  Not a doggone neck ud the missus
climb that she hadn't oughter.  An' you're a dang lot o' sap-heads to
talk it."

"You oughter know, Bean," grinned General.  "Y'ain't licking her pots
fer nothing, I bet."

Bean was on his feet so quickly that no one else had moved by the
time a chair whirled aloft in his hands.  General slid to the cover
of the table in desperate haste.

Dakota flung himself between them.

"Drop it, you fools!  Nobody's saying nothing again the missus, Bean.
They're just joshing you.  You needn't get so touchy anyway; she
ain't _your_ wife."

Bean, whose anger rose and fell with disturbing unexpectedness,
dropped the chair.

"No sech luck!" he growled.  "If she was I wudn't risk her where you
slimy coyotes was."

Alkali broke in:

"And now what's the agendar, Dakota?  Takin' on that Irvine job this
week.  'T should be a good time with the boss away."

Dakota screwed his eyes up thoughtfully.  "That's what I had in mind."

"No rifles this time," protested Bean Slade.  "We've toted 'em once
too often--I don't know but _twice_ too often.  Br-r-r!  I won't ever
forget----"

"Shut your clap, Bean!  You've had your man in your day, heaps of
'em."

"They allus had their chance," growled Bean.  "No rifles, I say, or I
don't go."

Three or four insulting guffaws greeted the threat.

"The Reverend Beanibus Slade, him of Dead Gulch memory and Two-Shot
Dick fame, will now lead us in singing the twenty-third Psalm!"
scoffed General Jones.  "Come along with us, Reverend sir--and bring
yore burial service."

"I've said it," repeated Bean stubbornly.

Dakota tried to oil the surface.  "We don't need rifles this
time--it's an easy job....  But we'll shore miss the Kid.  He shore
was the handy kid with the blinkers on a dark night, and he'd hold a
close second to yours truly with a gun.  Poor Kid!  I'd give my left
ear to get even with the guy that got him.  I've a bit o' lead
resarved for him."




CHAPTER VIII

A LAMB AMONG THE LIONS

"There y'are, mister.  That's your place."

Stamford unlimbered his stiffened legs and raised himself in the
buggy to look out over the valley of the H-Lazy Z.

"It's my place all right," he moaned.  "I don't care what ranch it
is.  I didn't think Canada was so wide as that sixty miles of
prairie.  Sixty miles!  Humph!  I've a complete set of disarticulated
bones that's ready to go into any witness box and swear it's at least
umpteen million miles, and then some."

The youthful driver grinned.

"Oh, you'd get used to that.  I 'member when _I_ was raw----"

"Look here, young man, for about eighteen hours you've been rubbing
my rawness into me.  Lord knows you didn't need to!  This rattly,
lumpy, jumpy bone-shaker you call a carriage would make any body raw
that's not made of cast-iron.  How the dickens Cockney Aikens, to say
nothing of his wife and the ranch outfit, can contemplate that sixty
miles with sufficient equanimity to stick the job is beyond my
limited experience."

"Golly, mister, Dakota Fraley--Two-Gun Dakota--bosses the outfit.
He's fit for anything."

"Huh!  Dakota seems to have a rep."

"Dakota Fraley," confided the driver, "is a gunman, a dead shot with
either hand.  He's lightning on the draw and was never known to miss
his man.  He's the toughest of the tough, a broncho-buster that takes
all the prizes at the contests--and they say he's got so many men he
lost track years ago.  But, say, he's a dead-game sport.  Ju hear
about the police-court case--for shooting up the town that time?"

Stamford knew every word of it, but the lad's story was worth
hearing, so he only looked interested.

"He just ponied up seventy-five simoleons without a wink.  I think
old Jasper was hoping he wouldn't have it, so he could send him down
for a couple of months.  Gee, I wouldn't send Dakota Fraley down, not
by a long sight--least, not unless I was dying or something and
wouldn't be there when he got out.  I wouldn't fool with Dakota
Fraley, no sir-ee!"

Stamford heard it with fitting solemnity.

"I suppose," he murmured, "that's how the books put it.  I mustn't
blame him."

"What d'you mean, mister?"

"Oh, excuse me, lad.  Don't mind me when I get wandering.  I'm often
taken that way.  The doctor says I'm not really dangerous."

"Don't you go to wandering about _here_ or you'll get plumb lost."

Stamford cast a furtive eye back on the sixty miles and shuddered.
Almost at daylight--and that meant about two-thirty a.m.--they had
pulled out of Medicine Hat, for he was determined to run no risk of a
night in the open.  One he had had already, and was content.  That
sixty miles of prairie hung behind him like a pall, too oppressive to
be relieved by its varied monotony.  Here a line of unaccountable
sand-buttes, there a landscape of rolling sweeps like the billows of
a petrified sea, and sometimes a stretch of dullness that melted into
the horizon uncountable miles away; and over all but the sand-buttes
dead whispering grass, trembling in the blazing winds of midsummer,
and a lifelessness that was uncanny.

His nerves were jangling still from the memory of it and, delighted
though he was at the end of his journey, sundry and impressive qualms
that resembled fear made him question his ability to cope with the
problem he had set himself.

He raised himself on his arms before the house and tentatively
extended one dead foot, drew in his breath painfully, and held
himself erect by the buggy as both feet touched the ground.

"There are the stables, I guess," he pointed out.  "I confess I don't
know the proper thing to do with you.  Will they feed you there or
here in the ranch-house?"

The driver gathered up the reins.

"They ain't going to have a chance to keep me neither places.  I'm
not taking chances where Two-Gun Dakota is--me with no gun or
nothing.  These broncs are good for another ten miles.  I got a
friend over at the Double Bar-O.  That's good enough for me."

He tumbled Stamford's suitcase out, chirruped to the horses, and
rattled away eastward up the slope.

Stamford was suddenly oppressed with the loneliness of things.  About
the ranch-house was not a sign of life, and the ranch buildings two
hundred yards away seemed to be equally deserted.  He glanced
hurriedly about and launched himself on the noisy gravel walk to the
door.  He was thrilled with the vastness of things, the tremendous
silence, the frowning cliffs across the river, the pettiness of mere
man; the gravel crunched pleasantly under him as he walked.

Receiving no reply to his persistent knocking, he lifted the latch.
The evidences of recent life within pleased him mightily, especially
the signs of a woman's presence.  Mary Aikens' darning lay on the
table where she had dropped it.  A pile of folded newspapers and
magazines covered the top of a smaller table against the wall, almost
crowding off a smoker's tray and pipestand.  The pictures on the
walls, the shiny stove, the cushions piled with attractive abandon on
couch and chairs, and, above all, a piano--Stamford felt his spirits
rise.

Here were luxury and art as he had not before seen them on the
prairie.  Here was more than temporary makeshift.  Here, he read, was
a woman determined to make life out there, sixty miles from the
nearest post office, railway station, and store, independent of its
isolation and inconveniences.

He spied the open door to the kitchen and passed through, gathering
from the array of tin boxes that his host and hostess were more than
temporarily absent.  It made him uncomfortable.  His mind refused to
grasp the full significance of the situation in which he found
himself.

He was wondering vaguely what to do, when the outer door burst
violently open, and he started like a thief caught in the act.
Dakota Fraley was standing in the doorway, peering about with an evil
frown.  Through the kitchen doorway he caught sight of Stamford and
strode quickly across the sitting-room.

"What you doing here?"

Stamford's attempt at propitiation was a wan smile; his heart was
pattering uncomfortably.

"Just as you entered, Dakota, I was wondering the same thing.  Mr.
and Mrs. Aikens are not at home, I take it."

"And won't be for a week, maybe," barked Dakota, standing with legs
wide, his thumbs caught in his belt.

"I gathered that from the lay-out."

"Tell 'em you was coming?"

"No.  I knew the rule of the prairie."

"What rule?"

"That a visitor is always welcome.  Have they been pulling my leg in
that, too?"

Dakota thought over that a moment.  His dislike for the little editor
since the shooting-up scene, as well as for any visitor to the ranch,
inclined him to kick Stamford off the place.  But there was Cockney
to reckon with.

"There's nobody here to welcome you--you can see that," he grunted.

"I was noting it," said Stamford quietly.

"Look here, you two-by-four, none o' your insults.  This is a mighty
big prairie to be alone on of a night ten miles from the next
stopping place.  There's nicer things for a tenderfoot, I warn you."

"But one of them isn't forcing myself on your society, Dakota Fraley.
Yet, at the moment you're my host by proxy; my lips are sealed."

Dakota calmed.  He was uncertain of the efficacy of anything but a
gun in dealing with insults, but to draw on such a little tenderfoot
was not to be thought of.

"Driver coming back?" he asked.

"By the way he galloped away I came to the conclusion he hoped never
to have to," smiled Stamford.

"We'll lend you a horse."

"Thanks, but I can walk better without one."

"I see you walking ten miles at this hour o' the night, I do?" jeered
Dakota.

"I wouldn't think of taking you from your own comfortable ranch for
such a trifling spectacle.  I won't mind if you take it for
granted....  But perhaps a horse would be company.  Lead me to it."

He pushed past Dakota and started toward the ranch buildings, the
foreman following, obviously ill at ease.  As they neared the
cook-house door a sly smile crossed the latter's face.  Several
cowboys came out.

"I've found it, boys!" yelled Dakota, with a wide grin.  "The only
and original tenderfoot--guaranteed to eat peas with a fork, crease
his pants every month, say 'fudge' when he means 'damn,' and take a
saddle-horn for the back of a rocking chair.  Only he doesn't like
us.  He's decided to move on.  We're bold bad men.  Alkali, trot out
Joe-Joe."

Dakota's grin repeated itself in several faces.  Stamford, aware that
silence was safest, said nothing until Dakota was through.

"It's a shame to inflict myself to the extent of a horse on your
already overtaxed hospitality," he said.  "I promise to pay livery
rates."

"Best put it on yer will, ole hoss, an' right now," drawled Bean
Slade through the whiffs of a cigarette.

Stamford looked up with a glint of understanding.

"My executors will naturally pay my debts first--if my estate is
equal to it."

"Yu seem to like Heaven best, kid," muttered Bean.  "It's close up to
here--the way yu're going."

"One might be forgiven for preferring the other place," replied
Stamford.  "At least there's only one devil there."

The cowboys grinned appreciatively.

"Best call it off, Dakota," suggested Bean.

Dakota frowned.

"If you geezers know of any quicker way of getting off the H-Lazy Z
than by Joe-Joe, trot the idea out and let's look at it, and
precipitous-like."

Joe-Joe, a mule-faced, conscience-stricken creature, with a scraggly
tail that never stopped flicking, came humbly up at the rear of
Alkali, bridle and saddle having been adjusted in the stables to an
accompaniment of clatter that confirmed Stamford's suspicions.  Still
he had no thought of funking.  He reached out for the rein.

His hand was pushed roughly aside, and Bean Slade vaulted into the
saddle, cigarette between his lips.  With a touching appeal in his
wandering eyes Joe-Joe looked about on the unsympathetic audience,
then, with a jerk that was startling even to see, he lowered his
head, arched his back, and leaped straight up with stiffened legs,
all part of one movement.

When he landed, every bone in Bean's lanky body rattled; and before
they had time to rearrange themselves Joe-Joe was in the midst of a
new gyration that loosened Bean's sombrero and cigarette.

The cowboys looked on, laughing, darting sly glances at Stamford to
see how he was taking his escape.  Dakota was divided between anger
at Bean's interference, and satisfaction at the trepidation on the
little editor's face.  Joe-Joe continued to leap and twist and kick,
Bean shouting encouragement and slapping the steaming thigh behind
him; but when the horse straightened out for a run, his rider freed
his feet and slid over his rump.

"Our show outlaw," he explained to Stamford, stooping to recover hat
and cigarette.  "Yu can see why yu'd need to say yer say in yer will."

Dakota accepted his defeat with a laugh.  He had had his fun, and the
sympathies of the outfit were against him.

"Any other ladylike nags about the place you'd like to break for us,
my little man?" he gibed, clapping Stamford on the back.  "The H-Lazy
Z's at your disposal."

"Thanks, Dakota, then I'll stay a while."

Bean Slade shoved out a long, limp hand.

"Bully fer you!  Yu've got the guts!"

"If you're going to kick about till the boss comes back," said
Dakota, "you'd better shake hands with the bunch.  Give your hoof to
Alkali Sam.  Alkali wasn't christened that--if he was ever christened
at all.  Somebody musta been reading a wild-West story and thought
Sam looked like the leading villain.  It's commonly hinted he
christened himself.  He's a would-be devil, a gen-u-ine bad actor--in
his own mind.  Alkali'd rather be called that than get his man on the
draw.  It saves a lot o' shooting--and it's less dangerous, a rep
like that.

"And this one--where's your flapper, Muck?--he's Muck Norsley.
Nothing's too dirty for muck--hence, Muck.

"The Dude there has been known to take a bath, comb his hair with
axle grease, and change his shirt, all in the same year.  Dude, you
ain't doing us justice.  Your neckerchief--well, it's a bit mussed,
and a tailor might improve them chaps.  Look nifty for the gent.

"General Jones derives his cognomen, so to speak--not from the army,
bless you, no, but because he's generally drunk, generally loafing,
generally a cuss.  No one thinks his name's Jones, least of all the
Police.  And that's why General's so popular.

"Bean Slade, here, forced his name on us.  He has to stand up seven
times to make a shadow.  When the wind's ripping things to
kingdom-come we send Bean out to do the punching; he just turns
sideways.  Truth is, Bean's the lady-killer o' the bunch, that is,
when Dude's not in glamorous garb.  Oh, Bean's the sly one.  There's
only one lady in ten miles here, and Bean's her lady's-maid.  Meaning
nothing vulgar," he added hastily at sight of Bean's glowering brows.
"Even in town Bean looks at every female as if she's val'able china
and li'ble to be broke."

Stamford, conscious of his incapacity to reply in kind, solemnly
shook the offered hands; which tickled them.  The Dude first rubbed
his palm on the side of his chaps, General Jones pumped his arm until
his head shook, and Muck Norsley murmured something he'd heard
somewhere about being glad to meet him.  Bean Slade muttered a
sheepish "Ta-ta!" and preferred his package of cigarettes.

The frowsy-headed cook thrust his face through the back doorway and
announced that "chuck" was on, and, in the fading light of a late
summer night--where the sun sinks about ten o'clock in
mid-summer--Stamford seated himself before his first meal with a
family of cowboys, a bit uncertain of the good taste of dining with
an unwilling host, but determined now to carry the adventure to the
end.

Throughout the meal, which seemed to Stamford's hungry but as yet
fastidious taste to consist largely of pork and beans, with a later
stratum of pie, there was a disposition among the others to show off,
developing quickly, as Stamford's interest grew, to an effort at fun
at his expense--not meanly, but with a twisted idea of sustaining
their reputations before a tenderfoot.  Stamford felt something of it
but, not knowing how to receive it, concentrated on the meal.  In
that he unconsciously did well; so that when the pie was well washed
down with strong coffee he remained the butt of their fun, but with
less malice than before.

Muck Norsley's appetite seemed insatiable.  When the others had drawn
back and were smoking the package of cigarettes that was a special
recognition of visitors, he continued to munch at the last piece of
pie--his fourth, Stamford was certain--swallowing noisily from his
coffee cup, the spoon held in the practised crook of his first finger.

"Muck always was delicate," said Dakota, by way of apology.  "Don't
you know, Muck Norsley, that it ain't good manners to eat when
everyone's through?"

"Everyone ain't through," replied Muck.  "I ain't.  It mightn't be
good manners, but it's good pie.  Anyway, this is supper, not
sassiety.  If that isn't so, tell yer pal and fellow-villain to take
his feet outen my coffee."

Alkali pushed his feet further on the table, brushing aside the
dishes, and relit his cigarette.

"You big lubber, you!" yelled Muck.  "Can't yer see this is comp'ny?
You know yer dassent do it when we're alone, you--you insult ter
decency!"

"Muck," warned Alkali gravely, tossing the match over his shoulder,
"yo know how easy I'm roused.  I've et bigger men'n yo fer breakfast."

"Alkali Sam," returned Muck, with equal gravity, "I ast yer tuh
remove them blots on the innercent habits o' the H-Lazy Z seminary
fer perlite young ladies.  I don't often ask twice."

Alkali ostentatiously loosened his Colt.

"Here, Dakota, take this toy while I'm good-tempered.  We ain't got
time fer no funeral."

Stamford caught the wink that accompanied Alkali's toss of the
revolver before his face, but it did not prepare him for the
explosion that filled the room the instant it touched Dakota's hand.
The bullet whistled so close that he ducked.

When he straightened, Dakota was looking into the smoking muzzle of
the Colt with an air of intense surprise.

"Funny things, guns!" murmured the foreman.

"Darn funny!" growled Stamford, taking fresh hold of himself.

The smile he saw flitting over the faces of the cowboys had warned
him that he was the victim of a bit of gun-play dangerous in the
hands of less expert gunmen than Alkali and Dakota.

Muck Norsley swept his hand over the table, scooping up a sample of
the flies that had all through the meal been robbing Stamford of some
of his appetite, fished two from his coffee, and carried them to the
door, where he gravely released them.

"I never did like the flavour of them flies," he muttered.  "Now over
in Dakota they come----"

During his absence at the door Alkali had liberally replenished the
supply of flies in his cup, and Muck, noticing the disturbance in the
liquid as he was about to swallow it, promptly despatched it into
Alkali's face.

Before he could defend himself, Alkali was on his shoulders, punching
wildly.  Muck heaved himself to his feet, caught Alkali about the
waist in a bearlike hug and, burying his face in his tormentor's
stomach, seemed to be eating him alive.

Alkali beat himself free, howling all the time, and rubbed his
stomach as if in terrible pain.

"Gi' me the gun, Dakota, gi' me the gun!  Quick!  I'll fill the
ring-boned, wind-galled, spavined son-of-a-gun so full o' holes----"

"Alkali always was fluent," applauded Dakota.

The two men were fighting round and round the room, striking
awkwardly, cursing, bunting with their heads.  The others retreated
to the two doorways and the corners, making no move to separate them.
Stamford circled the table with bulging eyes; he had never seen
anything so furious and brutal before.

Alkali fell over a chair, and Muck, seizing another, whirled it
aloft.  But Alkali squirmed beneath the table, grabbed Muck by the
feet, and brought him down with a crash.  Seated astride him, he
leaned over his victim, punching with both fists.  Muck struggled
vainly for a moment, then seemed to give up in sheer weariness.
Alkali gave a blood-curdling yell and jabbed his fingers at the
helpless man's eyes.

In the dimming light Stamford seemed to see the horrible gouging as
in a dream.

"Stop him!  Stop him!" he screamed.

Alkali whooped his triumph and reached to the table for a knife.
High above his victim he drew it back, gloating over the blow that
would clench his victory.

"Not by a darn sight!" yelled Stamford, hurdling a fallen chair and
kicking with all his might at the uplifted wrist.

Alkali uttered a howl of real pain and clambered to his feet.  To
Stamford's bewilderment Muck followed him, grinning, but sidling
between the irate Alkali and his new foe.  The injured man cursed
volubly, holding his wrist with the other hand, then he plunged
toward his gun, which lay on the table.  But Bean Slade's long leg
flashed out, and the gun rattled away to a corner.

"Yu got what was comin' tuh yu, you goat.  Swallow yer medicine.
Thought yu was puttin' it over on the li'l fellow, eh?  Looks 's if
he's got the last laugh."

"He's broke my wrist!" howled Alkali, hopping about.

"Get out!" jeered Bean.  "Yer shure a soft bad-man.  A li'l scrunt
like him put yu out o' business!  Haw!  Haw!"

Stamford was squirming beneath a burden of chagrin at the revelation
that all the time they had been poking fun at the tenderfoot.

"Funny thing, feet!" he murmured, contemplating his small shoes.

"Darn funny!" growled Dakota.

Stamford slept at the ranch-house and took his meals in the
cook-house.  It suited him perfectly--in spite of flies and
mosquitoes.  His search for health was accepted without question
among cowboys who imagined that poor health was the curse of every
tenderfoot, the dose being multiplied in one of such limited
proportions.  General Jones expressed the conviction that a month of
roughing it would make him so eager for "home and mother" that bad
health would look attractive by comparison; and Bean slyly suggested
that what Stamford needed to buck him up was a few more
rough-and-tumbles like the lickin' he gave Alkali.

Dakota looked into his guileless eyes and ridiculed himself for
having tried to get rid of him.

Early next morning, before Stamford had made up for the sleeplessness
of the first part of the night in a lone house on the prairie,
surrounded by a million shrieking coyotes, a conference took place in
the cook-house.  The result of it was reported in part to him by the
information that he and Bean Slade and the cook would have the ranch
to themselves for the next few days.  Stamford asked a few questions,
but his ignorance of ranching deprived the replies of most of their
significance.  For four days, therefore, he and Bean developed the
strange friendship that had commenced with Dakota's personal attack
in the shooting-up of Medicine Hat, and had been strengthened by the
scenes of his first evening on the ranch.

At the end of that time Dakota returned with three strange cowboys in
the best of spirits.  The three strangers, Stamford learned, were
other members of the outfit whose work was in more intimate touch
with the herds.

"Ten bucks for you, Bean!" Dakota announced jubilantly.

Stamford looked his enquiry.

"He's raisin' my wages fer lookin' after you," Bean explained; and
everyone laughed.




CHAPTER IX

COCKNEY'S MYSTERIOUS RIDE

Long after midnight of the short summer night, Cockney Aikens and his
wife drove up to the Provincial Hotel, the team in a lather but Pink
Eye with lots of the devil left.  Mary climbed down and pounded up
the night clerk, and Cockney, given the stable key, took the team
back himself.

As he emerged from the lane leading to the stables, a Mounted
Policeman, riding in late from patrol, pulled up before him and
stooped to see his face.

"What's on at this hour, Cockney?"

The big rancher straightened furiously.

"Say!  Some day I want to get somewhere where a bunch of interfering
red-coats aren't dogging my steps."

The Policeman laughed.  "I'm afraid you'll have trouble doing that in
this country."

"Then I'll go back home, where a man's his own boss."

"It didn't seem to suit you so well when you were there."

"What do you mean?"  Cockney's tone was almost a bellow.

"Sh-h!" soothed the Policeman.  "Everyone's in bed but ourselves.  I
suppose if you'd liked England so well you'd have stayed there.  No
one in Canada sent for you, did they?"

Cockney wheeled about and stalked up the Provincial steps, the
Policeman watching him until the door closed behind him.

Cockney Aikens hated the Mounted Police.  In all his life nothing had
so roused the depths of hatred usually dormant in his big body.  If
one came within sight he swore beneath his breath--or aloud,
according to the company.  He thought and spoke the worst of them,
and his unqualified dislike was unwilling to accord them any credit,
would grant no conceivable purpose they fulfilled.  On the trail he
passed them without so much as nodding, and the very few patrols that
wandered at long intervals to the vicinity of the H-Lazy Z avoided
the sullen hospitality of its owner.

The cause of this settled hatred was as simple and unreasonable as
that which lay at the root of most of Cockney's emotions.

Early in his career in the Medicine Hat district, when he was "going
the pace" more recklessly than since his marriage, one of his
uncontrolled orgies of drinking and gambling had brought him hard
against the red-coats, and he had learned what a ruthless wall they
are for wrong-doers to butt against.

Medicine Hat was not a wild town, as cow-towns go.  Drinking that
threw a man on the street in a condition dangerous to himself or
others was discouraged with a firm hand, but gambling, so long as it
kept under cover, was winked at by the town policeman as the least
objectionable of the many vices common to a section that lived
largely on its nerve.

Whether there was more in it than that for the policeman was open to
question.  Poker, and other card games of less skill and more
manipulation, were available to anyone who knew the ropes.  A daring
stranger to town had reported to a local friend, who happened to be
an usher in the Methodist Church, that the town policeman himself had
directed him to a game in progress--but this was challenged when it
came up before the town council.  One resort, the basement under a
barber shop on Toronto Street, was Cockney's favourite den; and, with
the gambling instincts of the Englishman, and copious additions
developed within himself, his evenings in the fetid atmosphere of
smoke and whisky were times of fever to more than himself.

One night, unlucky, urged to stake more than he had ready money to
meet, he emerged from the den in a vile temper, convinced that the
cards had been stacked but unable to prove it before a crowd of
blood-suckers frankly hostile to him.  At the moment the town
policeman happened to be on his rounds in that quarter, and in sheer
wantonness, Cockney banged his helmet into the roadway; and when the
policeman seemed to show resentment, he was tossed after his helmet.
But a Western policeman, town or Mounted, faces such contingencies
with the donning of his uniform, and Mason returned to the attack
with drawn baton.  Mason, baton and all, proved scarcely exercise for
big Cockney Aikens.

Unfortunately two Mounted Policemen, attracted by the crowd that had
trickled up from nowhere, arrived on the scene.

It was a brave struggle while it lasted, and four bodies ached from
it for several days, but it ended with Cockney securely locked in the
cells.  _In the cells!_  The big fellow came to himself and cried
like a child.

But his shame was only commencing.  Next morning the scene of his
disgrace was transferred to the police court, where Cockney, with
bowed head, scarcely heard the sentence of fifty dollars or thirty
days.  He realised it when he discovered that his account at the bank
was drained to the last ten dollars to pay the fine, owing to heavy
recent drafts thereon in settlement of his winter accounts and the
purchase of new stock for the ranch.

_And there remained unpaid his gambling losses of the previous night._

That was most terrible of all.  When that afternoon he slunk from
town with forty dollars of gambling debts recognised only in IOU's,
his shame was complete.

In his mind the Mounted Police were entirely to blame.  Before they
interfered he was having only an exhilarating frolic with Mason.  It
was that strange hold of one of the red-coats--it almost broke his
neck, and twisted his arm so that it still ached--that did the thing.

And so, with the capacity for stubborn hatred that required much
rousing but defied conciliation, he never forgave them.  They had
besmirched his honour--for four months he was ashamed to show himself
in the den under the barber shop--and nothing could remove the stain.
He would grind his teeth and swear that if a Mounted Policeman were
dying at his feet for a glass of water he would not stoop to give it
to him.

When Cockney entered their bedroom in the hotel he was too angry to
speak.  Mary was waiting for him, thoughtfully rocking in an old
rocker that was supposed to make cosy a room that had outlasted its
decorations and furnishings years ago.  He glanced at her swiftly,
but whatever she had in mind, his sullen mood seemed to alter it.

The clerk knocked and enquired if anything was wanted.

"Yes," cried Cockney, "a big whisky--straight."

His wife studied him anxiously as she went about preparing to retire.
The hideous life that would be hers for the next few days was
commencing earlier than usual.  Yet she was thankful to be there to
look after him.

Me seized the glass when it was handed through the crack of the door,
stared at it a second, and placed it on the washstand untouched.

"I'll be away for a few days," he told Mary casually, as he washed.
"You'd better sleep in; it's been a stiff day for you."

"You've had seventy miles of Pink Eye to hold," she reminded him.
"You need the rest more than I do."

He laughed bitterly.  "Rest?  There's no rest for me now for--maybe
for months.  I'll be back about--about Saturday, I think."

She knew the folly of asking questions, but she noticed that the
whisky was not touched.

She seemed to have been asleep only a few minutes when she felt him
lean over and gently kiss her.  She did not open her eyes until he
was fully dressed in his ranch clothes.

"Don't worry," he muttered, seeing she was awake; and went out on
tiptoe.  Though it was broad daylight, no one was yet stirring about
the hotel.

When she awakened later and realised how thoughtlessly in her
weariness she had let him go without trying to wring from him his
destination, she dressed hurriedly and went to the stables.  Pink Eye
was gone--Pink Eye, like his master, untirable.  It made her
thoughtful, and with thought came a sigh that deepened the lines
about her eyes.

On Saturday he returned.  He rode quietly into the stable yard,
handed his horse to the ostler, and sought his room.  He was
clear-eyed, but heavy with fatigue.  Without undressing he dropped to
the bed and was asleep before Mary could draw the curtains.

Out in the stable Pink Eye was as weary as his master.

Mary Aikens went into the streets, and in the post office heard the
latest gossip--a new case of cattle-thieving off toward Irvine.  For
hours she walked up and down the streets with a terrible ache at her
heart.

That night her husband sent her to a show in the "opera house," while
he broke loose up in the Toronto Street den and lined the pockets of
the usual sharpers on the look-out for reckless fools.  Through a
wretched performance she sat without grasping even its general idea,
miserable, lonely, trembling with indecision.  On her return to the
hotel she borrowed a railway time-table from the hotel clerk and took
it to her room.  For a long time she sat rocking, staring into space,
her face pale, her little fists clenched in the fight she was making,
and at last carried the time-table down unopened.

She hungered to get away from it all, to sink her streaming eyes in a
mother's lap, to feel about her arms that sympathised without
questioning.  But her pride, and a curious feeling about Jim, kept
her to the duty she had undertaken when she stood beside Jim Aikens
at the altar.




CHAPTER X

STAMFORD'S SURPRISES COMMENCE

Cockney and Mary Aikens returned home to find Morton Stamford
established at the ranch.  He had enlisted Bean Slade's special
interest in an effort to maintain himself in a saddle long enough to
sink asleep at night, sore but happy, with the thrill of having
ridden a horse.  For his use Bean had selected a broncho burdened
with the name of Hobbles, "because she acts that way," Bean
explained.  Not a cowboy on the ranch would bind himself to Hobbles'
limited capacities--more correctly, to Hobbles' mild manner of
getting about.  When Stamford had learned that the horn was not a
handle, he discovered, as he thought, unsuspected resources in
Hobbles.  He confided it to Bean.

"Humph!" replied the cowboy.  "Yu can't tell me nothin' about
Hobbles' speed.  She can cover the ground, but look at the way she
does it.  No self-respectin' cow-puncher wants to get about in a
rocking-chair--an' that's about how much life _she_ has."

So Stamford was content to reserve Hobbles' unconventionalities for
himself, convinced that under his developing horsemanship Hobbles and
he might yet be able to face a ten-mile ride without quailing.

His reception by his host and hostess was bewildering in its
fluctuations.  At first Mary welcomed him with enthusiasm that was
almost pathetic.  Cockney closed his lips and went about the chores
in the house necessary after a protracted absence.

"I guess the Provincial meals got too much for me," Stamford
explained.  "My doctor prescribed rest, exercise, no worry.  It's the
cheapest treatment I ever took.  I remembered your invitation, Mrs.
Aikens."

Cockney examined his wife with raised brows.

"Or rather," Stamford hastened to correct, "the invitation I twisted
your words into that day at Dunmore Junction.  Already I feel
rewarded, not only in a new vigour that has made me almost
reckless----"

"Don't let your recklessness run away with you."  advised Cockney
quietly, pausing in his efforts to blow the kitchen fire into a flame.

"Already," continued Stamford, "I can ride--_ride_.  At least, to-day
I stuck to Hobbles for ten minutes, and almost chose my spot to fall
on.  Only I didn't see the cactus.  If you don't mind, I'll eat off
the piano to-night."

"I can assure you, Mr. Stamford," said Mrs. Aikens, "that the H-Lazy
Z will be your debtor as long as you can stay.  Jim will say the
same."

But Jim did not say the same--at least not then.  Though Bean Slade
and the cook had arrived from the cook-house, Cockney bore the brunt
of the kitchen fire.  He remained bent over it, blowing and watching,
until the flame burned bright.

"There isn't a ranch in the country closed to strangers at any time,"
he said, slowly rising from his knees and bending to brush them off.

A sensible embarrassment filled the room.  Stamford felt the chill of
it, but the look he surprised on Mary Aikens' face prompted him to
ignore it.

"Of course there's danger of a tenderfoot out-Westing the West when
he gets started," he said lightly.

"Don't worry," said Cockney, more genially.  "We'll hold you to the
conventions."

Stamford was indignant inwardly.  Though he had made himself
Cockney's guest to prove his faith in his host justified, he felt a
twinge of shame at accepting such lukewarm hospitality.

"You know, Mary, I thought I noticed a difference in the last issue
of the _Journal_."  Cockney's spirits were unaccountably rising.  "It
seemed newsier, better written."

"I suppose," said Stamford, "like an old employer of mine, you
consider editors necessary evils to justify the existence of the
advertising man.  Smith will get along all right with the _Journal_.
I figured that an anæmic paper for a few weeks is better than a dead
editor for a long time--at least from my point of view.  In my
efforts to uplift Western journalism I seem to have pitted a puny
constitution against a vigorous tradition that all stomachs look
alike to the Provincial.  This little body was beginning to buck."

Mary Aikens had brought from town another visitor, a small
fox-terrier that Cockney had picked up somewhere, he did not remember
where.  He only knew that when he woke one morning he was forty-seven
dollars out and a fox-terrier in.  Mary was delighted.  It surprised
her that she had not thought of it before.  Cockney was less
enthusiastic.  He was oppressed with sundry misgivings of the manner
in which he had come by the dog, and out there on the Red Deer was no
place for a miserable little creature no decent coyote would make two
bites of.

Imp had accepted the ranch from the moment of his arrival as his own
special possession, and its occupants as created for his exclusive
amusement.  He was as keenly interested in the rousing of the kitchen
fire as was Cockney, considered Bean Slade a rather boring plaything,
favoured Stamford with a tentative sniff, but for his mistress had a
deep though undemonstrative affection.

Dakota Fraley lounged over from the bunk-house and stood in the front
doorway, tapping on the frame to attract attention.

"Here's something you'll be interested in, Dakota," called Mrs.
Aikens.  "I managed to get a couple of Montana papers for you.  Why,
look at Imp!"

Imp, christened more in hope than descriptively, was crawling to
Dakota's feet, head outstretched, tail invisible.

Dakota smiled.  "They all do it.  Never seen the dog yet didn't get
on his belly to me.  Here!  Up you get!  Better go back to your
missus; she's jealous."

The dog raised himself obediently, but with cringing body, and slunk
back to Mrs. Aikens, where he seated himself sideways in the shadow
of her skirts, watching Dakota.

"Just came to tell you, Mr. Aikens, that I'd best get Pink Eye out of
harness instanter or he'll get himself out, and mess up the ranch in
doing it."

Stamford remembered then that, in the fever of his new ranch life, he
had forgotten to shave that day.  He excused himself and retired to
his room, which adjoined the sitting-room on the ground floor.
Cockney went with Dakota to the front door.

"Thanks, Dakota!" he was saying.  "Pink Eye's going to make a driver
all right.  I may use him a lot.  He's got----"

The rest of the sentence was drowned in the closing of the door, but
more of their conversation came to Stamford through the open window.

"Get those cattle, Dakota?"

Dakota shouted to Pink Eye before replying:

"Found a dozen or so."

"Far away?"

"Down toward the railway--east."

The cowboy busied himself pulling Pink Eye to an even keel.

"Funny thing happened," he said.  "Spooky rider got through the
night-hawks the first night and pretty near stampeded the bunch.
General got a shot at him--a big fellow, the boys say, riding a devil
of a broncho--but we couldn't find any trace of him when it got
light....  We found some tracks though," he added slowly.

There was an appreciable period of silence before Dakota went on: "I
got my eye peeled for him.  He'll be bucking better shooting eyes
than General's next time."

The whip cracked and the buggy rattled off to the stables.  Stamford,
peeping through the window, his cheeks in a lather, saw Cockney look
after the retreating team a moment, then strike away to the stables.

Shaved and freshly clad in a white tennis shirt, Stamford emerged
from his room and found Mary Aikens superintending the preparations
for the night meal.  Bean Slade was peeling potatoes, a big grin on
his blushing face, and a large blue apron before him that Mary had
insisted on tying under his chin.  The cook from the ranch cook-house
was mixing something on the table, while the mistress was diving into
cupboards and shelves with the stores she had brought from town.

She hastened to meet Stamford in the sitting-room, a strange
constraint in her manner.  While she nervously set about laying the
table, he occupied himself with Imp.  He wondered what she had to say
to him that required so much courage.

"I'm afraid you'll find time hang heavily on your hands here."

She was leaning across to straighten a corner of the tablecloth, and
he could not see her face.

"I'm not afraid of that," he replied, giving Imp a poke.

"We've--we've never had visitors before."  A flush stole softly into
her cheeks.  "You've selected the last ranch to suit your
purpose--though it's healthy enough, I suppose.  The Double Bar-O
now--there are young people there.  And the Circle-Arrow further
east."

Apparently he was busy poking Imp's fat sides, but beneath his brows
he glanced at her again and again as she spoke.  For some sudden
reason she did not wish him to stay.  That suspicion determined his
course.

"In five days," he declared, "there have been no premonitory twinges
of lonesomeness.  And if, with only three of us on the ranch for
three days----"

"Only three?  What do you mean?"

"Bean Slade, cookie, and I--that was all."

"Weren't----  Where were Dakota and the others?"

"Down south somewhere--Irvine way, I think they said, in search of
strays."

"O-oh!"

She stopped on her way to the kitchen and turned into her bedroom.

Stamford became suddenly aware of Bean Slade's lanky, blue-aproned
figure lolling in the kitchen doorway.

"Yer shure lucky," said Bean, "gettin' the missus to cook yer meals,
'stead o' cookie.  Mebbe we'll miss yu--fer the meals.  Not to say
cookie here ain't a real shuff when he likes, but he don't like
nowhar 'ceptin' here at the ranch-house.  Look at that, now!"  He
turned to watch the cook relentlessly pursue a stray fly that had
managed to squirm through the screen door at the back, where a great
number of its fellows, attracted by the odour and heat, were
jealously prying about for entrance.  "One measly li'l insec' gi's
him the pip here; out at the cook-house he can sarve flies
twenty-seven different ways without overlappin'.  But lookee here,
Mr. Stamford"--he leaned into the room and spoke in a whisper--"don't
yu go fer to tell all yu heard us croakin' out there.  The boss
mightn't like it."

Stamford felt a glow of elation that Bean, in his innocence, had
furnished him with a clue, but before he could follow it up, Mary
Aikens came thoughtfully back and went about her work.  Bean slunk
back into the kitchen and nosed about for his own special fly.

Mary was in the act of reaching to a cupboard, when her hand stopped
and she turned to the window.  An exciting sense of nervousness and
unrest about the ranch made Stamford's heart leap.  He moved
restlessly in his chair.

"Listen!"

The dull thud of hoofs and the rattle of wheels drew them both to the
door.  A buckboard was coming drunkenly down the eastern trail, its
horses, under the direction of an inexpert--or drunken--driver,
uncertain of what was expected of them.  The smallest deviation from
the beaten track meant that one horse was mounting the ridge and the
other the prairie at the side, the wheels following them in jerks
from the deep ruts in the black loam worn by the unanimous track of
every previous vehicle and horse.




CHAPTER XI

THE FOSSIL-HUNTERS

Stamford raised his eyes from the wobbling wheels to the seat of the
buckboard.  Instantly he felt, rather than saw, that it was the
Professor and his sister.  Beside him Mary Aikens was puzzled, with a
nervous mingling of surprise and amusement.  With the instinct of her
sex her hand went to her dark hair, and a quick eye fell to the
spotless apron and moved on to her neatly clad feet.

When the buckboard was near enough to make out the Professor's
extended hands on the lines, his fierce concentration on the horses'
ears, his braced feet, and the threatening bounce of his body as the
wheel mounted the ridge, the spectators in the ranch-house could not
control their laughter.  For the sake of politeness Mary temporarily
withdrew.

With several stentorian and anxious "whoas" the buckboard came to a
stop at the end of the gravel walk, and Isabel Bulkeley, with a sigh
of relief, bounded out.

"Amos," she announced, "hereafter _I_ drive."

The Professor, an amusing figure of mingled satisfaction and relief,
protested.

"Now _I_ think I did that rather well.  Take the exact end of the
walk and the centre of the buggy--I'm not more than a yard or two
out.  It's that left horse that dislikes me.  I feel as if I must
expend myself on that line--and the other horse responds too.  When I
get time I'm going to invent a separate line for each horse--if only
for the use of amateurs.  As it is now, if one horse is of a contrary
disposition----"

He had leaped over the wheel and was diving a hand into a box in the
back of the buckboard, rummaging among bits of rock.

"Isabel!  Isabel Bulkeley!  Where's that Allosaurus vertebra?
Oh--yes, here it is.  Goodness, how it frightened me!"  He raised his
head and beamed on them through his large spectacles.  "Do you know,
I don't believe I've lost a thing--except confidence in my driving."

An enormous handkerchief emerged from his coat pocket and mopped his
forehead.  The hand that held the lines gripped them so firmly that
the horses were backing on him.

"Whoa!" he shouted, pulling harder.  "Mr.--Mr. Stamford, will you
give to this equine problem the touch I seem to lack?  If you don't,
I'm going to drop these flimsy bits of leather and take the brutes in
my arms.

"Some day," he went on, when Stamford had taken the reins, "I hope
posterity will unearth the bones of that brute on the left--and grind
them to dust.  Yes, I do.  Sometimes I can be really blood-thirsty.
But," he grinned, "I wouldn't be surprised if they found mine at the
same time, with Gee-Gee--what funny names you give your horses!--with
Gee-Gee sitting on my chest enjoying his last laugh."

Mary Aikens, her eyes brimming with tears, had rushed to meet Isabel
with a hungry welcome that was pathetic, seizing her hand in both her
own; and Isabel, after a moment of surprise she could not conceal,
flushed a little and responded with moisture in her eyes.  But the
few moments of the Professor's dilemmas had served to conceal the
little scene that recorded more of the story of Mary Aikens' lonely
life than she would willingly have exposed.

They were standing now, hand in hand, laughing on the two men.  To
Mary it was enough that, for the first time, another woman was to
cross the threshold of the H-Lazy Z.  Isabel was still, Stamford
thought, the fond sister who took as much amusement as anyone from
her brother's artlessness.

She turned to her hostess.  "This is not merely a flying visit, Mrs.
Aikens.  Amos--my brother--was dissatisfied with his searching down
the river.  We hoped you wouldn't mind letting us camp on your ranch
here while he pokes about the banks."

Beside the buckboard Professor Bulkeley was making the same request
of Cockney, who had come hurriedly up from the stables.

"The Double Bar-O--that is, I believe, the technical name--seems to
have been unpopular among dying dinosaurs and their forbears.
Whether one should infer from that that they avoided the locality as
unhealthy, or found it so healthy they couldn't die there, does not
appear in the evidence.  All I found there we know as much about
already as about last year's weather or the origin of mumps.  The
further I prodded west, the more promising the outlook.  This bit of
bone, for instance, is, I believe, of the Upper Jurassic period.  The
Double Bar-O region is by comparison disreputably modern--not earlier
than the Miocene.  This bone appears to be blood-cousin to a
megalosaurus we received once from England.  It has all the----"

"I'm not quite following you, Professor."  Cockney was struggling to
keep his face straight.

"No, no, of course not.  I'm--I'm apt to forget there are _people_
live in the nineteenth century.  I suppose they have their purpose in
the scheme of life--for our progeny of the five-hundredth century to
worry about, perhaps."

As he was speaking he was pulling from the buckboard the canvas and
poles of a tent.

"What's that?" asked Cockney, with a frown.

"Our tent.  If we could pitch it somewhere along the bank of the
river here----"

"You can pitch it into the river--and that's all."

"But we----"

Cockney kicked the canvas off the trail, drew a cigarette and match
from his pockets, lit them in a leisurely way--and dropped both into
the canvas.  A second match he struck and calmly held to a loose
corner.  The cloth, dry and brittle in Alberta air, smouldered a
moment, then burst into flame.

Stamford solemnly leaned over the blaze to fan it with his hand.
Mary stood laughing.  Isabel was divided between alarm and wonder.
Only the Professor seemed undisturbed.  He stood watching the growing
blaze with interest.

"As a raw backwoodsman I would suggest starting the blaze on the side
toward the wind."

Stamford followed the suggestion with success.

A heavy smoke rose and swirled about them, pungent and stifling.  The
Professor whiffed it once or twice and turned his back on it.

"Fancy, my dear, thinking of living in a tent that smells like that.
I can't imagine any other form of fumigation being sufficient."

"Now," ordered Cockney, "take your suitcases into the house."

The Professor looked at him admiringly.  "I wish I could express
myself like that.  Sometimes I find the language of the lecture-room
not exactly suited to buying oatmeal or getting a tooth filled.  He
means, Isabel, that we must be his guests, in spite of ourselves.  On
him be the blame."

Cockney burst into a laugh that startled the horses.

"I don't see why you shouldn't find old bones about here, Professor.
We seem to have pretty nearly everything else anyone wants.  We've
opened a sanitorium."  He nodded at Stamford.  "Might as well add a
seminary.  From to-day the H-Lazy Z ranks as a public institution."

There was nothing offensive in the tone, but about the laugh was a
suggestion of recklessness.

"Of course," stammered the Professor, "I'd be delighted if--if----"
He cleared his throat.  "General--I mean, Inspector Barker warned me
not to suggest it, but I feel I owe it to myself and to the
professional nature of my visit to express the hope that--that if
there's any consideration----"

"If you suggest such a thing again," interrupted Cockney, angrily
looking the Professor up and down, "I'll carry you down and drop you
in the river."

The Professor, retreating before the blaze of indignation, tripped
over the board edging of the gravel walk and fell.

"I meant no offence," he stammered, where he lay.  "It's only my
Eastern ignorance, you know."

Cockney reached down and jerked him to his feet.

"Gad!" he exclaimed.  "What a waste of muscle!  You fellows with
brains teeming with junk scorn the good things the Almighty has given
you.  Here's Stamford dying to have one little fibre of the sinew you
ignore--and you thinking only of a lot of old bones that can't affect
the price of cattle.  Well, heigh-ho!  Give me a month of you and
I'll show you new things in life to glow over.  You've the stature.
Maybe you'll learn out here to use it."

The Professor turned to bow over Mary Aikens's hand, and she flushed
with embarrassment and pleasure at the courtesy.

"Your husband has offered to share with me some of the fine things of
life on the prairie," he said.  "It is a prophecy of the scope he
has, that I see before me the woman who shares that life with him."

Stamford recalled with a malicious twinkle a moment of intense
chagrin in Inspector Barker's office.

"How ingenuous!" he murmured sweetly.  "How simple and sweet and
natural!"

The Professor's face went red.  Isabel's eyes were dancing.

"I owe that to the Professor," Stamford explained to Cockney and Mary.

"One of the things I don't share is my wife," Cockney observed
abruptly, and drove away with the buckboard.

Dinner--the night meal was dinner where Cockney gave the orders--was
such a time of pleasant chatter and merry banter as the H-Lazy Z had
never dreamed of, though there was a recurring element of constraint
that puzzled Stamford.  Cockney was a mass of varying moods, now
laughing uproariously, now moody and watchful; and all the time Mary
Aikens was rent by the conflicting emotions of delight, and of
sensitiveness to her husband's humours.  Afterwards Bean was
dismissed, and the two women undertook the kitchen work.  Cockney and
Stamford smoked, the former the inevitable cigarette, the latter his
short curved pipe.  The Professor did not smoke; he seemed to have
missed most of the habits of man.  While the two others talked in the
detached but perfectly satisfied periods of smokers, he drifted to
the piano and turned over the music.

And presently, so softly and smoothly that no one seemed to know when
he commenced, his fingers were moving over the keys to a quiet
refrain he had picked up from the pile of music on the piano.  When
Stamford looked up, suddenly conscious of the melody of it, it was
not the Professor he saw, but Mary Aikens standing in the doorway to
the kitchen with the dish-towel in her hand, tears in her eyes.  So
close to the surface had the unexpected arrival of guests brought her
emotions that she did not know she was showing them.  Stamford heard
Cockney draw a sharp breath, and the next instant his host stumbled
up and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

A gentle knock interrupted the Professor before he noticed the
consternation his wandering fingers caused.  The latch lifted and
Dakota stepped inside, fumbling his hat, his hair oiled flat from a
centre parting, and a pair of fluffy angora chaps held up by a belt
several holes tighter than was his wont.  He stood there,
embarrassed, looking from one to another.

When the music ceased Cockney came from the bedroom.  He laughed
noisily when he saw Dakota.

"Come in, come in, Dakota.  This is civilisation as the old H-Lazy Z
never looked for it, eh?  Guess you and I will have to take to our
glad clothes to keep in line."

There were no introductions--that would have added to the
embarrassment of the uncomfortable cowboy.

"'Dakota!'" repeated the Professor interrogatively.  "Does it so
happen that you come from my own country, the land of the free, where
floats--but, ahem! this is not Decoration Day.  I can see from the
light in your eye that you understand.  May I have the honour of
shaking your hand?"

Dakota intruded no objections, though he grinned foolishly.

"Your parents little thought," rambled on the Professor, "that the
name they gave you in the cradle would be your password the world
over.  With no offence to my host and hostess, and this eminently
agreeable gentleman on my left, I feel that I can take you to my
heart--or wherever people take their friends.  I must see more of
you, my countryman."

Though the flamboyancy of it was flagrant, and delivered with a
twinkle, Dakota felt an inclination to expectorate, but bethought
himself and coughed behind his hand.

"By the way, Mr.--ah--Dakota, now that I have you two residents
together, I must take advantage of it.  We have long known that the
banks of the Red Deer River are replete with interest for the
paleontologist.  The region around the Double Bar-O was
disappointing.  Perhaps your acquaintance with the rocks about here
will prepare me for what I will find."

"Looking for old bones, Dakota," explained Cockney, with a grin.

Dakota turned his eyes suspiciously from one to the other several
times.

"Seen a few bits o' stone that might 'a' been bones once," he
growled--"not such a lot o' them."

"You no doubt are as familiar as anyone with the banks hereabouts?"
suggested the Professor.

"I shore oughta be.  Seen every blessed foot on both sides for a
matter of fifty miles or so a million times."

"Ah!  And you've seen the fossils?  Where, may I enquire?"

Dakota felt for a cigarette, found he had neglected to put them in
his new clothes, and put a match between his lips instead.

"Seen a few to the east----"

"But I've covered the ground myself rather well in that direction.
It's the west I'm most interested in.  It was several hundred miles
to the west, this side of the town of Red Deer, where my hated rivals
of the American Museum of Natural History made their discoveries----"

"Not a da--I mean a durn thing to the west, mister," Dakota broke in
firmly.  "All I ever seen in that direction was within three miles,
or at least four.  Lots o' them down here just where the cliff
starts, enough to keep you going a dozen summers."

"Do you mean you'd advise me not to go further west?"

"You'd be wasting time, that's all."

"Where are the fords--or the ferries--or however one crosses the
river?"

Dakota glanced furtively up into the Professor's guileless face and
looked across at Cockney before replying.

"Course there ain't no ferries.  Never saw a blessed bone on the
other side anyway."

"The only ford about here," volunteered Cockney, "is a mile or so to
the east."

"West it's all canyon," added Dakota.

"By the way," asked Cockney, "do you ride any better than you drive?"

Professor Bulkeley shrugged his great shoulders.

"I regret to admit that it's not one of my few accomplishments."

"Not ride?"  Dakota broke into a relieved laugh.  "Then you don't
need to worry about anything further away than four miles--you'll
never get there.  You can't drive over these prairies, you know.
They ain't as smooth as they look.  Wait till you've tried it."

"I _have_ tried it," groaned the Professor feelingly.

"Dakota," said Isabel shyly, "_I_ ride--only a little, I suppose,
compared with your Western girls."

"I knew you did, miss," said Dakota gallantly.  "I could tell from
the cut o' you.  But I bet"--he looked the Professor up and down with
professional eye--"I bet I could have him riding in a week--only I
ain't got time," he added hastily.  "I know the shape when I see it.
Now, the tenderfoot here"--Stamford squirmed--"he'll never make a
rider.  Ain't got the right-shaped legs, nor the body-swing.  The
minute I seed you----"

He became conscious of his unusual loquacity and stopped.

"If you'll teach me Western ways of riding.  Dakota," smiled Isabel.

The cowboy grinned and rubbed his hand across his lips in sheer
delight.

"Shore, miss."  He looked up at the clock.  "Is it too late now?"

"They're going to be with us for months, Dakota," laughed Mary
Aikens.  "We mustn't unfold all our pleasures the first day."

Dakota rose to go, started to stretch, bethought himself, and
addressed Cockney.

"About them staples, Mr. Aikens.  We can't do much more to the new
corrals till we have 'em."

"I forgot them in town, Dakota.  We'll have to send one of the boys
in for them."

When Dakota was gone Cockney addressed the Professor.

"I wouldn't advise you to try to ford the river in that buckboard."

"I wouldn't advise me to try it without the buckboard," laughed the
Professor.  "A bath-tub of water gives me a panic.  And I'd never
feel satisfied if I didn't cover all the ground."

"If it wouldn't be too late then," said Cockney, "I'd let you find
out by trying.  It's safe enough if you know the trail, and the river
isn't high.  Better learn to ride."

The Professor glanced guiltily at his sister.

"Amos," she reminded him sternly, "you said you'd learn."

"Isabel," he replied, "I'm funking."

"Let me give you the recipe," said Stamford.  "You take Hobbles--it
must be Hobbles; she's used to it by now--you take Hobbles to where
the ground's soft.  You get one able-bodied cowboy to hold her head
and another--_you_ might need two--to lift you into the saddle.
Close your eyes, breathe the quickest prayer you know ... and brush
the dead grass off your clothes where you landed.  The cowboys'll
catch Hobbles.  One little secret I haven't yet told anyone: sneak
your feet from the stirrups while you're praying.  It's far easier to
fall then."

But the Professor shook his head stubbornly.

"It wouldn't be fair to the Institute to risk losing those old bones
out there on the rocks by risking these bones.  That, you see, is the
comparative values of the products of the Mesozoic and the Quaternary
periods.  It may be a distortion, but it's my job."

"Then," declared Stamford firmly, "you're not going to save your
bones and risk your sister, until we've tried the ford without her.
I'm going with you myself."

"How ingenuous!  How sim----"

Stamford raised a warning finger.

"Not that, Professor, not that!  To date we're even.  If you reopen
the feud, I swear I'll have the last word, if I have to leave it set
in type."

The Professor's eyes twinkled about the room.

"If my dead body is picked up among the cliffs, here's the murderer.
I can't always be sure of having Isabel along to protect me."

"I'm afraid, Mr. Stamford," said Isabel, "he's grown rather dependent
on me."

"Then he can't learn independence earlier," persisted Stamford.

"And he's going to need it some day," laughed Cockney.  "There are
other men, Miss Bulkeley."

"The necessity for concentration in a task like mine----" began the
Professor.

"Doesn't excuse selfishness," Stamford filled in.  "To-morrow I'll be
your assistant.  We'll risk our valueless lives together on that
ford.  The little man has spoken."

"Such a quaintly practical way of expressing his devotion to your
sex, my dear!" said the Professor to his sister.




CHAPTER XII

STAMFORD GOES FOSSIL-HUNTING

They did not go fossil-hunting on the morrow.  Instead, the Professor
preferred to spend much of the day with his countrymen at the
cook-house, while Isabel hunted Dakota up and took her first lesson
in an art of which she had little to learn.  Stamford, feeling
unaccountably out of things, sulked under the pretext of reading.

He was oppressed with a sense of the futility of his mission, where
so many side-issues were so much more vital than the purpose of his
visit.  Just what that purpose was he had to revive by sundry
uninteresting reminders.  Of mysteries about the H-Lazy Z there were
enough to encourage the hope that some day the big thing he was
searching for would stumble into the light--and he must be there to
see it.  Cockney's innocence was not so assertive now as it once was;
perhaps in his foolish idea of proving the Police wrong he would only
convict himself.

The Professor was frankly extending his information about ranch-life,
and the humorous twists to his queries and replies immediately made
him a favourite with the cowboys.  They tried to express their
approval by teaching him to ride, hunting out Stamford at last to put
him through his paces as a sample of one week's lessons.  The
Professor shook his head.

"The difference between us is in the results of failure.  A man of
his size scarcely ruffles the grass where he lights.  The
seismometers at my own Institute would record my unseating as my only
epitaph worthy of note."

Dakota and Isabel whirled down the slope, Dakota liberally applying
his whip without gaining ground.  Right on top of the group about
Hobbles and Stamford they drew up, so close that Hobbles herself
reared a little.  Stamford promptly slid off on his back.

"Hobbles," he chided, "we were showing off.  I'm disappointed....
I'm also surprised.  I'd clean forgotten a horse rears, though I've
seen it in pictures.  Dakota, should I wrap myself round the pommel
when she does that?"

But Dakota was too busy with troubles of his own.  When the two
riders pulled up, Isabel was off first.  With an angry flush she
snatched Dakota's quirt from his unresisting hand.

"If you use your whip once more, Dakota, I'll never ride with you
again.  I don't want to call you a brute, but I got quite as much
speed out of my horse without punishing him."

Dakota was staring down into her indignant eyes, too surprised to
speak.

Stamford cocked an eye at him.  "When you hang and quarter him, Miss
Bulkeley, I'd like you to save those chaps.  I think they'd become
me."

Isabel's anger had already fled before Dakota's helplessness.  She
laughed apologetically.

"It's all right, Dakota.  I suppose I'm not used to Western ways.
But I won't get used to that."

Dakota took off his Stetson.  "Not used to them!  By Samson, miss,
there's nothing in the West can beat you!  If you could come along
with us on the ranges we'd show you life.  We're going to be busy out
there for the next couple of months."

"Couldn't I come?" asked Isabel innocently.

Dakota looked at the other cowboys, and they all laughed, without
explaining.

"Can I come along in my buckboard?" queried the Professor.

Dakota elaborately explained the work of the ranges--_too_
elaborately, it seemed to Stamford--and the Professor and his sister
listened with evident interest, the former asking foolish and wise
questions that brought equally varied replies.

"I'm coming out here to the cook-house often," gushed the Professor,
as the call came to lunch.

"Shore!" chorused a half-dozen voices.

"And bring your sister," said Dakota.

"We're your debtors for the summer," bowed the Professor, backing
away.

"I do love the native," he enthused to Stamford, on the way to the
ranch-house.

"The funny part of it is," laughed Stamford, "that Dakota and the
H-Lazy Z outfit are the only cowboys about who _aren't_ natives.
They're your own countrymen."

"Mr. Stamford," chided Isabel, looking slyly at her brother, "you
have a drab soul.  Why can't you let Amos enthuse?  It's what he
grows fat on."

"Is it a prescription you're giving me?" asked Stamford.

The next morning, feeling a little foolish in his new rôle of
gallant--as the Professor called it--Stamford stretched his
five-feet-odd on the seat of the buckboard beside the towering
six-feet-three of his tormentor.  Down the river trail, and thence
along the edge of the rough beach rock below the corrals, the
skeleton buggy bounced eastward to the only ford west of the Double
Bar-O.  The one consolation to the injured pride of the smaller man
was that his companion insisted on letting him drive.  Stamford had
always considered his accomplishments with the reins as born of
necessity rather than of experience, but the Professor frankly
refused to expose himself to his own driving.

"I'd even let Isabel do the driving," he confided, "if it weren't
that I'd rather die a man's death than live a male baby with a female
chaperon."

The ford was used only at long intervals as access to pastures across
the river.  It was plain enough at its southern entrance to the river
flood, but to those who did not know it the course thereafter was a
matter of conjecture.  Stamford drove into the water with more
trepidation than he allowed himself to show, anxiously searching the
torrent ahead.  Mid-stream the water bubbled through the slats of the
buckboard, and the team, terrified by the prospect, pulled up.
Stamford urged them on, but Gee-Gee leaped against his mate, forcing
him into deep water.  The buckboard would have overturned were it not
built for almost any situation into which a horse might force it.
Stamford stood up to get a shorter hold of the lines, but the
Professor swept him back to the seat with one strong arm and took
control.  Immediately the team seemed to find bottom and courage
together.

As they climbed the gently sloping grade on the north side, the
Professor lifted his hands and stared at the reins.

"Goodness!  How did I get them?  Did you--did you give them to me?  I
hope I didn't use force.  Honest, Mr. Stamford, I never did such a
thing in my life before.  Was I very frightened?  Don't tell the
women, please.  I'm horribly and disgustingly proud."  He squared his
shoulders.  "Say! with practice I believe I could get on to the hang
of the thing.  Let's get the practice right now when my spirits are
high.  We'll do that crossing again.  It looks shallower up this way."

Before Stamford could voice his protest the team was around and
re-entering the water.  With much waving of arms and shouting they
completed the double passage of the river in safety by a better route.

"There!"  The Professor handed the reins back and mopped his forehead
with the big handkerchief.  "I'm more puffed up than when they
Ph.D.'ed me.  Will you be good enough to steer for that bulge in the
cliff?  I like the looks of the flexure there."

All day Stamford yawned and slept and tried to read, and opened his
eyes to the blazing sky and heated rocks.  The Professor, his round
spectacles pressed close to the ground, poked off among the rocks.
At lunch-time he reported his delight at the prospects and could
scarcely stop to eat, though he managed his share easily enough when
he started.  In the evening they drove back over the ford, Stamford
hot and irritated, the Professor gushing with anticipation.

"You know," he said, "I wonder _more_ neurasthenics don't give this
climate a chance at them."

"Good heavens!  You don't think I'm a neurasthenic?"

"No offence, I hope.  I knew you were here for your health, and I
couldn't see----  You'll forgive me, my dear fellow, but I've dabbled
a little in medicine too."

Stamford had not prepared for enquiry into his symptoms.

"I'm just generally run down--overworked, I suppose, trying to
stiffen the legs of a dying newspaper."

"You were lucky to have such old friends as the Aikens to see you
through."

"But they're _not_ old friends--very new, in fact.  I happened to
meet Mrs. Aikens one day at a railway station; she invited me out."

"Ah, Mr. Stamford!  Those railway stations!"  The Professor's big
finger was wagging in his face.  "Must I remind you that Mrs. Aikens
is married?  Oh, you bachelors!"

Stamford jumped.  "Great Scott, man!  What in thunder has that to do
with it?"

The Professor coughed apologetically.

"I thought--well, anyone can see that Mr. Aikens is none too--too
eager, shall we say, for visitors.  I'm sure it can't be for fear of
his wife.  She seems much more--more thoughtful of him than he of
her--if one may be permitted to discuss his host and hostess.  I'm
sure I'd rather pay--or live in a tent, and be independent.  Dakota,
too--though he's a countryman of mine, doesn't seem overjoyed at our
presence.  May I ask if you received the same impression?"

Stamford chuckled.  "_You_ were lucky.  I had to face Dakota alone.
I'm sure my hair went a shade lighter from the first impressions _I_
received."

"Ah--I thought so."

The big fellow settled back in deep thought.  Stamford tried to
reassure him.

"There's no need to mind Dakota.  He's only a third partner and
doesn't really count when it comes to a show-down."

"But I'm vastly interested in Dakota," murmured the Professor.  "He
seems to have something on his mind--some worry."

"They _all_ do," Stamford blurted out.

"Ah!"

Stamford glanced from the corner of his eye at the Professor.  He
wanted to confide in someone.  Dare he tell his suspicions to the
simple friend beside him, who seemed to be stumbling on things.  He
decided against it; it would be no relief to himself and only add to
the Professor's worry.




CHAPTER XIII

THE CONSPIRACY

After dinner the Professor announced his intention of strolling
across to his friends at the cook-house, but learned from Cockney
that only Bean Slade was about the place, the rest having gone out on
the ranges for a few days.  Bean was finishing some needed repairs
about the ranch buildings, and was going to town in a couple of days
for the staples.

"Dakota has made a place for your team in the stables," Cockney said
casually.  "He's afraid to let strange horses loose in the corrals at
night: they might hurt themselves."

"That's thoughtful of Dakota," replied the Professor.  "I don't know
what Inspector Barker would say--he lent them to me, you know, as the
safest in Medicine Hat--because it must be stifling some nights in
the stables.  If I relieved Dakota of all personal responsibility I
suppose he'd let them run loose in the corrals?  Gee-Gee seems to
have a temperament that requires airing."

"The stables are not stifling," said Cockney shortly.  "Besides,
Dakota looks after that part of the ranch; I don't interfere."

Stamford took it outside and thought it over.

"I'd almost forgotten my daily ride," he said, entering the
sitting-room a few minutes later.  "I have a premonition that should
Hobbles lose track of me for a day she'll forget my weaknesses.  Will
you come and see I get fair-play, Miss Bulkeley?"

"Hobbles is in the stable, too," said Cockney, "also Miss Bulkeley's
horse.  The key's hanging inside my bedroom door.  Help yourself."

Bean Slade suggested that he, as teacher, accompany the two, but
Stamford waved him away with mock rudeness.

"You make me blush, Bean.  I'm taking Miss Bulkeley for an evening
ride--showing her the sights.  One of them may be when Hobbles
decides to trot, but I must chance that.  I usually last only three
trots.  Hobbles has the habit now of stopping at the third to let me
remount."

He bumped away, the perfect seat of his companion giving his
inexperience the laugh.

"I don't see how you do it, Miss Bulkeley, but if I could ride like
that I'd be a Mounted Policeman--if they'd take me in.  Too bad to
waste it in Washington.  If everyone in your city rides like you----"

"Don't talk about civilisation, Mr. Stamford," she rebuked.  "It
sounds so funny out here."

"Can I really be funny so easily?  Speaking about civilisation, did
you ever see anything to beat this locking up of our horses?  What's
Dakota afraid of anyway?  I'm a funny critter, Miss Bulkeley.  I
never had an ambition to ride Hobbles out of hours before.  Now I'm
wild to tear about this lonesome prairie at the most unconventional
hours.  If you'll turn your back you won't be accessory to a crime.
I'd ride away and turn my back to you, only Hobbles wouldn't leave
your horse now, and I couldn't make her.  I'm making a drawing of
this stable key.  Yours not to reason why."

He turned himself from her as much as he could and outlined the key
in his notebook.

"I was watching the sunset all the time," she told him when he had
finished, "and wondering."

"Don't wonder," he warned, with a sigh.  "I've started to, and I'm
getting more tangled every day.  Life was never like this before."

That night he made arrangements with Bean to go to town with him two
days later, and retired to bed with a virtuous satisfaction at having
beaten his favourite enemy, though when he thought of Cockney he had
twinges of conscience.

The second day of fossil-hunting with the Professor was even less
interesting and more wearying than the first.  There was a limit to
the hours Stamford could sleep, and the scorching heat among the
rocks made eyes and face sting.  After lunch he ended an
uncomfortable hour of dozing by hunting up the Professor.

He found him curled in the shadow of a rock, sound asleep, hammer and
chisel by his side.  Stamford struck the rock a ringing blow with the
hammer.  With a bound the Professor was on his feet.

"Oh--you, Stamford!  This heat--I guess I must have succumbed to
it--that and the drone of the mosquitoes.  Did you ever feel such a
blistering heat, or see such armies of mosquitoes?  I believe they've
been here all these years probing into these old bones under the
impression that they're succulent.  They've discovered their mistake
since I came," he added ruefully.  "Six weeks ago one must have had
to hack a way through them in this Edmonton formation.  In one short
week I've learned that the guiding star to some antediluvian monster
is the modern mosquito."

He seized his tools and began to hack a crevice.

"There's a rib here, a big fellow.  I'm having a great time tickling
it--but the big brute never quivers a hair--if he ever had any.  Down
there is a tooth.  Would you mind taking a look and reporting on the
quality of dentistry prevailing in B.C. a million?"  He sat back on
his heels.  "I envy the advantages of those to whom my bones will be
fossils.  Present palæontological graveyards have not to date yielded
up a single gold filling.  If you wouldn't mind chalking off any
outlines of bones on that patch of rock down there, you could feel
that your day was not wasted."

Stamford yawned, made a few desultory marks, and sat down.  The
Professor continued his hacking without bothering him further.

That night there was music at the H-Lazy Z; the banks of the Red Deer
canyon echoed for the first time to sounds prophetic of the day when
ranches will give place to farms, farms to towns.  Professor Bulkeley
played, until he felt every eye fixed breathlessly on him; then he
rose in confusion and insisted on Mary Aikens taking his place.  To
her accompaniment a chorus formed, but in a few minutes it had
dwindled to a duet.  Stamford and Isabel withdrew to a corner.
Cockney sat smoking in gloomy silence.  Even the yelping coyotes out
on the prairie ceased their shuddering clamour to listen--a space of
silence Imp did his resentful best to fill.

Stamford, seated by the screen in his room before climbing between
the sheets, heard the voices of brother and sister over his head.
After a minute he started to a guilty consciousness that he was
straining to hear what they said.  Noisily he jerked the window down.

It seemed to him that he had just dropped to sleep when Bean hammered
at the screen to waken him for the trip to town.

On the long drive Stamford found the cowboy little more inclined to
talk than was the youthful driver who had brought him out.  It was a
keen disappointment to the self-appointed detective, for he had
counted on Bean's affection for him providing the clues that were
evading him.  The lanky cowboy was willing enough to talk on subjects
of no possible interest to Stamford, but of the ranch he had nothing
to say.

However, when, the second day afterwards, he and Bean floated on the
ferry across the South Saskatchewan and climbed the cut bank toward
the northern trail, Stamford felt that his trip was not wasted.  For
one thing he carried in his pocket a duplicate of the stable key.
Also he had had a short conversation with Inspector Barker that clung
to the fringes of his consciousness.

"For an invalid, Stamford," mocked the Inspector, "you strike me as
no friend of the undertaker's.  If I didn't know your holiday was a
real loss in dollars and cents, I'd say it was undiluted laziness.  I
can't imagine anyone, after three months in this dollar-chasing
country, sacrificing cash for chronic fatigue.  Or is the fair Isabel
there?"

"How did you know?" asked Stamford amiably.

"That's the little birdie that tells secrets to us married men.  If
she hadn't come to the mountain, then the mountain----  How's the
Professor getting along with his new friends, the Red Deer dinosaurs?
What's more to the point, by the way, have you come across a pair of
big dogs that don't seem at home?"

"There's Imp," suggested Stamford.

"Who's Imp?"

"Imp is several degrees short of big--though he certainly doesn't
seem at home--unless Dakota's about.  Legally he belongs to Mrs.
Aikens.  As a matter of fact Dakota has him eating out of his hand.
The little chap attached himself to our rowdy friend at first glance.
Love at first sight.  Took to him like a mouse to cheese."

The Inspector was more than amused.  He asked so many questions that
Stamford realised how easy it was to make the little terrier
entertaining.  Some of the brightest things he determined to repeat
to Isabel Bulkeley.

On the return Bean was more talkative, without saying anything of
value for Stamford's purposes.

As they rolled, in the late afternoon, over the gently waving prairie
toward the Red Deer, Stamford's weary eyes caught a movement on the
top of a rise to the west.  It came once, and went, furtively,
Stamford was convinced.  Without seeming to watch he kept his eyes
fixed on the ridge, and after a few minutes was rewarded by the tip
of a Stetson, as if someone were lying down, peering over at them.
Bean was sleepily flicking the broncos.

When two more Stetsons appeared beside the first, he made his mind
up.  Calling Bean's wandering senses back to earth, he waved his
arms.  Instantly the Stetsons disappeared.  A moment later Dakota
loped over the ridge and down the slope.  He drew up several yards
away and beckoned Bean to him.  From the furtive glances in his
direction Stamford knew he was the subject of their early
conversation, Dakota questioning, Bean explaining.  Then they turned
their backs on him.  The owners of the other Stetsons did not show
themselves.

As Bean clambered back over the wheel Dakota shouted a last word:

"Get cookie to hustle a snack for you.  But hurry.  We'll wait.  You
can do it in a couple of hours."

Bean flicked the whip and they started for home on the canter.

"They aren't giving you much rest," sympathised Stamford.

"Naw," replied Bean shortly.

"The work about a ranch is certainly a surprise to me.  What does
Dakota want you for?"

"It's a hell of a life!" grumbled Bean.  Thereafter he kept his lips
closed.

An hour later Stamford was eating in the ranch-house, trying to
answer with intelligent flippancy the questions poured at him.  The
promise of the stable key burning a hole in his pocket was filling
his mind.  To outwit Dakota was his sole ambition at the moment.  If
he could get Hobbles from the locked stables----

Pleading fatigue, he retired early.  For some time he heard the
conversation in the sitting-room, subdued for his sake, and then the
stair door closed behind the Bulkeleys.  The sudden Western night had
fallen.




CHAPTER XIV

RIDERS OF THE NIGHT

Stamford, softly lifting the screen from his window, with the thrills
of a conspirator, climbed through and looked about.  Once before he
had stood in the midst of the darkened prairie, with no thought then
than that he was temporarily but not dangerously lost.  What lay
before him now he thought he had seen under every aspect from his
bedroom window.  But there was a difference--a very disturbing
difference.

Now, in the eeriest part of the vast prairies he was stepping into an
eery and illegitimate adventure.  Deliberately he was involving
himself in a situation that could bring no satisfaction but that of
counter-plotting, and, were he discovered, would expose him to even
worse suspicion than he deserved.  Most of the exhilaration fled with
the touch of the cold night air on his face; the rest of it went
before the vividness of his imagination.  He marvelled that a mere
key should have uplifted him so much, that a prospective ride at such
an hour should have gratified one to whom riding was at best nothing
more than an unpleasant education.

Had his knees not trembled he would probably have climbed back
through the window with a grin of shame at his foolhardiness, but
with terror tingling his scalp----  He closed his teeth and struck
out stubbornly round the corner of the house, avoiding the noisy
gravel walk.  Up the slope diagonally he crept, pointing above the
stables.  A sense of the necessity of concealment, and a dim thought
of future needs, impressed him so strongly that he scouted about for
a long time back and forth in search of the deepest of the scarcely
visible rolls he knew to mark the prairie everywhere.

Dropping down the slope then from above the stables, he applied the
key to the padlock.  His heart was beating fast, his fingers
trembling.  The night was crammed with terrors, and anxiety about the
fit of the key made him wonder what kink in his brain clothed an
adventure like this in attraction.

The key fitted.  He realised then that there was no honourable escape
but to go on.  Fate was a funny thing.  He looked back once toward
his window in the ranch-house, took a long breath, and stepped into
the utter blackness of the stable.  The horses sniffed, and for a
moment he tried to convince himself that he had accomplished all he
wished.

He knew Hobbles' stall, and, speaking gently, advanced in the
darkness.  By the light of a sulphur match which he struck under the
cover of his coat he found saddle and bridle and clumsily fastened
them in place.  Once off the wooden floors, the horse's feet met only
hard, soundless clay, and when he emerged into the night, leading
Hobbles, he was satisfied that he could not have wakened the cookie,
who alone, he thought, remained in the ranch buildings.  Pushing back
the loop of the padlock without locking it, he led off to the
south-east, avoiding bunk-house and ranch-house.

In the saddle he was more satisfied.  No longer was he alarmed, but
the exhilaration of exercising a new art alone in the night
determined him on one burst of speed.  Stopping suddenly at the end
of a few hundred yards, he turned his ear back with tingling veins.
Back there somewhere in the darkness he imagined the beat of a
horse's hoofs--and then sudden silence.  Twice more he repeated it
with the same result.

Convinced now that he was really frightened into foolish fancies, he
rode on.

Out before him a strange lightness in the sky attracted his
attention.  Five minutes later he could see dimly the lines of dead
grass on the crest of a ridge.  Riding slowly up a slope, he looked
over.

Four hundred yards away, in a deep coulee, a fire was burning.  The
bottom in which it was kindled was carefully chosen for concealment,
and Stamford thrilled with excitement.  Between him and the flames a
bunch of cattle was kept in hand by a temporary corral, two
silhouetted cowboys seated on the top rail.  About the fire more
cowboys were struggling with a steer that lay on its side, and the
smell of burning hair carried to Stamford's nose the work of the
branding irons.

He wondered what mystic night rites he was invading.

Seeking a nearer approach than was possible from that direction, he
rode back down the slope and skirted about to the opposite side.
That side, the south, suited him better, too, for the reason that, if
he were detected, he would not seem to have come from the ranch.

Leaving Hobbles with dropped rein in another coulee, he climbed to
the ridge.  There he could see everything.  Though he knew next to
nothing of branding, and nothing whatever of its dishonest forms, the
hour of the deed, the silence of the operations, and the choice of
location, convinced him that it was intended only for the eyes of
those immediately concerned.

He had just settled down to watch the thing through, when from only a
few yards away rose the startling howl of a coyote.  The sound
galvanised more startling life into the group of cowboys.  Those at
the fire dropped their branding irons and rushed for their horses,
and the two at the corrals were in their saddles as the howl ceased.

Stamford tumbled down the slope and raced for Hobbles.  As he
clambered into the saddle he realised with a gasp how hopeless flight
was.  Even with such a short start he had confidence that Hobbles
could hold her own in the dark--but _he_ couldn't at such a speed.
Fifty yards convinced him of it--fifty yards of giving Hobbles her
head and concentrating on the horn in front.

He was considering what would happen when they caught him, when a
horse raced out of the darkness behind him and shot past--so close
that a skirt blew against his legs and he could hear a woman's voice
whispering to her mount.

So Mary Aikens, too, was out that night!  He forgot his fears and
raced on.

But escape was hopeless.  From the ridge came the thunder of the
pursuing cowboys--and then, close behind him, another horse.  It was
gaining rapidly, the quirt lashing again and again--Stamford could
hear its gushing breath at his hip....  And then he felt himself
pushed from the saddle with a force that threw him clear of Hobbles'
flying heels.  Over and over on the soft earth he rolled, uninjured
but too mystified and angry to appreciate it.  He was rising to his
feet to face his captor, when he realised that the rider who had
unhorsed him had not even paused in his pace.  Twice he heard the
quirt fall, and he remembered that as he left the saddle that quirt
had lashed over Hobbles' flank.  Without a rider Hobbles would make
the ranch.

A short hundred yards back pounded the feet of the pursuing horses.
Stamford crept swiftly out of their path and lay still.

When they were past he rose and started on the run for the ranch.
Vaguely he felt that in the speed of his return lay safety.  Reaching
the trail, he ran until his heart threatened to collapse; but he
would not stop to rest.

It was still dark when he topped the rise overlooking the ranch
buildings and crept carefully down toward the house.  Though there
seemed little danger of discovery, he kept to the depressions,
zig-zagging downward.  He was thankful to his instinct for
concealment when he suddenly became aware of someone standing before
the ranch-house looking up the trail--a woman.  He could make out no
more than the outline, but it must, of course, be Mary Aikens.  He
knew that she could have no desire to be discovered by him, and he
moved more slowly, waiting for her to go.

His foot struck an unexpected mound and landed him on his face.  As
he lay in the grass he saw her move swiftly away round the corner of
the house.  Both the front door and the window of the Aikens' bedroom
were in plain sight, but she did not enter either.  He ran on openly
then.

On the other side of the house no one was in sight.  He hastened to
the back, but the peg left by the cookie on the outside of the screen
door when he departed after his evening's work proved that no one had
entered there since.

Stamford leaned against the wall, completely mystified.  He looked
around, poking in the grass, yet without hope.  The woman had
vanished.

He remembered Hobbles and, gulping down a desire to cuddle into the
bedclothes, hurried to the stable.  The mysteries increased--_the
stable was locked_.  From the bunk-house came the noisy snoring of
the cookie.  With his duplicate key he let himself into the stable
and found Hobbles--_unsaddled_--as if she had never been out, though
her sides were still slightly warm.

Stamford crept out.  It was uncanny.

The soft padding of a horse down the slope to the east, far from the
trail, brought him to a sense of his exposure.  Diving between two
buildings, he waited.  The rider turned off toward the corrals,
evidently moving with caution, and a few minutes later Cockney Aikens
came round the corner of one of the buildings that concealed
Stamford, stopped a moment to listen to the snoring of the cook, and
passed on to the house.

His steps were still audible when another horse came along the same
course, but it did not turn off to the corrals.  Stamford slunk
further into his hiding-place as Dakota Fraley rode past and drew up
before the bunk-house.

To Stamford's amazement Bean Slade came out.

"Who in h--l's been riding about here to-night?" Dakota demanded.

"Nobody--not that I've heard," returned Bean in a whisper.

"You been sleeping so tight, I guess, it ud take a kick on the ear to
wake you."

"I heard _you_ far enough," returned Bean sharply.

"Bring the lantern."

Dakota dismounted.  Bean was a long time with the lantern, striking
several matches in vain.

"No ile," he growled, with a curse.

"Never mind.  I have matches."

Dakota tried the padlock, unlocked it, and entered the stable.
Stamford heard a match scratch and saw a momentary flare through the
cracks where the mud had dropped out.

"That shore beats me," muttered Dakota, as they came out.  "They're
all there.  Let's take a look at the corrals."

They went off around the stable, and Stamford, creeping out, slunk up
to the depressions in the slope that had become in one night such
good friends to him, and returned to the house.  He discovered that
he had left his screen out, and a few hardy mosquitoes that defied
the chilly night were buzzing within.  Imp's snuffling grunt came
from beneath the door and he opened it noisily and let the little
terrier in.  As he did so he thought he heard a gentle creak of
Cockney's door.  He smiled into the darkness and crept into bed, the
dog curled up at his feet.




CHAPTER XV

ONE MYSTERY LESS

It was after nine the next morning when Stamford's eyes opened on a
world that seemed out of focus.  He examined his watch incredulously;
the dink of breakfast dishes and the rumble of lowered voices
convinced him that it was wrong, and he dressed without hurry.

As he opened the door, the Professor, Isabel and Mrs. Aikens were
rising from the table.  The sitting-room clock told him that his
watch was right after all.

"These prairie nights seem too much for all of us," said Isabel, in
answer to his puzzled look.

"Except our host," corrected her brother.  "He's been gone an hour."

"It _does_ affect strangers that way," said Mary Aikens, without
looking up from the table she was rearranging for Stamford's
breakfast.

"It wasn't that with me," explained Stamford.  "I didn't sleep well."

"The drive was too much for you," suggested Mrs. Aikens.

"Perhaps Mr. Stamford had too successful a day in town," laughed
Isabel, watching him.

"Yes, it was successful," he replied, looking straight at her.

"Perhaps they're serving stronger stuff than they did a couple of
weeks ago," hazarded the Professor.  "By a chronometer that never
deceives, you've been in bed for the circle of the clock.  My limit
is eight hours.  Simple mathematical progression in comparative
physical proportions would grant to Imp here the whole twenty-four
hours, and a mosquito would overlap on the week after next and still
be the creditor of time.  But, lord knows, they never sleep.  In the
meantime some gently dead but brutally fossilised Trachodon is kept
waiting beyond his preconceptions of Doomsday for the resurrective
hand of the Smithsonian Institute."

Stamford yawned frankly.

"Really, Professor, I'm not quite up to that so early in the morning."

"Some day," said Isabel, "Amos will have had his say.  And the world
will be so still then."

"And so will science, and brilliant conversation----"

"Even our hostess is laughing at you," said Stamford.

"Me?"  Mary Aikens was colouring.  "I--I like this new life about the
ranch.  I wish I could keep you all--always."

Isabel leaned over and patted her hand, and a tear was behind the
smile.  Stamford, uncomfortable at the display of emotion, changed
the subject.

"And so you've been exposing your sister to that ford while I was
away?"

"My dear fellow," replied the Professor, "when did you come to the
conclusion that Isabel was here for someone else's amusement than
mine?  Of course, Mrs. Aikens, if she can be of real service to you
here----"

The door had opened.

"Don't worry about Mary," Cockney broke in harshly.  "Since Stamford
and the _Journal_ let us down in the matter of help, we're getting
accustomed to doing our work ourselves.  At any rate we haven't
fallen to depending on our guests.  Mary, where's the large pair of
wire-cutters?"

His wife loaded herself with dirty dishes and started for the
kitchen.  The Professor leaped to her assistance.

"I wouldn't disturb myself so much if I were you," said Cockney in an
even tone, so full of meaning that the Professor turned aside through
the stair door without a word.

"We'll have to go now."  Isabel started to follow her brother.  "The
ford's perfectly safe, Mr. Stamford," she threw over her shoulder.
"Anyway I can swim."

"What can't you do?  But you'd drown trying to save that blundering
brother of yours."

"But he's a perfectly nice brother, don't you think?"

"No," he snapped.  "I don't.  I wanted you to come for a ride."

"Thank you," she called back from the stair door.  "My next
engagement's with Dakota, I believe."

When the buckboard had disappeared round the lower end of the corrals
on the way to the ford, Stamford, more than a little uncertain of the
wisdom of it, made for the stables in search of some light on the
previous night's scene.  But no one was about, and he saddled Hobbles
and rode for an hour.

As he turned back, a solitary mess-wagon came into sight far along
the eastern trail.  Stamford's thoughts flew back to the cattle
shipping at Dunmore Junction, when the same mess-wagon, at Dakota's
command, drifted away into the lonesome northern prairie, leaving a
half-dozen of its companions rattling off down the trail for a night
in Medicine Hat.

Stamford found himself wondering now, as he had then.  He swung
Hobbles off to the south, and when the wagon had turned down the
slope to the ranch stables, he rode slowly back to the crest of the
slope.  The wagon had just pulled up before the bunk-house.

The driver was lifting several rifles from the wagon to carry them
inside, the other cowboys, who had returned while he was riding,
looking on.  Stamford's eyes gleamed with a sudden revelation.

That lonesome mess-wagon of the H-Lazy Z on the day of the double
tragedy had concealed the rifles the Police could not find.  Its
puzzling departure--Dakota's objection to feeding Mary Aikens at the
ranch mess-wagon--it was all clear now.

Down the slope he could see Dakota, Bean and several strange members
of the outfit watching him.  Whereupon he promptly fell off,
scrambled into the saddle again, and rode in clinging to the horn.

"You're shore conside'ble of a horseman," chaffed Dakota.  "If I was
you I'd patent that style and sell it to a circus.  Barnum's got
clowns not half so funny."

"We're always funniest when we don't suspect it," returned Stamford.
"I hope nobody will tell you the truth about yourself, Dakota; it
would spoil things for the spectators."

Dakota forced the frown from his face with a smile.  For some reason
he preferred to be friendly.

"You and me should mate up.  We could put on a show for the ranch
folks some night.  But you seem to be having fun without it.  We can
hear you out here.  Say, that Bulkeley gal shore can sing some, eh?"

Stamford resented words and tone.

"It happens that she never sings."

"Then it's the only thing she don't do.  You don't mean to tell me
it's the missus?"

"Mrs. Aikens has done all the singing you've heard."

"Holy Smoke!"  Dakota turned to his companions.  "Think of that.
It's more'n a year since she's opened that piano.  'Member when she
came first, boys?  Wasn't them fine concerts she gave us?  Then she
stopped.  Say, d'ye think, Mr. Stamford, they'd mind if I drop around
some night and just sit quiet-like where I can hear and see?  Us
punchers don't get much chance with music, 'cept what we make
ourselves."

"I'm not the one to ask, Dakota.  But I don't imagine----"

"By Samson!  I'll take the chance.  I don't think I look so awful raw
in them angoras, eh?  They cost me a handful of bucks in the days
when I was a gayer spark than I have time to be these days.  It's
about time I got something back for my money."

And so that night, after the singing commenced, Dakota sidled humbly
to the open door and stood outside the screen waiting to be invited
in.  Mary Aikens called to him.

"It sounds purty fine out there," he apologised.  "It's a heap sight
nicer close."

He carried a chair to the corner of the room, clutching his Stetson
nervously.  When Stamford thought of him again he discovered him deep
in conversation with Isabel Bulkeley, a wide grin on his face.
Stamford liked it so little that he looked no more until Dakota rose
to leave.

The next day, after his morning ride on Hobbles, Stamford had a lunch
put up for him and set out for the river to test the fishing.  A few
goldeyes fell to his rod in the first half-hour, and after that he
grew sleepy and leaned against a rock.  Across the river the cliff
towered raggedly above him, its strata a confusing repetition of
lines that merged into monotonous chaos.  Great clefts, gorges and
inclines cut the face of it into a less inaccessible wall than it
looked at a distance.  He became interested.  He dropped his pole and
sauntered up the bank.

Reward came suddenly.  Through a fissure in the cliff, that seemed to
open into a wider cleft further back, he caught a glimpse of a
familiar grey dress.  He was thankful then for the idea that had
struck him on his visit to town--that he might find use for his
pocket field-glasses.

Isabel Bulkeley was seated on a ledge, her back against a straight
wall, her hands folded idly in her lap.  Evidently she was dreaming,
though slight movements of her feet showed she was not asleep.  The
tools lay beside her, and, though Stamford watched for almost an
hour, she did not use them.  Of the Professor he saw nothing.  He
returned thoughtfully to his fishing, cast his line, and almost
immediately hooked a big pickerel.  Thereafter he forgot for a time
the very existence of the Bulkeleys.

On his way to the ranch-house Imp darted from the cook-house and fell
in at his heels.

"At any rate," he said to his hostess, "I've earned my feed to-day.
Four gold-eyes, one real pickerel--and Imp."

"For the fish, thanks!" laughed Mary Aikens.  "But for Imp I fear we
can lay the credit to Dakota's absence more than to your attractions.
We're alone again on the ranch, and even Imp, the traitor, finds the
ranch house preferable to a deserted cook-house.  No," she scolded
down at Imp, "I'm not prepared to receive you into my heart on such
short notice."  She turned suddenly to her husband.  "Where have
Dakota and the others gone this time?"

He shrugged his shoulders.  "Don't ask me.  My ignorance of ranching
is notorious.  Ah--by the way, it's good we have friends with us.
I'm going away myself for a few days.  I want to see how the
Circle-Arrow dogies are standing the gaff.  They've been on the
ranges for two months now.  Next summer I'm thinking of improving the
strain from the east....  You'll be all right with such brave
companions as the Professor--and Stamford."

A forced smile was scarcely wrinkling his face.  Mary Aikens made no
reply, but whistled to Imp and went out to frolic on the little patch
of dry grass she had once fondly hoped to be able to call a lawn.

Dinner over, Cockney rode away to the east.  They stood in the
doorway and watched Pink Eye race up the slope and sink out of sight
over the ridge.

"A wonderful man on a wonderful horse!"  Isabel Bulkeley voiced the
thoughts of them all.

"And yet you've seen me on Hobbles!" chided Stamford.

"That's why."  The Professor ducked beyond reach.

"Pink Eye is as vicious on occasion as he is powerful," said Mary.
"Cockney doesn't ride him much, but when he does I know there's a
hard trip ahead."

That evening a strange silence brooded over the valley; even the
coyotes failed to greet the falling darkness.  The Professor played a
little, but his fingers were lifeless, and, after a few bars, he
closed the piano and pulled his chair before the door to stare into
the night.  The women were busy with needlework; Stamford smoked and
thought.

Cockney's repeated absences, always coinciding with those of Dakota
and the others, puzzled him.  His instincts refused still to link the
big rancher with the subterranean work in which Stamford suspected
the cowboys were engaged, but----  Stamford closed his lips tight; he
was there to prove Cockney's innocence in the teeth of suspicion.

When he went to his room.  Imp shivered in at his heels and curled up
on the foot of the bed.  Once during the night Stamford was awakened
by the dog's muffled bark, and against the window he could see the
ears pointing stiffly out into the night.  Far away a big pack of
coyotes yelped, and, half-asleep, Stamford followed their rapid
passage along the crest of the cliff across the river.  Yelps and
barks and howls burst out in a score of places over the prairie.
Stamford reached down to rub Imp's ears and sank to sleep.

It was three days before Cockney returned.  They were at the dinner
table when they saw him ride up to the stables, unsaddle, rub Pink
Eye down with straw, and lead him away to the lower corral.

"Any of the boys back yet?" he asked, as he joined them.

When they told him only the cookie was about the place:

"Better keep quiet about where I've been.  Dakota's sensitive on the
dogie question.  Every year we fight about it.  He considers dogies
the blight of the West--that they lack more in stamina and size than
they make up in quality of beef.  My idea is to improve the quality,
not only the bulk."

Stamford was watching him narrowly.  That he was weary and hungry was
evident, and about his talk was an abstraction that belied the
seriousness of his subject.

"You have a few more ideas about ranching than you care to show," he
said.

Cockney served himself a third helping of pork and beans and said
nothing.

"Large men always wear masks," observed Isabel.

"And small men are as transparent as water, I suppose," complained
Stamford indignantly.

Cockney was playing with his knife.  "Perhaps Stamford knows he
couldn't deceive if he tried.  My personal experience of small men is
they're seldom up to what they wish to appear.  For instance,
Stamford is physically broken.  Would anyone suspect it?  He seems to
enjoy the aimless life out here, yet in town he works twelve hours a
day with gusto.  There's nothing to do about the Red Deer but loaf,
yet he's never indolent.  I don't try to understand them."

He had resumed his eating, but Stamford was uncomfortably conscious
of more than banter in his words.  Isabel spoke quickly:

"Anyone can see that Mr. Stamford's job is to sleep--and doze--and
sleep again."

"In order not to give offence----"

"You wouldn't willingly give offence," she broke in, with a laugh so
indulgent that to accept her words seriously would have been
impertinence.

"I wish you'd teach Mary how to say that," said Cockney.

"Perhaps," suggested the Professor merrily, "she knows you better
than Isabel does Mr. Stamford."

"Too often guessing is mistaken for knowing," said Cockney, looking
at his wife.


Dakota and Bean returned early the next morning, the others following
in the afternoon.  The Professor greeted them with unaffected
pleasure as he returned from his day's work; and after dinner he made
his way to the cook-house.  Imp was already installed at the
foreman's feet.  Cockney lit a cigarette and wandered off toward the
corrals, and Mary called for Matana and went for a wild ride, leaving
Stamford and Isabel to keep the ranch-house.  But Dakota drifted
across from the cook-house, whereupon Stamford was quite certain that
henceforth they were bitter enemies.

Indeed, Dakota developed such an annoying habit of spending the
evenings at the ranch-house that Stamford's hatred of him assumed
enormous proportions.  The cowboy took to daily shaving, and even
Stamford was forced to admit hitherto unsuspected traces of an
elemental comeliness.  When Isabel also seemed conscious of it, he
cursed beneath his breath with a small man's jealousy.

Dakota responded to the poorly veiled dislike in the safety of the
cook-house, whither Stamford repaired at every opportunity for the
purposes of his quest.

"You don't seem to like me, Dakota," smiled Stamford.  He knew the
memories it recalled.

"I always did hate dwarfs," snorted Dakota.

"You see," said Stamford, with mock humility, "there was so much good
left after you were created that it wouldn't have been fair to put it
up in big bundles.  I must have been turned out just after you were
patched together."

Dakota was not soothed by the loud guffaw from his companions.

"Some day," he warned, "I'll get you where we can talk it over real
friendly-like.  Let me invite you over to Montana, where the
shooting's good."

"Thanks!  I'm safer here."

"You're dead right there, youngster," agreed Dakota vehemently.

August was hastening to its end.  Stamford, in a panic, began to
realise how little he had accomplished.  He was oppressed with the
depth of his inexperience, and at moments considered seriously the
wisdom of handing over to the Police all the information he had
collected and getting back to his paper.  Though, the longer he
remained, the more he was impressed with the mysterious undercurrent
at the H-Lazy Z, he had arrived no nearer the solution of the murder
of Corporal Faircloth.  His tentative ventures to direct the
conversation to informative channels, whether with the cowboys or
with Cockney, were blocked by sullen silences or suspicious glances;
and it spurred him on in his most discouraged moments, though it told
him nothing of value.  He knew he was in the right place, but he was
growing less confident that he was the right man.

One day, having wandered far up the bank of the river with fishing
tackle in hand but a keener intentness on the opposite cliffs where
he knew Isabel Bulkeley was working with her brother, he saw, far to
the south-west, a galloping Policeman.  He mentioned it at the dinner
table.  Cockney bit off an oath in time and expended his fury on his
meat.  Professor Bulkeley did not seem to hear, expressing a regret
that he had been denied an opportunity of meeting "these fearless and
sparkling guardians of the law."

Cockney gave an audible sneer.

"You don't admire them, Mr. Aikens?"

"I hate them," Cockney exploded.  "If I saw them driven into a corral
and shot out of hand----"

"Jim, dear," Mary broke in gently.

His anger directed itself against her.  "Yes, you've been swallowing
the dope, like everyone else.  You women!  You can't resist the
glamour of them.  But, for Heaven's sake, keep it from me in my own
house!  I won't have it!"

He was almost shouting at the last, the very unreasonableness of his
outburst increasing his anger.  Mary sat cowering a little before it,
and Professor Bulkeley rose abruptly and disappeared upstairs.
Cockney's eyes followed him in a sudden silence, then he, too, got up
and stumbled out.

Mary Aikens, returning in the early darkness that night from a mad
gallop on the prairie, brought with her a bundle of papers handed her
by a rider from the Double Bar-O.  From copies of the _Journal_
Stamford learned that the cattle-thieving was becoming bolder.
Evidently Smith was doing good work on the paper, and the advertising
was holding its own.

He went across to the cook-house, the Professor strolling in later.
The Dude was induced to bring out his guitar, and accompany himself
to one of the sentimental ditties of the Montana saloons, the
Professor proving himself possessed of a remarkable ear for songs new
to Stamford and not in the tenor of Smithsonian Institute circles.
There were several mouth-organs among the outfit, and Bean Slade's
high tenor was a not unpleasing addition to the part-singing.  The
Professor was so exuberantly delighted with the entertainment that he
went to the door and whistled across to the ranch-house for his
sister.

She came immediately, laughing her way into the group with the subtle
touch of companionship that always breathed from her.  Stamford
immediately retired into his shell, resenting her frank friendliness
with these rough fellows, resenting their half-shy acceptance of it,
resenting more intensely Dakota's assumption that he represented the
things she liked about them.  Isabel looked at him under her brows
two or three times, with a sly smile about her lips that did not add
to his good humour.  And presently, when she and Dakota were talking
and laughing together, while the others went on with the desultory
entertainment, Stamford rose to leave.

"Oh, Mr. Stamford," she called.  "Don't leave the tenderfeet
unprotected.  We're going in a minute.  I was almost forgetting Mrs.
Aikens."

She smiled on Dakota and the others, and Dakota bowed low, hand on
heart.  In his enthusiasm he shook hands with the Bulkeleys, omitting
Stamford.  Bean's shy but inevitable "Ta-ta" was quite as full of
gratitude, and Imp barked a farewell that, by his snuggling wriggles
against Dakota's legs, was meant to say: "I appreciate the friendship
of the ranch-house, but it mustn't presume to interfere with my
_real_ love."

"What fine fellows those chaps could be!" muttered the Professor, on
the way to the ranch-house.

"They're that now," replied Stamford,--"except Dakota."




CHAPTER XVI

AN ADVENTURE IN THE MOONLIGHT

Stamford climbed into bed with a feeling of discomfort.  He always
knew beforehand when he would not sleep.  Even as a youngster the
aftermath of indigestible luxuries, nightmare, was heralded before he
closed his eyes by a feeling of oppression.  To-night he longed for
Imp's watchful ears at the foot of his bed.  Outside, the world was
dominated by the hideous yelping of the coyotes.  To Stamford they
were a symbol of Red Deer mysteries: though hundreds of them by day
lurked within the horizon, they were seldom visible; at night, when
only their eyes could see, they filled the darkness with raucous
clamour.

For a long time he struggled in vain to sleep, and at last put on his
dressing-gown and seated himself before the window.  The mosquitoes
had retreated before the cool nights, though the sun still brought
them to life in clouds by day.  He removed the screen and leaned from
the window.  Beyond the shadow of the house the prairie was yellow
now with a brilliant moonlight.

A distant sound of disjointed conversation drew his eyes to the
bunk-house.  A light still burned there.

Urged by sudden recklessness, he hastily donned part of his clothing
and climbed outside.

He found the prairie in another of its moods.  To-night the moon
blazed a spirit that ridiculed the proportions of darkness and day.
It seemed inconceivable that the slightest movement could pass
unnoticed in such brilliance, but this that he looked on was a new
world of silent majesty.  There were the old landmarks, but they were
altered in size and distance and relative location.  So plainly did
the cliff across the river stand out that it seemed within a stone's
throw, yet any attempt to decipher the familiar strata, the recesses
and projections, was defeated by a bewilderingly new mass of shadows
and high-lights.  The ranch buildings were crowding closer, and the
lazy movements of the horses in the corrals came sharp as pistol
shots.

Stamford stood for minutes, gripped in the clutch of the prairie by
moonlight.  His mind refused to turn from the scene; he was restless,
unsatisfied, undecided.  The light was still there in the bunk-house,
and at intervals he could hear the sound of voices.

Bringing himself back to realities by sheer force of will, he moved
round to the front of the house, clinging to the shadows.  Where they
ended he paused a moment to fix in his memory the concealing
depressions that stretched further up the slope toward the stables,
and then struck swiftly through the moonlight.

He was conscious of an ill-defined desire to conceal his movements
from the ranch-house as well as from the bunk-house for which he was
making, and he sank to the first cover with a sigh of relief.  After
a careful inspection in both directions through the long grass he
began to crawl forward.

Nearer and nearer he approached the bunk-house, though on a higher
level, without having once exposed himself--he was confident of that.
The voices grew audible, certain excited words coming to him, then
phrases.  A wordy quarrel was in progress, from which Bean Slade's
high-pitched voice projected itself frequently.

Stamford moved nearer, crept over several rolls to a hollow before
the bunk-house, and lay down to listen.

"Yah!" he heard General sneer.  "_You_'d 'a' let him go, _you_ would,
and got a bellyful o' lead fer yore trouble, you would."

"There was other ways o' gettin' out of it," protested Bean shrilly,
"besides doin' fer him.  It was damn brutal murder, I call it."

"Just 'cos _you_ cain't sleep, Bean," jawed Alkali, "don't mean yo
need to growl the rest of us awake everlastingly."

Dakota broke in imperatively:

"If you fellows don't shut your heads there's going to be trouble.
Here you been on that ole song, Bean, for the last hour.  What's the
good?  It can't be helped now.  Somebody had to shoot--not to say it
was meant to plug him for keeps.  Now shut up both of you.  We got
enough excitement ahead for a month or so without worrying about a
measly bullet or two."

Stamford hugged the ground, scarcely breathing.  Once more Dakota had
blocked him.  Another minute and he would have heard something of
moment, he was certain, though what it was he did not stop to
consider until, in obedience to Dakota's orders, the quarrel ceased.
He was not sure then that it was a case of any personal interest to
him.  Someone had once shot someone.  All he knew was that Bean
resented it, and that General was its strongest defender, whether as
the shooter or not was uncertain.

He knew of only three deaths by shooting since he arrived: Corporal
Faircloth, Kid Loveridge, and Billy Windover.  Corporal Faircloth's
death was not involved, since there could have been no danger of a
bullet had he been spared.  Kid Loveridge?  It was almost as
difficult to imagine that it concerned him, since he was one of the
outfit and its most popular member.  Of Billy Windover's death he
knew too little, and was too little interested to follow the
connection.

The light went out; silence reigned in the bunk-house.  But Stamford
lay there, forgetting where he was, riveting the conversation to his
memory for future reference.

A sharp, muffled bark from the bunk-house roused him.  He raised his
head cautiously and peered through the grass.  That was the precise
warning the dog had given twice from the foot of his bed.  What had
disturbed it this time?

The door of the bunk-house opened and Dakota came stealthily but
swiftly out, clad only in his shirt.  In his hand was a rifle.

His first glance was toward the ranch-house, but all the time he was
moving rapidly to the corner of the bunk-house, the rifle
half-poised.  Imp was there ahead of him, ears cocked, looking off
down the valley toward the corrals.  Stamford sank into the grass.

A burst of flame startled him, and then the crack of the rifle.  It,
too, was pointing down the slope toward the corrals.  Stamford forgot
caution and raised himself to look.  But he could see nothing save
the melting moonlight that never fulfilled its promise of exposing
details.

Dakota returned to the bunk-house even more quickly than he had come.
A few excited whispers followed, and then silence once more.
Stamford began to work his way back to the ranch-house, suddenly
aware of how shivery he was.

He had but started, his eyes searching the line of retreat, when he
saw Cockney, fully dressed, appear from the shadows of the house,
pass into the moonlight-bathed side where his bedroom window was, and
climb through.  Stamford hurried on.  But before he reached the point
where he must cross the open, Cockney reappeared and slunk into the
shadows.  An instant later Mary Aikens, in a dressing-gown, clambered
through the bedroom window and crept timidly along the moonlit wall.
At the corner she cautiously peered round after her husband.

Stamford could see Cockney outlined against the moonlit prairie
beyond.  He was standing with his face turned to the ranch buildings,
as motionless as the other shadows.  After a moment or two, with
sudden decision he wheeled about and began to retrace his steps in
long strides.

Mary Aikens turned and ran for the window, but she was too late,
unless----

Stamford stood upright and spoke:

"Did you hear it, too, Cockney--the shot?"

Cockney stopped in his tracks, hand on hip.  And his wife disappeared
over the window-sill.  Stamford stepped across the moonlight to the
shadow of the house.

"Stamford"--Cockney's voice was full of menace, though it was quiet
and low--"you'd better not butt in."

"I'm sure----" Stamford recognised the futility of talk.  "I heard
the shot and----"

"I've warned you," said Cockney, and entered the house by the front
door.

Stamford stumbled thoughtfully on to his bedroom window.  He was
throwing one leg over the sill when Isabel Bulkeley spoke suddenly
from over his head.

"I was wrong, Mr. Stamford."

He was as much startled by her presence there as by anything else
that had happened that night, and he did not reply until he was safe
in his room.

"You--you frightened me, Miss Bulkeley," he gasped, leaning out to
see her.

Her low laugh made him himself again.

"How _could_ you be wrong?"

"You certainly do more than sleep--and doze--and sleep again.  Here
you're strolling out when everyone else is asleep."

"It's very lonely," he hinted.

He felt that she was laughing in the silence that followed.

"There are more reasonable hours for a moonlight promenade than ten
minutes to one in the morning--even in _such_ moonlight."

"Any hour of the moonlight will suit me," he said,--"if I'm not
alone.  What wakened you?"

"When two men stand outside one's window quarrelling, a light sleeper
is apt to waken."

"Didn't you hear the rifle-shot?"

"Sh-sh!" she whispered.  "I think I hear Amos.  If he wakens he'll
not sleep for the rest of the night.  And he must have his eight
hours.  Good-night, Mr. Stamford!"

The little man cursed the petty weaknesses of the big brother.

"Miss Bulkeley!  Miss Bulkeley!"

But her window lowered, and he could hear her move away.

With throbbing heart, unaccountably happy, he threw off his clothes
and crawled between the sheets.  The clandestine good-night echoed
sweetly in his ears.  He could die like that----  But that was
getting maudlin.  He pulled up an extra covering and settled to sleep.

As in a dream he seemed to hear, far to the west, the thud of a
horse's hoofs.




CHAPTER XVII

THE HOWL OF STRANGE DOGS

Sleep trifled with him--beckoned him on, only to elude him
maddeningly.  He spoke sternly to himself in language favoured by the
cowboys.  The fact was that he was frightened, and he knew it.  A
sense of impending events held his body tense and his ears strained.
Reasoning with himself that it was only the result of the night's
rapid sequence of mysterious incidents did not calm him.

For minutes he strained away to the west after those strange hoof
beats, only to relax, disgusted at himself for yielding to the
imaginings of his tingling nerves.

From the direction of the bunk-house he imagined he could hear at
intervals Imp's muffled bark--and then the gripping silences of the
most silent places in the world.

After a long time the coyotes gave tongue again in their long,
shuddering yaps.  Strange how reassuring they were that night--that
hideous yelping that always before made him shiver!  Stamford sank
into a sense of momentary security.  He slept.

He wakened to find himself seated upright in bed, trembling,
straining with eyes and ears.  Something terrible was happening
outside.  Yet there was not a sound.  In a flash he knew.  His
sensitised ears were still echoing with the comforting yelps of the
coyotes, but at the moment it was as silent as if not another force
but himself existed in all the world.  He knew that he had wakened at
the moment when a great hand seemed to have gripped a thousand wild
throats to silence.  A hundred times before he had heard the same
uncanny burst of silence.  But now----

On his elbow he rested, scarcely breathing.

Outside--in the house--even down in the corrals where several
restless bronchos always hitherto in these startling moments of peace
had spoken audibly of life, was a breathlessness as strained as his
own.  The world was waiting--waiting.

Suddenly into the hush burst a solitary howl, a shattering roar that
seemed to mass all the wild things of the prairie behind one
tremendous throat.

Stamford's blood ran tingling to his scalp.  Every muscle was tense
against the inclination to shut the awful thing from his ears.  And
as the howl pulsed through the listening night, a second joined it.
Taking a deep breath, Stamford bounded from the bed.

He knew that cry.  It was the night-baying of huge dogs gone wild on
the trail, of such dogs as he had never seen.  Shivering before the
window, he listened.  They were running swiftly across the prairie
above the house, drawing nearer and nearer, their clamour shutting
everything else from Stamford's mind.  What were they doing there?
Where were they making for?

A commotion in the bunk-house brought his eyes in that direction.  A
pair of figures, trailing saddles, flashed out and ran to the
corrals.  And even in their haste their movements were furtive.  As
they galloped madly up the slope toward the oncoming dogs, Stamford
heard Dakota Fraley curse under his breath.  The hoofs of the horses
struck the prairie at first with only the hiss of dead grass, and
then the thud-thud of distant galloping.

The dogs were coming fast from the upper side of the house.  Stamford
braced his trembling legs, climbed through the window, and ran to the
back of the house where he could see the slope upward to the prairie.
Yard by yard he could follow their advance.  Almost as vividly he
pictured the rushing of Dakota and his companion to meet them.  Half
the world then for Hobbles beneath him!

Across the broken howls cut Dakota's bellow, and silence fell like a
blow.  A few seconds later came two sharp yelps of pain, and then
nothing more.

Stamford still stood in the cold night air, one hand pressed against
the wall of the house.  It was that hand warned him of movement
within the house.  With a vivid memory of Cockney's warning only an
hour before, he darted back for his window.

As he turned the corner a flicker of movement passed between him and
the lighted prairie beyond; but it was too quick to place.  Dragging
his fingers along the wall as he ran, his hand struck something that
gave before him.  Without stopping, he glanced upward.

A rope ladder was hanging from Professor Bulkeley's window.

A crunch on the gravel walk before the house sent Stamford on,
scarcely pausing to think.  Throwing himself over the window-sill, he
straightened up within his room and waited in panting excitement.

Fear crowded him in--threatened to stifle him.  Someone was out there
before the house--his ears told him that.  But a more thrilling sense
warned him that someone was in his room--that if he but reached out
his hand he would touch a living body.

"Sh-sh!"  The low hiss from beside him dissipated every element of
personal fear.  "It's Bulkeley!"

Stamford gasped.  Most prominent in the medley of feelings gripping
him was a desire to laugh hysterically.  It was so like the big
innocent fellow to present himself like that, as if they were meeting
in a game of hide-and-seek--nothing more.

"I'm f-frightened," came the stammering whisper again, as the
Professor's huge hand fell on Stamford's arm.

The steps before the house moved lightly round to the window.

"Are you awake, Mr. Stamford?"

Close to the house, just beyond range of the window, Mary Aikens was
standing, terrified, pleading for companionship and comfort.  The
Professor's grip tightened so convulsively that Stamford almost cried
out.

She must have heard the movement.

"What is it, Mr. Stamford, oh, what is it?"

Stamford wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her like a big
brother.

"It's only dogs, Mrs. Aikens--somebody's dogs on a coyote or antelope
trail."

He was trying to reassure her with his tone even more than with his
words.

"But it was so terrible--so threatening!"

"It's the way of dogs at night.  They're apt to revert to type at an
hour like this."  The Professor's grip relaxed.  "To tell the truth,
I'm far more thrilled than I sound.  It reminds me of sheep-hunting
dogs back East."

A low sob broke from her.  At the same instant the Professor hissed a
warning.

"But there are no dogs on the Red Deer," she sobbed, "none like that."

"The night magnifies them.  But where's your husband?"

"He went out--long ago----"

A gruff voice from the corner of the house stopped her with a gasp.

"Mary, when you've finished your midnight conversation with a man
through his bedroom window, we'll go to bed."

"Oh, Jim!  I was frightened.  I couldn't stay in there alone."  A
double terror was in her voice now.

Stamford ground his teeth in his impotence.  Cockney's big bulk
loomed before the window.

"Go to bed," he ordered.  "I've something to say to this
fellow--right now."

She moved quickly before the moonlit square of the window and threw
her arms about the big man.  Cockney made no resistance.

"Don't, Jim, please.  Come to bed.  Can't you see that I----"

The Professor's lips were close to Stamford's ear.

"For God's sake get him away; he'll murder us."

Stamford stepped to the window.

"Cockney," he said, "whatever you think of me is no reason for
forgetting yourself.  I'll be here in the morning."

The big rancher turned his head to look down on the small figure of
his pleading wife, took her arm without a word, and started away.
Stamford stood listening as they crossed the sitting-room and closed
their bedroom door behind them.

"Now," he demanded, turning on the Professor, "perhaps you'll explain
at least _one_ of the night's mysteries.  A little light might help."

He was fumbling about the dresser for the matches.

"No, no, please!" pleaded the Professor.  "There might be others
around.  I'll go back to my room in the dark."

"First of all you'll explain why you're here."

In the darkness his five-feet-four was not dwarfed by the extra foot
or so of the Professor, and the smaller man was in his own room and
had himself under better control.

"I'm afraid you'll--you'll laugh at me, Mr. Stamford.  I have
my--ah--little fancies.  We all have.  I suppose I'm more sensitive
to ridicule."

"There's a good deal more of you to be sensitive," Stamford sneered.

"Perhaps that's it.  Would it be--ah--too much to beg of you not to
insist?  You don't suspect me of intentions on your purse, I suppose.
As a matter of fact"--he giggled in a silly way--"I was on my way to
the furthest corner under your bed when you came in."

"Considering the fact that I found you in my room in the dark when
you are supposed to be in bed," persisted Stamford, "you'll agree
that not insisting is little likely to dismiss the affair."

The Professor cleared his throat gently.

"I throw myself on your mercy, Mr. Stamford.  I don't believe you'll
betray me.  When a lad of eight my home was burnt down.  My little
dog, Tony, and a pet kitten went with it.  It was terrible to me.
The fear of fire has clung to me ever since.  At home I always sleep
downstairs.  When I travel I carry a rope ladder.  If you look you
will see it dangling now from my window."

"Yes," said Stamford drily, "I did notice it."

"I know it's disgustingly foolish, but--ah--I was practising on it.
I've done it once or twice before since we came.  And then those
awful dogs--or were they wolves?--completely unnerved me.  I must
have lost my head.  You see, I've always with me such valuable papers
on my work, the destruction of which would be a loss to the whole
nation----"

"It doesn't happen to be _my_ nation," Stamford broke in coldly.

"Mr. Stamford, can I trust you?"

"That depends."

"I was going to crave that you'd take the responsibility of looking
after my notes--in this room."  He laughed apologetically, "In case
of fire they could be saved here."

Stamford had a sudden idea.

"And your sister--does she share your fears and--and practise on the
rope ladder?"

"Never, never!  Fear is a matter of mind, and to Isabel is not that
peculiar delicacy of mind that----"

A slight scraping sound against the side of the house stopped him.
There was a dull thud on the ground, and Isabel Bulkeley came swiftly
before the window.

"Mr. Stamford, I can't find my brother."  She was almost as agitated
as Mary Aikens had been a few minutes before.  "He's not in his
room----"

"Here I am, Isabel."

The Professor stepped quickly to the window and touched her on the
arm.  She laughed, with a tinge of hysteria none would have connected
with her.  Then the chaperone came uppermost.

"Amos Bulkeley, you come right to bed!  Don't you know you never
could stand the night air?  You'll catch your death of cold.  Is it
any wonder, Mr. Stamford, that I lose patience with him sometimes?
No, not a word, Amos!  You march!"

And Amos marched as he was told, his long, awkward legs struggling
through the window with ludicrous contortions.  Stamford, watching
with a smile in which was amusement and contempt, saw him carefully
place his feet in the ladder rungs, test the ropes, and begin to
climb ponderously upward.

He could not resist the opportunity.  Isabel was holding the ladder
for her brother to ascend.

"Miss Bulkeley, I'm so glad you came to me for help.  This is the
second time I've seen you to-night.  It's been a lovely night.  If
ever I can----"

"Thank you," she whispered back.  "I'll remember."

"Isabel, Isabel!"  The Professor was leaning through his window.
"Come right along now.  I'll hold the ladder.  Don't be a bit afraid,
dear.  Nothing can happen.  Just close your eyes and climb."

Stamford snarled up at the cooing voice.




CHAPTER XVIII

A CATCH OF MORE THAN FISH

Long before the guests appeared at the breakfast table next morning
Cockney was away on Pink Eye; so that there was nothing to fear from
him.  A singular and confusing reticence was on them.  Several times
the Professor cleared his throat as if he would speak of the things
they were avoiding, but he thought better of it each time and
continued his meal in silence.

Imp was there, slinking close to Mary's skirts wherever she went,
cowering, every bit of his chirpy impudence gone.  His mistress
reached down and rubbed his ears.

"He leaped through my window this morning and ran under the bed.  He
would scarcely come out.  If you'll tell me how I can keep you,
little fellow, I'm willing to try.  It's home in a storm, isn't it?
Dakota doesn't wear, does he?"

Imp waggled a lifeless tail and relapsed into obscurity.

A heavy knock startled them, and Dakota walked in.

"Mr. Aikens here?"

"He went away early, Dakota--perhaps across to the Double Bar-O.  I
know he was intending to see Mr. Gerard soon on business."

Dakota's eyes were roving about the room.  Imp tried to slink to the
other side of the concealing skirts, and Dakota's face lit up.  He
reached over and prodded the terrier with a forefinger.

"Scared o' the wolves, little shaver, eh?  I don't wonder.  We don't
hear 'em often up here."

"Were they wolves?" asked Stamford, eager to believe mere dogs had
not so shattered his nerves.

"Come down from the north, I guess," explained Dakota.

"But how could they cross the river?" queried the Professor.  "They
must have a better ford than I use."

"Hm-m!  Perhaps they drifted up from the Cypress Hills, or across
from the west.  Maybe they smelt the little shaver here.  If they
ever got after him they'd shore peel the bark offen him.  I'll be
warning the boys to keep a look-out on the calves.  I wouldn't like
to meet the beggars on the prairie without a horse, no, not even with
an arsenal on me.  They're dangerous devils."

"Isabel!"  The Professor was looking anxiously at his sister.  "I
guess we'd better hasten our task.  This isn't safe for you.  Wolves!
Gr-r-r!  It sounds uncivilised."

Dakota shook his head gravely and left.  Imp tagged humbly at his
heels.

"Of course," the Professor grinned, "if there are only the two we
heard last night, I might be able to satisfy them myself.  A couple
of hundred pounds ought to hold them for one meal.  At any rate, I'd
make a point of lying so heavy on their innards that you'd have a
chance to escape, Isabel."

He looked out through the window to the ranch buildings.  Dakota had
picked up Imp and was hurrying along with the little terrier tucked
under his arm.

"I think, Isabel, we'll try this side of the river to-day.  That
Monodonious skull can wait another day.  It's managed to stick it
long enough to forgive another twenty-four hours, don't you think?
I'll get the horses."

He lumbered off along the path to the stables, calling as he passed
the cook-house for a good Samaritan to lend him a hand in deciding
which end of the harness went first on Gee-Gee.  Bean Slade beat the
Dude and General to it, while the Professor watched proceedings as if
it were a new experience.

"Some day," he declared, "I'm going to invent a harness that can be
grafted on a horse for a few generations until it's handed down as
part of his natural equipment, like teeth and eyes.  I've a warm spot
for tenderfeet--even tenderfeet of ten centuries hence.  If I lived
that long I'd never forget my troubles with Gee-Gee....  Hello,
Dakota!  Teaching Imp to ride?"

Dakota was in the saddle, with Imp still under his arm.

"Naw!  I'm taking him for his morning constitooshunal.  He's changed
his doctor, and this one prescribes lots of exercise.  What Imp needs
is muscle; he's got gall enough for a Great Dane."

The cowboys grinned, and Dakota chirruped to his horse and moved away.

"Why don't you train him to hunt wolves?" suggested the Professor.

Dakota threw him a quick glance over his shoulder.

"By Samson, Prof., you've a head!  Alkali 'n' me'll perceed to take
your advice--Alkali 'n' me 'n' the dread avenger o' the Red Deer,
Imp.  Wolfies, we're on your trail."

"If you'd wait a few minutes," said the Professor, all excitement,
"I'd like to join you.  To be able to tell my colleagues at the
Institute that I, the old-bone man, had hunted wolves--that would be
pride, indeed."

Dakota merely waved a refusal and trotted away.

But the Professor picked up his sister at the ranch-house and bumped
away to the south-west over the prairie in the direction Dakota had
taken, Isabel hanging to the low arm of the seat with both hands.

Far out they descried Dakota and Alkali riding in circles.  Imp was
running about with his nose to the ground.  The Professor shouted and
stood up in the buckboard to wave his arms.  But long before he was
close enough to speak, Imp yelped and struck off to the north-west as
fast as his little legs would carry him, Dakota and Alkali spurring
behind.

The Professor waved in vain for them to wait, then turned the horses'
heads to the north-east and his day's work.

Meanwhile Stamford, left to his own resources for the day, collected
his fishing tackle and made for the river.  He was not a fisherman,
but such fishing as the Red Deer afforded gave him excuse for getting
away where he could tell himself without restraint what a fool he had
been to undertake his hopeless task.

In the shadow of a low cliff he baited his hook and tossed it into
the water.  A gold-eye took it at once, and for a time he played with
it absent-mindedly, finally drawing it out, removing it from the
hook, and tossing it back.  Several more he treated in the same way,
and at last cast in his hook without troubling to bait it.  The sun
crept higher and beat unmercifully on the bare rock, and he rolled a
stone on the end of the pole and stretched himself in the shade.

"Don't seem ter be enj'yin' the fishin'," gibed a high-pitched voice
from the rocks above, "or else yer too blame cosy."

Stamford raised his head lazily and surveyed Bean Slade's unkempt
figure perched on a ledge over his head.

"Any fish that takes that hook's a born fool," he sighed.  "I don't
want 'em any more than they want me.  Come on down, Bean.  It's far
more fun to lie about and talk."

Bean climbed down and picked up the rod.

"Yu don't know no more about fishin', boss, then yu do about--about
lots o' things yu'd like to know.  Gi' me that bait.  See that smooth
spot out there?  That's deep water.  Watch yer Uncle Ned."

He whirled the rod back and forward, and the hook shot out to the
centre of the deeper water.  Almost immediately the line tugged,
jerked, loosened, and went taut again.  Stamford leaped to his feet
and grabbed the pole.

"Hang to it, Bean!  There, we'll get it!  Whoop!  Gee, ain't he a
fighter?"

Bean yielded up the rod with twinkling eyes.

"Fer a tenderfoot who don't fish, yu can work up what looks mighty
like a taste fer it."

He hung precariously over the water and scooped unsuccessfully at a
shining back that showed for a moment.

"Let 'er run, dang yu!  Let 'er run.  Yu got to get 'er to shallow
water."

After a struggle, in which Stamford objected to assistance, but was
unable to complete the catch himself, Bean stepped into shallow water
and clutched the sturgeon.  Stamford looked down on it with blazing
eyes.

"Mister Stamford," grinned Bean, "if yu wasn't born a fisherman, yer
shure goin' ter die one."

"Bean," said Stamford, "I'll crave your kind assistance to the extent
of baiting that hook again.  Then--no more.  I'll bring the next
fellow in myself or die in the attempt."

Stamford went back to the hole.  Nothing happened.  He waited several
minutes, yawned, frowned, and leaned back against the rock.

"That one," he declared, pointing to the still wriggling fish, "had
this whole darn river to itself.  My line says so."  He yawned again.
"Bean," suddenly, "you're my friend, aren't you?"

The cowboy studied him curiously.  "I reckon I ain't got no spite
again yu--none of us chaps at the cook-house have."

"Not including Dakota, of course."

Bean ruminated over that.  "Mebbe yer right."

"I don't believe, Bean Slade, that you're happy with that gang."

Bean got up and started away.

"Ta-ta!" he called.  "This ain't my pumpin' day."

Stamford cursed his impetuosity.

"All right," he laughed.  "You've a brain of your own--and I've seen
no evidences of a loose tongue in you.  I was going to tell you
something--perhaps--that was all."

Bean kicked over some loose stones and wandered back.  Plainly he did
not want to go.

And just then a fish took the bait.  Stamford jumped forward, missed
his footing, and tumbled helplessly into the rushing current.

At the same instant a scream broke down the river from the cliffs
higher up.

Bean bounded to an overhanging rock, braced his feet in a crevice and
leaned far over.  Stamford came up almost beneath his hand, gasping,
already half drowned, surrendering to the icy torrent that started in
distant glaciers.  He could not swim a stroke.  Bean's bony fingers
closed over his hair, stayed his progress, and the other hand moved
down to his arm.

"Here, yu noodle!" he shouted.  "Yu got to help yerself, or I'll let
yu go.  This ain't no time to faint.  Grab my shoulders.  Now work
yer way up my body.  Yu'll find bones thar to catch hold of.
Now--all together!"

Stamford lay panting on the rock.  Bean, perspiration bursting from
every pore, leaned weakly on his elbow beside him.

"Whew!" he puffed.

That was all, but his limbs were shaking, and the perspiration
trickled down his neck and dampened his loose neckerchief.  A great
gush of affection passed between the two men, though neither spoke.
Stamford extended his hand and laid it on Bean's, and the cowboy
looked away and drew a coloured bandana with his free hand and rubbed
it round his neck.

Presently he sat up and stared up the river.

"Huh!" he grunted.  "Yu shure don't take a bath of'en, do yu?"

"Not that way--never again!" replied Stamford fervently.

"Thought not."

"Why?"

"'Cos there's such a funny noise when yu strike the water."

Stamford flushed.  "Did I scream?"

"If 'twas you," grinned Bean, "yu shure can throw yer voice high and
far."

Stamford followed his eyes up the river cliff, and flushed again,
this time for a different reason.

"Pshaw, Bean!  You were excited."

"Then there was two of us, I reckon."

"I'm sure I must have screamed," said Stamford.  "I was never so
scared in my life."  But his heart sang with the knowledge that
Isabel Bulkeley, somewhere in the cliffs above, had feared for him.

"All right, have it yer own way.  Only if I was you I wouldn't
believe myself."  He drew several long breaths and looked shyly at
the man he had rescued.  "God, if I hadn't been here!"

"Bean, I----"  The surge of Stamford's gratitude was choking him.

"Billy Windover saved me once like--like that," said Bean, his eyes
fixed on the foaming water.

"Billy Windover?  Wasn't that the cowboy who was shot down near the
Cypress Hills a couple of months ago?"

Bean nodded.  "Billy an' me was chums--the best chums in the world, I
guess, pretty near.  Me and him was raised together--down in Indiany.
Our farms was close together, an' Billy an' me played Injun an'
pirate an' stage robber together when we was knee high to a
grasshopper....  We grew up together....  We loved the same gal....
He licked me and won.  We fought it out on the banks of a deep stream
that cut through both farms--in the woods--an' the licked one was to
drown himself....  He pulled me out...."

He lifted himself higher and drew one hand angrily across his eyes.

"The gal she turned out bad ... and Billy went a bit wild....  I went
with Billy.  We broke out in Montany.  Billy was a reckless cuss, an'
he got in bad with the sheriffs and flitted over here.  I came as
soon's I got the chance....  And--and now he's--he's pulled out an'
left me--alone."

"He was murdered, I understand," said Stamford.

Bean's face darkened, and his sunken eyes glared.

"Damned sight wuss 'n that!  Shot down without a chance in the dark.
Dirty cuss who did it's goin' to settle with me."

"If you ever find who it was."

"Why----"  Bean's eyes peered out furtively beneath his shaggy brows,
and he said no more.

Stamford led off on another tack; he had learned all that interested
him there.

"There's Kid Loveridge, too.  Someone shot him, and he was one of
this very outfit."

"Huh!" growled Bean.  "The Kid got what was comin' to him."

Stamford held himself under careful control.

"Then there's Corporal Faircloth."

Bean's lips closed, his face was inscrutable.

Presently he spoke.

"Yu thought a lot o' the Corporal?"

"He was my first and best friend in the West."

"An' yer mighty consarned to find out who shot him?"

Stamford did not reply immediately.  He had a thought of throwing
himself frankly on Bean's affection.  It was certain that Bean could
tell him what he wished to know--much more certain than that he
would.  But the three fruitless weeks of search on the H-Lazy Z
called for desperate measures.  He was debating it when Bean spoke
again in an ominous tone.

"'Cos what yer doin' 's a mighty dangerous game."

"Dangerous?  Do you know what I'm trying to do?"

"I'm just givin' yu a warnin', boss, that's all.  It's like to end at
the business end of a gun."

Stamford made a decision.

"The H-Lazy Z is crammed with mysteries.  If you----"

"An' the less yu understand them the better fer yer skin.  An' it
shore ain't no business o' yours."

"It is my business that my best friend was murdered."

"Best leave that to the Police."

"But they're doing nothing."

"I guess ya don't know the Police," said Bean, rolling a cigarette.

Stamford sat thinking.  "Bean," he said suddenly, "I'm going to tell
you something.  The night we returned from Medicine Hat I got Hobbles
out--never mind how--and rode back to where we'd seen Dakota."

He waited in vain for a burst of surprise.  Bean merely nodded.

"They were branding or something.  They almost caught me."

"Yer dead right there," agreed Bean.

In a flash Stamford understood.  "But it couldn't have been _you_
pushed me from Hobbles."

"Huh!" grunted Bean, taking a long draw at his cigarette.

"You were back at the bunk-house.  I saw you there an hour or so
later, when Dakota came in."

"Uh-huh!  An' yu purty near gave the show away--if Dakota's ears was
as good as mine....  Also Hobbles couldn't 'a' been out at the
branding neither, 'cos _she_ was there in the stable then, too, eh?"

He chuckled, and coughed with the smoke.

"But I heard you tell Dakota no one had gone out--also I saw you
start off right after your supper to join Dakota; you promised him to
as we were driving in."

"Dear me!  Did yu think yu wasn't intended to see an' hear all that?
Ha!  Ha!"

"But I don't understand."

"Shure yu don't!  If yu did yu'd be back in town now....  An' I'm not
goin' to tell yu, neither."

He got up, stretched, expectorated into the river, and sauntered away.

"Ta-ta!" he called back.  "Take care o' yerself."




CHAPTER XIX

TWO PAIRS

Stamford folded his fishing-rod, threw his lunch strap over his
shoulder, and started back for the house, forgetting the big sturgeon
lying in the sun.  His clothes were almost dry already with the warm
rocks and sun.  He had his first useful clue, and it reassured him.
His guiding thought now was that Bean Slade knew the murderer he was
after--and if Bean Slade, then the rest of the H-Lazy Z outfit.  But
how much or how little was Cockney Aikens involved?

He was surprised to find the Bulkeleys already returned to the
ranch-house, though dinner was a couple of hours away.  It delighted
him--and also blotted from his mind the success of his afternoon's
work.  What he recalled was the scream Bean claimed to have heard.
He wanted to verify or disprove that.  With a refreshed pride in
himself he determined that he _would_.  He proposed a walk; the
brilliance of the out-of-doors provided perpetual excuse in the West.
Isabel's immediate reply was an anxious look at her brother and Mary.

"I'm not asking your brother," he said boldly.

"Amos and I have to work on his notes," she objected.  "That's why we
came in early."

"Tut, tut!" protested her brother recklessly.  "I've changed my mind.
The inspiration is lacking.  It's not my day for work.  I don't care
a hang if the entire carcass of a crested Saurolophus is lost to the
world by an afternoon's indolence.  I'm--going--to be indolent!
There!  Whoopee!  Hear the cry of independence."

He lifted a foot and kicked the top of the doorway with surprising
ease.

"It sounds to me like revolution," said his sister with mock
severity, yet with more than a little anxiety.

He picked her up and deposited her outside the door.

"Trot along now, or Mr. Stamford may never ask you again."

"Amos!"

He made a face at her from the doorway and turned his back.

That her annoyance was not assumed Stamford discovered to his
embarrassment before they had gone six paces.  Once she turned about,
to see the laughing faces of the Professor and Mary Aikens regarding
them from the doorway.  For some minutes their progress was wordless.
Stamford was puzzled by her reluctance to leave the ranch-house, for
he was convinced that she wanted to come.  He knew the wisdom of
leaving her to break the silence, of assuming humility, whether he
felt it or not.

But he was not prepared for what she did say.

"We shouldn't, Mr. Stamford, we shouldn't."

He heard only the implied partnership, and threw his shoulders back
recklessly as he tramped on.

"I don't care what we shouldn't do.  If it's naughty it's nice.
That's how reckless I am."

Her smile was wan; some anxiety too deep to respond to his banter was
there.

"I don't like you serious," she said, "but--but you _must_ be now."
There was such innocent candour in it that he knew he wanted only to
help her.  Always when he was feeling most strongly the thrill of her
presence, she disarmed him by throwing herself on his mercy.

"I'm going to be serious with you some time, Miss Bulkeley," he said
soberly.

She ignored the warning.

"It's about Amos."

"If Amos isn't big enough to leave alone, he never will be.  Anyway,
Mrs. Aikens will look after him till we've had our walk.  Now I've
got you to myself, I'm going to keep you till dinner-time."

She was laughing a little, but shaking her head, as if to reprove him
for trying to turn her away from her troubles.

"We mustn't be selfish," she said slowly.  "Amos is big ... but he's
not big enough, I fear, to resist the--the most powerful thing in
life."

The alarm with which he searched her face for a moment changed
quickly to annoyance.

"It isn't possible to misunderstand you, Miss Bulkeley, but----"

She laid one hand on his arm, turning to him her troubled eyes.  He
stood still for fear she would remove it.

"Haven't you seen--haven't you suspected?"

"Miss Bulkeley, I can answer for our hostess.  If you can say the
same for your brother----"

"I can, I can," she murmured brokenly.  "But love, you know----"

"I know that, love or no love, there never was a finer little woman
than Mary Aikens.  Has your brother betrayed to you that he is less
of a gentleman?"

"I could trust Amos anywhere," she replied simply.

"Then why not here?"

Her hands were clasping and unclasping as they walked.

"This is so different.  I know what love can do--how it can change
things."  She was stumbling over it, flushing as she spoke, but
continuing brave!

"I hope you do," he breathed.

But the tears brimming in her eyes made him feel the brute for
intruding his petty affairs just then.

"Would your brother stay if he knew he was exposing himself to a
temptation he could not resist?" he demanded.

She considered the reply for a long time before she made it.

"We can't leave, Mr. Stamford.  We have our work to do--it's not mere
personal pleasure or satisfaction that forces Amos to continue until
he's completed his investigations.  It's his duty to stay to the
end--he can't help himself."

He frowned.  "Please don't make me believe you think digging up old
bones a duty that ignores--what you fear.  I hope you're not that
kind of a girl--I won't believe it."

She turned her face squarely to his, and for several seconds they
stood looking into each other's eyes.  Her head was thrown back a
little proudly and reprovingly, and every barrier of reserve was
down.  Once more the utter confidence in his manliness forced him to
control himself.

"I knew it," he said humbly.  "Only I don't understand....  There's
this to say for your brother, that the husband of the woman you fear
your brother is learning to love doesn't seem to be trying to hold
her love.  I don't understand Cockney Aikens.  I believe he's white,
but--but here we treat women differently."

"That's what started it, I think," she said sadly.  "Amos pitied
her--as you and I did....  And there are other things....  I can't
tell you all--everything that worries me."

"Then it's your duty----"  He was about to tell her that she should
take her brother away, but he was not unselfish enough for that.

"I can't," she replied, as if he had finished the sentence.  "He
wouldn't come--he couldn't."

They had turned back and were approaching the ranch-house.

"May I--talk things over a little like this with you when I'm
worried, Mr. Stamford?"

Even as his heart leaped, he recognised the subtle way she had armed
herself against him by the petition.  Never was he to permit himself
to take advantage of her confidence.  When he would say to her the
thing which he now knew he would some day say, he must make his own
opening.

"I understand," he murmured.  "You may say anything you like.  If I
can help you--that will be enough for me--now."


Mary Aikens and Professor Bulkeley, left to themselves, with cookie
in the kitchen fussing over the dinner, looked out to the sunlit
silences where the other two had gone, and responded to their appeal.
They saw the two lovers sauntering down toward the river, and they
chose the trail up the slope.  Slowly they climbed the grade, saying
nothing.  From the cook-house door Imp thrust his nose, sniffed with
half-shut eyes into the drooping sun, and decided that one of his
half-formed barks befitted the occasion.  Then, satisfied that he had
done all that could be expected of him, he trotted back and lay on
one of Dakota's feet.

The foreman was sneering through the doorway.

"The big boob!  He's shore on the wrong trail there, and some sweet
day the boss'll lay hands on him and--piff!"  He made a movement of
tossing something away.

"An' the biggest boob on earth wouldn't have no chance to earn it,"
growled Bean.  "Not with the missus."  When Dakota laughed in his
nasty way, Bean fired angrily: "An' that little editor'll piff
you"--he imitated Dakota's gesture of a moment before--"if you go
gettin' funny with the other gal.  Anyone can see where your eyes is."

He laughed and strolled outside to avoid the explosion.

Up the trail, over the crest of the slope, the two passed out of
sight.  She plucked a handful of grass from the centre ridge of the
trail between them and began thoughtfully to tear it to pieces.  He
moved at her side, his great hands gripped behind him, his eyes on
the rut at his feet.

"Don't you think they're getting fond of each other?" he said after a
long time.

A smile of loving sympathy made her face so beautiful that he looked
sharply away and pointed to the vivid colourings of the sunset.  She
followed his pointing finger absent-mindedly.

"It would be one of the few flawless matches," she said, in a low
voice.

"They are all flawless--at first," he returned.  "Only some last a
shorter time.  That's part of life's misery, the legacy of original
sin--perhaps the worst....  Some pause to weigh to the merest
trifles--and lose their chance.  Some ... some don't pause enough.
The secret of happy marriage, I'm convinced, Mrs. Aikens, is a
complete knowledge of the essentials of each other's lives before the
ceremony."

One handful of grass had been pulled to pieces, and she seized
another nervously.

"Few of us pause for that," she murmured.

"The agony of it!"  His hands were clasping and unclasping behind his
back, almost as were his sister's on the other trail.  "And
ordinarily there is no way out.  Divorce doesn't settle it.  The most
righteous divorce laws cannot supplant conscience--and conscience
speaks only in the one Book of all the world....  But this isn't
becoming to such a night," he broke in, with sudden eagerness.  "Look
at that sunset.  Only in the West do you find that unbroken
spectacle, such clearness of air, such a wonderful sweep of colour.
What is it about the Western air that makes a man----"

He paused abruptly, breathing heavily.  She looked at him in quick
fear.

"--that makes a man feel ten years younger," he went on, with an
absurd change of tone.  "I think I could grow frisky out here."

Across her face passed a grateful smile of relief and understanding
that she did not know she made so plain.

"It's the essence of the West.  It makes or mars a man.  It does the
same, only more swiftly, with the consumptives they send to us from
the East.  Some it cures--some it kills....  Some it kills when it
seems most certainly to be curing them....  That's the West; it does
that with everyone--one never knows."

He broke in on her dreamy reflections in a lighter vein:

"Just the same it's the young man's country, don't you think?"

"It's a great blessing--or a great curse....  What was Jim before he
came here?"

It startled him; he had no reply ready.

"I fear Jim and I do not fulfil your estimate of the foundation for a
happy married life.  I never knew his past--I don't now.  I never
knew his people--he never speaks of them.  I took Jim--for himself--a
handsome, manly, honest, good-natured----"

The man at her side coughed, and she turned to him with a wan smile.

"I know," she said wearily.  "You think I shouldn't talk of my
husband to others ... but in all our married life I've never before
had anyone to talk _anything_ with....  Jim and I--Jim and I----"

"What I'm thinking, Mrs. Aikens," he interrupted gravely, "is that
I'm the last one to whom you should speak of him."

She kept her eyes ahead of them on the dim line of the sand buttes,
and they walked on in silence.

Suddenly a cry burst from her lips.

"I must speak, I must.  My very heart is eating away with the strain
of silence.  I'll go crazy with the worry of it.  It's about
him--Jim.  He's different--these days.  At first----  Don't think
there's any chance of Jim and me not--not sticking to each other.
I've fought that out with myself already.  He's changed, but I know
what he _can_ be--what he was once ... what he won't let himself be
now.  Why?  I don't know.  Something--something is crowding between
us--crowding harder and harder every day, I see him so little now,
and----"

The big man squared his shoulders and lifted his head.

"Mary Aikens, I'd do anything--pretty nearly anything to help you.
You know that.  But I can't help you in this.  Please, please, don't
ask me--don't say another word about him--not to _me_.  It doesn't
seem heartless, does it?  It's as far from that as--as black from
white.  You've a heavier burden to carry than anyone I know ... and I
don't know yet how it can be relieved.  But it _will_ be, it _will_
be.  I've that much faith in Providence.  I shouldn't have said--that
about marriage.  Had you known--did you know all about him, you would
at least bear one less trouble than you do, I'm sure of that.  If I
were you I wouldn't bother about that--not now.  You're his wife.
You should know whether he loved you once or not.  And"--he ran his
hand across his forehead--"as an onlooker with eyes, I can tell you
that he loves you more than he ever did.  Is that enough....  I
believe--at this moment--he loves you better--better than you do him."

She gasped, and her hands tightened convulsively over the grass she
carried.

"I still love him," she said deliberately....  "I think I do.  What
my love lacks is thrust there by--by the wall he is slowly building
between us.  I think he loved me, yes, but--it probably sounds
foolish--I don't feel that he wants me to love him--not too much.
He--sometimes seems to toss me aside--you've seen it.  And Jim's not
naturally brutal."

The Professor spoke with careless deliberation:

"His past is much easier to unravel than his present.  You're most
anxious about the latter.  I can see it--I see it every day.  You've
undertaken a lonesome task--it's the way a wife has to, but it's as
apt to mislead as enlighten.  I don't believe that--that the wall is
unscalable--or at least the mortar's thin....

"And now," he started again lightly, "let's enjoy that sunset.  I
have only a few more of them ahead, unless the winter holds off
longer than usual.  I'm not so bound up in my poking about not to be
sorry when I think of having to give all this up."

They had been retracing their steps for some time, at his wordless
guiding, and were close to the ridge before the drop to the valley.

"Never," he told her, "no, never, speak to me again of your husband.
It won't lighten your burden and it only increases mine.  Jim Aikens
may be maligned by circumstances beyond his control, and we from the
fringes are so apt to misunderstand.  When I can help you I'll give
the signal.  Till then--but there he is now--down in front of the
house--waiting for us."

Cockney was standing on the gravel walk, every line grim and
accusing.  His great legs were apart, his arms were folded across his
chest, and he was staring at them under his eyebrows in that
thoughtful, disapproving way of his.  They could read the angry
tossing of his mind far away.  Mary Aikens laughed nervously.  The
Professor bit his lip.  But before they came within speaking
distance, Cockney wheeled away and disappeared into the house.  When
they reached the sitting-room they could hear his heavy striding in
the bedroom beyond.  His wife trembled, started for the kitchen, then
changed her mind and passed into the bedroom to him.


It was a grateful relief to an oppressive dinner when Dakota
presented himself at the door.  A fire was burning in the
sitting-room stove, for the evenings were sometimes frosty now, and
the cowboy sank modestly into a chair in the corner beside it.
Isabel, in an effort to break the embarrassing silence, seated
herself near him.

"I hope you're finding all you came for," said Dakota pleasantly.

"Thank you, Dakota.  My brother considers the summer well spent
indeed.  He still has hopes of a more complete skeleton, but we can't
remain much longer, can we?"

Dakota scoffed.

"There ain't likely to be snow before November.  Sometimes we have a
storm in September--mostly, I guess--but it goes as quick as it
comes.  We're often out riding with the herds into November.  It
ain't just the weather you'd want to be handling rock in, but you
should oughta see October here.  It's got creation beat a mile.
Don't you go till October.  Besides," he added naïvely, "we got some
hard work for the next few weeks, and we can't be home much."

"What indefatigable people you cowboys are!" exclaimed the Professor.
"Sometimes there seems nothing to do, and then it's night and day for
weeks."

"You're right there, Professor," Dakota agreed in a loud voice.  "To
make a ranch pay like the H-Lazy Z is real hard work--though Mr.
Aikens there don't seem to think so.  And there ain't many pays like
the H-Lazy Z, I tell you."

"What's that you said, Dakota?" asked Cockney, coming out of his
silence.  "Going away for a few weeks?"

"Yes, and taking the outfit.  The fall clean-up.  We'll make the
round o' the ranges and fix things up a bit.  The Indians say we're
in for a breezer of a winter.  There's that Big Bone Slough we got to
fence on the north side--where we lost all them cattle two winters
ago.  I was saying to the visitors they needn't go for another month
anyway--till we're through all that.  It's shore been a different
place this summer.  The Dude was saying that he never got such joy
from slicking up and changing his shirt every week."

He grinned with them.  It was a long speech to make in public, and he
was proud of it.  The Professor bowed with a low sweep.

"I'm bowing for Mr. Stamford, too," he chuckled.  "I can do it bigger
than he can.  We appreciate, Mr. Fraley, the many courtesies we have
received from our fellow-countrymen.  But, no, that couldn't include
the little editor; he's only a local product.  He doesn't know what
it is to thrill to the stripes of Old Glory.  We'll always remember
you.  We hope you'll have equal cause to remember us."

"That's all right, Professor," Dakota replied, with an expansive
sweep of his hand.  "We're shore pleased punchers."

And having delivered himself with credit to himself and his friends,
he backed out, bowing, his angora chaps ruffling in the wind as he
opened the door.

His companions greeted him at the bunk-house with eager grins.

"Did she give yer a scented hanky to wear nex' yore heart, ole hoss?"
enquired General confidentially.

"Or a kiss on the forehead an' promise to be a sister to yo?" put in
Alkali sympathetically.

"Oh, you fellers ain't familiar with the symptoms," said Muck.
"Dakota's planned ter 'lope, an' he ain't got his checks cashed."

"G--!  I wish I had," muttered Dakota, with sudden fervour.  "I'll
shore be devilish glad when we get this bunch offen our hands and the
equiv in our jeans.  I got a spooky feeling about the whole biz.
It's a big bunch to get down across the railway and over fifty miles
more to the border.  And it'll be a deuced sight bigger when the next
lot's run in....  But we got to do it.  That S-Bar-I outfit'll give
us a run for our money.  But that's all to the hunky.  Got your
shooting irons o.k., boys?"

He shifted his eyes slowly to Bean Slade's thin body outstretched on
a bunk, his hands beneath his head.

"Bean's funking," he sneered.

Bean lifted an angry head.  "Bean Slade's got himself in this thing
with both feet, you son-of-a-gun, an' he'll stick....  Just the same,
the old H-Lazy-Z outfit's goin' to bust up this winter.  This li'l
boy's strikin' back fer civilisation--whatever that means."

Imp, resting against Dakota's foot, raised his sharp ears and
grunted.  In a couple of bounds Dakota had the door open.  Professor
Bulkeley stood outside, blinking and smiling through his spectacles.

"I'm so glad you haven't retired, friends," he chattered.  "I
couldn't let you go without a record of the pleasant associations
with my estimable and cheery countrymen of the H-Lazy Z.  Will you do
me the honour of inscribing your names in this little book?  My
sister and I will look at it for many a year in remembrance of you
when we're far away."

He stumbled over the step, a notebook in one hand, fountain pen in
the other.  Dakota laughed harshly.

"Here, trot up, you low-born Yanks, and scrawl your nom-de's for the
everlasting records of the li'l country God made without desecrating
it with Mounted Police.  Let's make it our second papers o'
repatriation.  Hurrah for Old Glory--and Professor Bulkeley and his
charming and beautiful sister!"

The Professor pompously cleared his throat.

"On behalf of myself and my sister, on behalf of the country we love
and respect, I thank you.  Ever enthroned in our hearts will be----"

"Ya-as," yawned Alkali, "so they say.  Le's take the rest for
granted.  Sounds like Decoration Day--an' sort o' makes me lonesome.
An' I don't cry pretty."

"Don't mind Alkali," apologised Bean Slade.  "He allus did get
maudlin easy.  There's my scribble--Albert Shaw, better--or
worse--known as Bean Slade ... so my mother won't rekernise me when I
get mine in the way I'm shure to get it.  Fust time I've wrote it fer
eight years....  Last fer the rest o' my nacherl days, so help me!"

He tossed the book across the table.  The Professor picked it up with
a beaming smile and bowed himself out.

"Ta-ta!" Bean called after him.

"The sneaking old geezer!" growled Dakota, when the heavy steps had
faded into the darkness.  "If it ud been anyone else there'd 'a' been
shooting, I tell you--that Stamford peanut, for instance.  I don't
like the look of his ratty eyes.  He's just the kind o' unlikely chap
ud be working for the Police--if he had a foot more on him.  Now turn
in, boys.  To-morrow's the last round-up for the big vamoose to God's
country--and then gold enough to drown ourselves.  Bean, hang on for
another year or two, and I'll be damnified if I don't flit with you.
It's a bit too creepy for me off here at the edge of nowhere."




CHAPTER XX

THE SECRET VALLEY

Morton Stamford may not have been a sick man when he arrived at the
H-Lazy Z ranch; he was at least a stronger man at the end of his
month's stay.  His riding he continued only as practice, always with
the thought that he might require it.  But he walked more, diving out
of sight daily into the chaos of the river banks, there to piece
together his clues and plan new attacks on the problem he was working
into shape for presentation to the Mounted Police.

Also he now and then caught sight of Isabel Bulkeley on the other
cliff, and that in itself was reward enough.

As the days passed he felt a new thrill in his veins, a virility that
clamoured for physical exertion, and his walks extended further and
further along the river, a lunch strapped over his shoulders.

Eastward the south bank often fell to an uninteresting flatness,
lined still by the grass-covered trails of the buffalo herds of
comparatively recent years.  Westward it was different.  There the
prairie level dropped to the river in one great leap, confining the
current sometimes between high cliffs, sometimes with steep rocky
wall on one side and an almost inaccessible valley on the other to
the foot of the opposite cliff.  It was a canyon of varying
tightness, but always a canyon, the water dashing down here and there
with frothy roar, everywhere with a force and depth that defied
fording.  The glamour of its fury appealed more and more as he
tramped further up-stream.

Hundreds of miles still to the west, in the foothills of the Rockies,
the main branch was a glacier torrent that rolled onward through
uninhabited wilds until it cut the Calgary-Edmonton line of
homesteaders at the village of Red Deer.  Thereafter it dived once
more into the unknown, never once touching the haunts of men until it
reached the H-Lazy Z.

Stamford used to sit overlooking the torrent, picturing that long
trail in the wilderness, where thousands of years ago great animals
had been covered by the earth's convulsions.  His uncontrolled
imagination knit fantastic stories about them, and the fettered life
of the little man longed to break into the heart of it and listen to
its tale before soulless man tamed it.

One day he found himself far above any point he had reached before.
He had clung to the top of the cliff, stopping only here and there to
peer over the precipice to the water's edge, and his progress had
been faster than he realised.  Amid scenes new and vastly interesting
he munched his lunch.  Below him the face of the cliff was rent by
huge fissures and lined with ledges, and the river valley spread and
narrowed in infinite variety.  Across the river the hitherto unbroken
height showed signs of relenting, and great dips almost approached
the nature of valleys.

Uncertain how far he had come, he was about to turn back, when a
sudden noise sent him crouching to the upper rocks.  It was the
barking of huge dogs.  At the first note he recognised them.  He
wondered if they had seen him, and he peered carefully out.  The dogs
were on the other side of the river, higher up.

He began to creep toward them, the condition of the cliffs favouring
him.  Gradually he sank lower and lower toward the river.  He did not
dare look out.  With an instinctive anxiety he did not stop to
analyse, he felt that other eyes were there; also he dreaded some
unthrilling explanation for the thing that was thrilling him.

When at last the clamour told him that he had come far enough, he
raised his head to an opening in the rocks and looked.

Across from him, partially hidden by a line of slender crags at the
river edge, was a beautiful valley, a low-lying patch of verdant
meadow as different from the dead wastes above as a garden from a
wilderness.  Almost half a mile long by four hundred yards deep, it
was backed by a straight wall of cliff, broken only by two ledges.
Several tiny waterfalls tumbled from the face of the cliff, splashing
to the upper ledge, where they joined and widened for the plunge to
the meadow below.

In that deserted country the Red Deer had scooped out for its own
amusement a veritable oasis, and enclosed it with unscalable walls.

That was Stamford's fleeting idea.  But several flaws chased the
romantic thought away.  The valley was neither reserved for the
amusement of the river, nor was it inaccessible.

A herd of cattle was browsing in the succulent grass.  To the east
the cliff sloped away behind the obtruding crags.  There undoubtedly
was the entrance.  And with his field-glasses Stamford picked out on
the lower ledge a rude shack that, to the bare eye, merged in the
general greyness of the background.

Nothing else of life could he find, though the valley was only a few
hundred yards from him.  Then where were the dogs?  And where were
dogs must be humans.

Suddenly the barking broke out afresh, and two great dogs burst from
behind a concealing rock, their noses pointing upward to the slope at
the eastern end of the valley.  Stamford swept his glasses all about,
but for a time saw nothing to focus the clamour.

Then, climbing along the higher levels beyond the reach of the dogs,
came into view the big form of Cockney Aikens.

In and out among the rocks Cockney moved, now visible, now hidden
from view, examining every rock, every foothold; climbing downward,
the dogs seeming to tear themselves to pieces to get at him.  He
lifted himself to the top of a rock and stood looking across the
valley at the cattle, ignoring the canine protest.  Then, as if
startled, he leaped out of sight and did not reappear.  The barks
rumbled away to grunts and growls, and presently the dogs returned to
the lower level.

Stamford was still watching with fascination their slinking muscular
movements, when one of them raised his head to the top of the cliff
and growled, and in a moment both were filling the valley with their
disturbing din.

The field-glasses were turned on the top of the cliff.  A man's head
came slowly in sight and peered over.  Then a long rope dropped away,
and, hand over hand, the man descended rapidly to the upper
ledge--sixty feet of descent without a pause.

So absorbed was the watcher in the remarkable grace and muscle of the
descent, that he did not at first recognise this second visitor to
the valley.  When he did he rubbed his eyes, directed his glasses
again, and gasped.

Professor Bulkeley!

The big man walked fearlessly along the narrow ledge, a hundred feet
above the valley, disappeared from Stamford's sight, and after a time
came into view again on the lower ledge.  The dogs bounded up rude
steps cut in the rock before the shack, welcoming him with waving
tails and whimpering barks.  He stooped to rub their ears, then at a
word they quieted and fell in at his heels as he dropped to the
valley.  A second command sent them to their stomachs, while the
Professor advanced slowly toward the cattle.  The nearer ones raised
their heads from the long grass and examined him suspiciously, but he
stood still, and they returned to their feeding.  Slowly the
Professor moved round the herd, eyeing them from every angle.  After
a time he came down to the water's edge and looked up and down the
river, intently examining the opposite cliff.

Stamford lay motionless, only his eyes showing.

Whistling to the dogs, the Professor went off to the eastern side of
the valley and began to pick his way upward, peering about him as
Cockney had done.  On the very rock where Cockney had stood he paused
a long time, looking across the valley and all about at his back.
Below, the dogs watched him with clumsily wagging tails.  When next
he came into sight it was on the ledge beside the shack.  This he
skirted back and forward but did not enter.  Then, with a farewell
pat to the dogs, he disappeared the way he had come and came out on
the upper ledge.

Hand over hand he went up the rope almost as rapidly as he had
descended a half-hour before, and a few seconds later two lolling
dogs and a herd of feeding cattle were the only life in the valley.

Stamford lay where he was for a long time.  He had no hope of seeing
more that day, but he did not wish to be seen.  The dogs lay on the
lower edge, their heads outstretched on their paws.  Below them
contented steers sank their noses into such grass as they had never
before eaten, and drank from sparkling streams that were nectar to
their alkali-parched throats.  A heavy-footed farmer might have
issued from the unsightly shack and whistled lazily to the dogs to
fetch the cows for milking.

Stamford smiled at the fancy.

Thoughtfully he retraced his steps under cover of the jagged cliff
for almost a mile, where he emerged on the prairie and made swiftly
for home.

He was late for dinner, but they were holding it for him.  Cockney
had not returned.

"Deep down in my innards," protested the Professor, with mock
displeasure, "I've an irresistible impulse to be nasty.  I'd like to
think it righteous indignation--but it may be only hunger.  At any
rate, here goes: Anyone who can delay a meal in this boarding-house
should have his rates raised.  He insults the fare--as well as the
f-a-i-r."  He bowed to their hostess.

"I nearly lost myself," apologised Stamford.  "Deep down in my
innards is only hunger; and I'm not going to make it an excuse for
mushy compliments.  I'll leave contrition until I've satisfied my
hunger."

"Indigestion is the most likely result," laughed the Professor.

"Were you really lost?" asked Isabel anxiously.  "You know how
dangerous----"

"Isabel Bulkeley"--the Professor was shaking a stern finger at
her--"I refuse to share your anxiety with Mr. Stamford."

"Having made such a failure of mothering you," she retorted,
flushing, "I'm inclined to transfer my anxiety."

"I wasn't really lost," Stamford assured her, "for I stuck to the
river-bank.  But I've been further than I ever was before--many miles
to the west."

He regarded the Professor significantly as he said it.

"I, too, went far afield," returned the Professor mysteriously.  "And
I found promising signs.  But before I say more I want to be certain;
it's disappointing to hope too much.  It's very interesting up there,
isn't it?"

"It is--very," Stamford replied into his soup-spoon.

All evening the Professor was plainly trying to get a word alone with
him, but Stamford had no wish to be questioned, and he gave no
opportunity.




CHAPTER XXI

THE RAFT IN THE CANYON

Next morning Stamford started off the instant breakfast was over, but
he did not go further than the cook-house.  He found it deserted, the
outfit having departed the day before on what promised to be a three
or four days' expedition.  Stamford poked about the cook-house and
bunk-house with a vague idea of coming on clues left carelessly
exposed.  In the midst of it the Professor walked in on him.

"Oh, I thought you were gone for the day," said the Professor, "and I
hoped our friends of the funny names might be back."

"I'm going now," Stamford returned shortly, and walked away, though
the Professor called to him.

From among the rocks on the river-bank he saw the buckboard pass
around the corrals and make for the ford.  He followed.

Somewhere that herd of cattle in the little valley had crossed the
river, and he was determined to discover where.  He had rather
definite ideas about them that led him to expect no information from
the ford.

In that he quickly proved himself right.  He had seen, even from
where he lay on the opposite cliff, that most of the cattle had been
in the valley a long time; that was evident from their plumpness and
undisturbed feeding.  The more recent arrivals were betrayed by their
rougher coats and leaner bodies, and by a wilder fling of the head
when the Professor approached them.  There had been no rain on the
Red Deer in two months; their tracks, were there any, would show
plainly enough in the mud approaches to the ford.

But there was nothing there save the hoof-marks of the Professor's
team and a few dim old hollows that must have been there from the
spring.

He considered the possibility of a ford further east, but one near
enough to be of use to the valley he would have heard of.

Carefully examining the shore as he went, he turned back to the west.
Now and then he stopped to scrutinise the face of the opposite cliff
for marks of a slope on that side.

Not far from the end of the lowest corral he raised himself on a
rounded rock to look about him.  Across the river was unbroken wall.
On this side was a stretch of tumbled erosions that cut off his view
from the ground.  As he let himself down again his foot slipped and
he fell, feet first, between two rocks.  He was surprised to hear the
crunch of leather, and, looking where his feet had gone, he saw a
saddle carefully hidden, and beneath it a bridle.  More surprising,
it was not a stock saddle but an English pattern of the softest,
lightest kind, ridiculously small and compact--so small that a man's
coat would almost hide it.

He thrust it back and went hastily on.  His eyes flitted
instinctively to the ranch-house, and just then the cook came from
the kitchen and emptied a pot.  Stamford ducked, though a score of
heads would pass unnoticed in that jumble of rock at such a distance.

Keeping to the river-bed, he moved up-stream and presently the cliffs
beside him rose to the level of their mates on the other side.  But
there was always room for him to advance.  At places the walls
narrowed, the current rushing between with indescribable fury, and
widening below in eddying sullenness that was almost as terrifying.
That it did not always chafe its barriers in vain was shown by the
tumbled confusion everywhere.

In a few places deep crevices ran down from the prairie, and these
Stamford examined carefully.  But there was no sign of a ford.
Equally alive was he to movement on the opposite cliff.  By
lunch-time his clothes were showing marks of his tireless clambering.

Below him--during the last half-hour he had been rising on the face
of the cliff--a comfortable ledge invited, and he climbed down and
unslung his lunch.  As he ate he realised how easy had been his
descent.  Out before him extended a level floor of rock up-stream;
behind, a steep incline ran upward, disappearing around a bulge in
the rocky face.  Stamford knew cattle would not follow such a steep
ledge at such a height.  Below, the water ran smooth, but tiny
whirlpools covered its surface; the current beneath was swift and
treacherous.

He ate absent-mindedly, puzzled by the clear ledge ahead, while
elsewhere was such a chaos of fallen boulders.  With the last
mouthful he retraced his steps, searching for some branching path to
the prairie above.  He found it in a draw that left at right angles
the one he had followed down--an easy, grass-floored ascent.
Tangling and twisting, he reached the prairie.

In its depths were unmistakable evidences of cattle.

He returned to the lower level and followed it to its end.  Gently it
fell to the level of the river; abruptly it ended in a wide platform
of rock that extended in under the cliff for fifty feet or more.  On
all sides but the way he had come was towering rock only a bird could
pass.

Nonplussed, irritated by the dashing of his hopes, he poked about.
The bare rock all round could conceal nothing, and ten yards ahead
was the certain end.  Yet at his feet were the marks of cattle.  He
moved nearer the end of the platform and leaned against a pinnacle
that projected from the water.  As he turned helplessly to the
opposite side of the river, the solution lay before his eyes, the one
thing he had never suspected.

A heavy raft lay tight against the pinnacle on which he leaned,
protected from the rush of water above by another jutting rock.

He approached it with incredulity.  Quiet as the stream looked
superficially just there, he knew no motive power applicable at such
a place would breast that current.  And clearly it was too deep and
swift to pole.  In vain he examined the overhanging cliffs for wire.

At the very end of the ledge he caught sight of an end of cable wound
round a rock.  Through his field-glasses he traced its exit across
the river.  But still the method of passage was obscure, for the
cable stretched beneath the torrent, as did the wire that connected
it with the raft.  Studying then the angle of the raft to the
current, he realised that the same principle prevailed here as
propelled the ferry across the South Saskatchewan at Medicine Hat.

It was surprisingly simple, yet he had nowhere else seen it in
practice.  A wire extended from either end of the raft to the
cross-river cable, the shortening of the front one of which, together
with the extension of the rear one, forced the current itself, urging
against the angled side of the raft, to be the propelling power.

A burden lifted from Stamford's mind.  Here was the crossing of the
herds to the hidden valley....  Here, too, was the means by which the
dogs--somehow unknown to Dakota and his comrades--were brought from
the valley and turned loose on the prairie on that memorable night.

He caught himself whistling, until he realised that no part of his
discovery assisted him to the solution of his own problem.

A feeling of discomfort had been increasing for some time, and he
decided that he was under observation.  Clambering nonchalantly to
his feet, he retired to the cover of the pinnacle that concealed the
raft from below, and seated himself behind it.  After a time his
curiosity overcame him.  Turning on his knees he slowly advanced his
head to look across the river.

As his eyes came over the edge of the bank he saw an end of wire
protruding from a small pile of rock close to the water's edge.  It
extended out into the river and disappeared.  He knew by its position
that it was intended to be concealed even from those who commonly
used the raft.  The action of the current had worked the end from its
covering of stones.  He drew back without touching it.

At the end of an hour he decided to brave the eyes he knew were still
on the watch.

Again he was late for dinner, but from a distance he saw the
Professor and his sister drive rapidly up to the ranch-house.  They,
too, were late.

"Really," the Professor chided, trying to induce a frown to gather on
his placid forehead, "your continued indignity in the matter of eats
is a subject for solemn consideration."

"I am at a disadvantage," returned Stamford.  "I have no team to
hustle me and my discoveries home at night.  With Gee-Gee and his
fellow a good driver could, I am sure, cover from five miles up the
other side of the river, and cross the ford, in the time it would
take me to walk it on this side.  With an exceptional driver I'd lose
miserably."

"Some day," proposed the Professor genially, "we'll try it.  I'm
growing quite conceited over my mastery of the incorrigible Gee-Gee.
I won't always be so busy as I am now."

"If that day delays, you'll never be able to get to town the mountain
of button material collecting at the back door."

"Always," returned the Professor gravely, "I'm looking for something
bigger.  That discovery I hinted at last night----  You wait, you
cold-blooded editor.  We palæontologists may be denied some thrills,
but at least when we make mistakes there's no libel action.  If I
could be assured that in the wonderful national museum for which I
have the honour to collect there would stand through the ages a
monument to the memory of one, Amos Bulkeley----  It doesn't mould
readily to Latin, does it?"

Stamford sighed wearily.

The Professor stooped to look beneath the blind.

"Your husband!" he announced across the table.

Presently Cockney jerked Pink Eye to his haunches before the door.

"Anything left to eat?" he called.  "I'm starving."

"When Mr. Stamford has his fourth helping there won't be," replied
the Professor.  "He's a past master at keeping others talking while
he eats."

"Stamford, take Pink Eye to the corral," ordered Cockney.  "The
bottom corral, you know.  He's too tired to be breezy."

"Here!  Let me tackle him."  The Professor was advancing in a circle
on Pink Eye, as if with a vague idea of securing a strangle hold
before the broncho could put up a defence.  "If I could end the
summer with the thought that I'd handled a real devil of a broncho,
my pride would sustain me for a whole winter.  Even Gee-Gee seems to
have lost all ambition."

"Don't you bother," Cockney growled.  "I'll take him myself."

Stamford came forward valiantly.

"Don't be afraid of him," cautioned Cockney, removing the saddle.
"If he cuts up, let him go; he won't go far.  Here's the key to the
gate.  I think you'll find it swing easily enough.  We'll have real
hinges and a new gate before another season.  Be sure and lock up."

The Professor watched Stamford gingerly lead the jaded horse away.

"I haven't the heart to let him go alone," he decided, and set off
running.  "If we don't come back," he shouted over his shoulder,
"you'll find me gathering up what's left of Mr. Stamford."

Stamford, turning at sound of the Professor's heavy feet, saw Cockney
standing before the ranch-house, watching them in that speculative
way of his.

Pink Eye was honoured with a corral all to himself, an unusually
strong one of six-foot fences, with a network of wire stapled about
it.  The gate, a clumsy affair of cotton-wood logs, hinged to the
post by heavy loops of iron, was fastened at its other side by a
chain passing through a huge staple in the gate and padlocked around
the fence post.  This post was sunk in the ground close to the main
post of the fence, apparently added to fill an over-wide breach left
by a makeshift gate.

The Professor took the key and pulled the gate open for Pink Eye to
scamper through.

"Humph!" he growled.  "The key seems a bit superfluous, with that
contraption to move before Pink Eye could get out."

He closed the padlock and started back for the ranch-house.

"You're sure you locked it?"

Stamford, remembering Cockney's last words, turned back.  To his
surprise the loop had not caught, though the Professor had turned the
key in the lock.  The latter, apologetic, returned and corrected the
mistake.

"They'd have thought we were too frightened to do the job right," he
remarked, with a sheepish grin.  "Just the same, it's a tiresome rite
to go through for one lone broncho that wouldn't go far if he got
away."

"Oh," Cockney exclaimed, several minutes after they were back in the
sitting-room, "the key!"

The Professor fumbled through his pocket and produced it.

"Pink Eye must look on his corral," he observed, "as the equine
equivalent of a jail.  Is he in the habit of spending his evenings at
the corner saloon, or----"

"It's a habit I have of wishing to reserve my own things for myself,"
said Cockney shortly.

"There are worse foibles," was the Professor's sweet reply.  He gave
the embarrassed laugh that usually preceded a confession.  "One of
mine is ever so much less respectable.  I'm simply scared to a panic
at thought of fire--fire anywhere--here at the ranch-house--wherever
I spend the night.  I know how foolish it is, but my instincts are
stronger than my intelligence.  I must have been a wolf a few lives
back.  At home I always sleep downstairs on that account."

"Unless both Stamford and ourselves give up our downstairs rooms I
don't see how we can satisfy you at the H-Lazy Z," said Cockney.

"Of course I'd have to be near him," put in Isabel hastily.  "So it's
quite impossible.  Please don't think of indulging his foolishness
any more."

"At any rate," said Stamford stubbornly, thinking of the limitations
imposed on his uncertain night investigations by an upper room, "I'm
not going to give up my room until my host orders it."

"Your host," said Cockney emphatically "is going to do no such thing."




CHAPTER XXII

PINK EYE AND THE ENGLISH SADDLE

Stamford tossed about when he should have been sleeping, worried by a
thousand questions, a thousand disturbing suspicions.  And through
them all ran the thread of his love for Isabel Bulkeley.  He could
hear her moving about her room, and long after they should have been
asleep, the voices of brother and sister came to him in gentle
murmur.  Added to this was the evidence of a similar wakefulness in
the Aikens' bedroom.

Imp came to his door and whined, and Stamford let him in, glad of his
companionship.  Thereafter, with the watchful little terrier curled
on his feet, he found it easier to drift away.

He was awakened by Imp.  In the outline of the window Stamford saw
the dog's ears erect, and a slight sniffing sound told of some
disturbing scent.  Stamford hurried to the window.

The night was sharp and clear.  He shivered, partly with excitement,
partly with chill.  Something moved in the moonlight down the slope
toward the corrals, but it was gone so quickly that he was uncertain
of his eyes.  The moon was low and dull, with a thin mist before it
that prophesied the coming of winter.  He watched until his teeth
were chattering, then, with a pat to Imp's warm body, he returned
gratefully to the warm sheets and settled to sleep.

He was wakened again by Imp leaping to the floor to sniff beneath the
door.  Out in the sitting-room someone was moving, but there was
nothing furtive about it.

Then Stamford became conscious of a strange rumble like distant
thunder.  But it was no noise of the elements.

Mary and Cockney were whispering outside his door in excited tones.
Someone rapped.

"Don't be alarmed, Stamford."  Cockney pushed open the door, speaking
in a low voice.  "It's cattle on the run--a stampede....  But it's a
small bunch.  They'll get them under control.  The boys are riding
now ... like mad! ... Listen! ... Ah!  They have them bunched! ...
They'll stop by getting in each other's way!  Not badly frightened, I
guess....  I wonder where they broke from."

A moment longer he stood listening to the waning sound.

"If you'd throw something on and come out to the sitting-room I'd be
grateful.  I'm going out.  Mary's frightened....  I hope--I hope
we're not making our guests too uncomfortable."

"I'll be there in three minutes," Stamford promised, groping for his
clothes.  "We'd better tell the Bulkeleys; they'll wonder what it is."

"Never mind the Bulkeleys," returned Cockney sharply.

Stamford could hear him pounding off to the stables.  In what seemed
seconds he was galloping back below the house, making for the west.

Opposite Stamford's window the horse dropped suddenly back on its
haunches.  Stamford peered out.  Somewhere to the west came the swift
gallop of approaching horses.

But Cockney's eyes were fixed on the side of the house.  Stamford saw
them rise to the Professor's window and drop again, while the broncho
pawed impatiently.  With a bend of the hand Cockney turned the horse
to the house, where it drew up for a brief moment, then, under
digging spur, dashed to meet the oncoming riders.

Stamford leaned out and saw the rope ladder dangling from the
Professor's window.

Before Cockney had gone a dozen paces the ladder began to move
rapidly upward.  In the dim light Stamford imagined a small hand
reached out and drew it over the sill.

Thirty yards away Stamford and the approaching horses met.

"Who's had Pink Eye out?" demanded Dakota's angry voice.

There was a perceptible pause.

"I don't like your tone, Dakota," said Cockney icily.  "When you want
information, there's only one way to get it."

"I found him out there on the prairie," Dakota blustered.

Cockney rode round the horse Dakota was leading.

"I didn't know he was out.  But first you'd better answer my
questions.  Where did the cattle stampede from, and how did they
happen to be away off there?"

"What difference does that make?  But if you want to know"--Dakota
was plainly sparring for time--"it was a bit of the Lost Dog Coulee
bunch.  They ran a long way before we got 'em stopped.  Just a small
bunch.  What's more serious is Pink Eye out there."

"Who's saddle's this?" Cockney was leaning over Pink Eye's back.

Dakota laughed in a nasty way.  "Thought maybe you'd know.  It's an
English saddle.  Ever see it before?"

"By gad!  That's curious!  It's a racing saddle of the lightest kind."

"I found the cinch unbuckled," said Dakota.  "We were a bit too quick
for the fellow that had him.  But we couldn't find him."  He cursed..

Cockney rode up to Stamford's window.

"You there, Stamford?  Did you lock Pink Eye in the corral last
night?"

"Certain of it.  Both the Professor and I tried the padlock
afterwards."

Dakota spoke impatiently:

"Anyone out of the house now?"

"One moment, Dakota," snapped Cockney.  "I'll do the questioning.  I
can answer that one myself.  Everyone is in....  I think I'd like to
take a look at that corral," he said suspiciously.  "Come along,
Stamford; you can tell us if things are as you left them.  Tell Mary
it's all right, will you?"

Stamford spoke to Mary Aikens on his way out.  She was sitting in the
dark sitting-room, and he imagined she was sobbing.  He ran after
Cockney and Dakota, and arrived at the corral in time to hear Dakota
exclaim:

"Holy cripes!"

Stamford ran forward.

The gate was wide open, but the padlock was still locked.  The
ponderous mass of logs must have been lifted until the chain would
pass over the top of the post to which it was fastened.

"Holy cripes!" Dakota exploded again, when he had examined padlock
and post.

He stooped and put his muscle to the heavy gate, but he could
scarcely lift its weight from the loops that acted as hinges.

Cockney smiled in a superior way and pushed him away.  With a great
heave he managed to raise the gate from the ground, but he dared not
remove a hand to throw the chain over the post.  With a muffled oath
he let it drop, and the upper loop snapped, letting the gate sag on
the lower hinge.

"That's two men's work," Dakota exclaimed.

"Three--at least," corrected Cockney thoughtfully, "two to lift the
gate, the third to remove the chain."

Dakota looked fearfully about in the dim moonlight.

"Then--then there's a gang about!" he whispered.

"Come back to the house," said Cockney.  "It's worth looking into."

Beneath Professor Bulkeley's window he stopped and called his name.
Mary Aikens came timidly from the house, a lonely little figure
bathed in the moonlight.

"What is it, Jim?"

He turned on her roughly.

"Go inside.  This at least is no concern of yours."

She obeyed without a murmur, her feet dragging forlornly over the
frosty grass.

"Professor!  Professor!"  Cockney's voice grew louder and more
peremptory with each call.

Isabel Bulkeley's head appeared in her window.

"Did you want my brother, Mr. Aikens?"

"I'm not calling him at this hour of the night for vocal exercise,"
replied Cockney.

"He's such a sound sleeper----"

"Then you'd better waken him."

"Is anything the matter?  I'll go and call him."

They heard her bedroom door open, then a knock on her brother's, and
the turning of the knob.

"Amos!  Amos!  Don't be frightened.  It's only Isabel."

The bed creaked with sudden violence.

"Uh!  What--what's the matter?" sputtered the terrified voice of the
Professor.  "Is it fire?"

His great feet pounded to the floor and across the room to his bureau.

"Here--here!  Isabel!  Take these--and these--and these.  I'll--oh,
where's that--that----"

"Amos!  Amos, dear!"  She was laughing a little now.  "It's
not--fire.  Listen!  It's--not--fire."

"Not--fire?  Not----  Then what's the reason----"

"Mr. Aikens wants to speak to you--out the window.  Put your slippers
on first--and this gown."

"Eh--Mr. Aikens?  Why--why, what's the matter?"

The window opened wider and a night-capped head was thrust out, only
to be withdrawn immediately.

"Isabel--Isabel!" he whispered, in a tone that carried as far as if
he had shouted it.  "Where's the ladder?  I'm sure I left it out as
usual.  It's--gone."

She spoke from dose beside him at the window, laughing:

"I drew it in, you silly!  I didn't want the whole world to see how
foolish you are."  She put her head from the window and called
laughingly down: "We always have trouble with him like this, wakening
him out of his usual hours.  He'll be sane in a moment."

The Professor's head appeared again, this time minus the night-cap.

"Say, is this a serenade?  On behalf of myself and my sister, and the
great Republic we represent----  Oh, that you, Mr. Stamford?  Where's
your banjo?  Isabel's window is the one over yours.  Fancy you making
a mistake like that!"

Even Dakota was laughing.  Stamford failed to see the joke.

"It's all right, Professor," Cockney assured him.  "We only wanted to
make certain no one was alarmed.  There was a slight disturbance in a
herd of cattle.  You can go back to bed."

"Thank you, Mr. Aikens.  I won't leave that ladder out again.  I
wouldn't put it past those New York museum people to have spies on my
track.  They haven't in their whole collection such a----"

He sneezed, repeated it, doubled in volume and noise.  The men
beneath the window laughed openly.

"If you don't mind, Mr. Aikens, will you come round to my door.  I
never could stand the night air.  Could I, Isabel?"




CHAPTER XXIII

PREPARATIONS TO FLIT

The next morning Stamford was again disappointed: the cowpunchers had
not returned.  He walked on from the cook-house to Pink Eye's corral,
to see by daylight what had seemed so incredible in the light of the
moon.  On the way back he saw the Bulkeleys driving to the
north-west; they were not crossing the river that day.

Carrying a lunch, he set off for the river skirting far out on the
prairie that he might reach the canyon unseen far above where the
Professor was working.  Arrived at last in the cover of the upper
cliffs, he hurried on.

The hidden valley interested him.  There he knew, lay the solution of
some of the ranch mysteries.  The stampede of the night before was
significant, for the H-Lazy Z herds never ranged there.  The cattle,
he decided, were on their way to the raft and the hidden valley.

As he approached the valley he could hear the dogs barking
continuously but without excitement.  He discovered that the valley
was lively with cowboys, the members he knew best of the H-Lazy Z
outfit.  They were moving about the fringes of the herd, carefully
avoiding a bunch that kept to itself in a far corner of the valley.
From its ragged and wild appearance Stamford took it to be the
addition of the night before.  The others the cowboys drove on foot
to the eastern end of the valley, where a temporary barricade crossed
from cliff to cliff, forming a corral at the base of the only exit.
Then three of them disappeared, coming into view again on their
horses from behind concealing crags.  At a word from Dakota the two
dogs that had been all the time slinking close to his heels bounded
up to the ledge beside the shack and lay down, their eyes still fixed
on Dakota.  The mounted cowboys gradually worked the new bunch toward
the corral.

Evidently the cattle were being collected at the exit for immediate
removal.

About the shack Bean Slade was acting as temporary cook.  The others,
when all the cattle were in the corral, grouped together, rolling
cigarettes.  Dakota seated himself on a rock and whistled to the
dogs, which came madly bounding down the steps.

There was no suggestion of furtiveness.  Stamford began to think he
had come on one of the ordinary feeding grounds of the ranch herds.

To get a better view behind the crags, he crept farther up the stream
and lower on the cliff--crept into the muzzle of a revolver.  Behind
the muzzle was Cockney Aikens' determined eye.

"So it's you, Stamford?" he sneered.  "That investigative mind of
yours is bound to get you into trouble sooner or later.  I wonder it
wasn't sooner.  It strikes me you're acting strangely about the
H-Lazy Z for a guest."

Stamford flushed, partly because he knew the charge to be true,
though not in the way Cockney imagined.  Almost as much for Cockney's
sake as for his own had he undertaken to clear up the mystery of
Corporal Faircloth's death; _more_ for Cockney's sake had he chosen
the H-Lazy Z for his investigations.  He bristled with indignation.

"If you're not as guilty as you make yourself appear----"

"A guest with a sense of decency would at least have consulted his
host."

"And if you're guilty," Stamford continued, "I don't care a damn
whether you resent it or not."

Cockney examined him with puzzled but admiring eyes.

"I wonder if you'd be so foolhardy if Dakota was at this end of the
gun.  I'm not going to shoot.  I'm still your host."

"No, you're not, Cockney Aikens.  From this moment I'm no longer your
guest."  He unstrapped the lunch and tossed it at Cockney's feet.  "I
suppose you'll let me get my suit-case?"

Cockney thoughtfully returned the gun to his belt.

"If you'll take the advice of one who knows at last all you don't
understand, you'll keep so strictly out of this that you'll forget
all you've heard and seen.  You don't carry a gun--you wouldn't be
dangerous if you did.  Yet there's going to be shooting before this
is cleared up ... and when there's shooting among men who handle guns
like we do, there's apt to be blood....  This is the second time I've
found it necessary to warn you.  Next time will be too late."

He crept away to a lower level and left Stamford wondering what it
was all about.

Across in the valley Dakota had gathered his companions about him,
except Bean, who was still working about the shack.  Evidently they
were engrossed in a discussion of the utmost importance, for several
were gesticulating, and Dakota was listening judicially.  Now and
then their eyes went furtively to the shack where Bean was.  Through
the open door Stamford could dimly see Bean watching them stealthily
through the window.  After a time Dakota broke from the group and
climbed the steps to the shack.

In a few minutes he and Bean reappeared on the ledge, Dakota arguing
violently, Bean sullen.  Dakota started angrily down the steps, but
Bean stood a moment on the ledge, looking thoughtfully across the
river at the very spot where Stamford was lying.  Then he, too,
dropped to the valley.

Dakota was striding down toward the river.  As he crossed one of the
little streams that bubbled from the falls in the cliff he stopped
abruptly and bent over the ground.  An excited gesticulation brought
his companions on the run, and together they stooped over Dakota's
discovery.  The Professor had crossed the streams there, Stamford
remembered, and the ground would be soft.  Hastily scattering, the
cowboys searched the valley.

It was long before Alkali, poking about close to the river, came on a
second track, and they clustered about it, gesticulating, excited,
voluble.  Stamford leaned far from his hiding-place in his
excitement, and Muck Norsley, wheeling suddenly, examined the cliff
all about him.  But the distance was too great, the muddle of broken
rock too confusing; and Stamford scarcely breathed during the
scrutiny.  When it was over he sank to cover, and perspiration broke
out over him.

Dakota and his friends continued their search up the eastern slope
from the valley, pausing now and then as if over further disturbing
evidence.  They climbed upward to the great rock on which Cockney and
the Professor had stood, mounting from below by means of a rope.  For
a time they worked about its base, then it rolled back and the upward
path was clear.

As the horses toiled up the steep ascent, Stamford noticed that a
rifle hung from every saddle.  When they had passed, the rock rolled
back again, shutting in the valley, and only the cattle in the corral
and the dogs remained.

Stamford commenced his rough trail back down the river, always
keeping to cover.  Only two definite ideas were in his mind: to
escape notice, and to reach the Bulkeleys to borrow their team for
the journey to the Double Bar-O.  His work at the H-Lazy Z was
ended--and it was a failure.  Almost he could find it in him to
regret that he had lost his temper with Cockney.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE FIGHT IN THE RANCH-HOUSE

Mary Aikens, alone at the ranch-house, went about her morning work
with fumbling hands and tired brain.  The shadow of impending crisis
was over her though she recognised only the thickening of a cloud of
doubt, suspicion, and fear that had been closing in on her for more
than a year.  To her it was conviction enough of Jim's share in the
mysteries she was struggling single handed to unravel, that he
refused to take her into his confidence.

The last act of her morning duties was always a visit to the
Bulkeleys' rooms.  Isabel had refused to leave to her any of the care
of their rooms, but Mary Aikens, as hostess, never omitted that
morning visit to see that nothing was lacking for their
comfort--perhaps, too, to dream a little over the wonderful thing
that had happened that summer to the H-Lazy Z, the lonely ranch where
never before in her time had another woman set foot.  In Isabel's
kindly eyes and sympathetic silences she read what one woman can tell
another without the perils of speech.  The Professor?  There she
always stopped short.  The only indulgence she permitted her thoughts
was that the Professor needed most a strong and understanding wife,
indulgent--a little--but very firm at times.  He was a spoiled child
she longed to mother.

Softly she closed the stair door behind her and dropped on the seat
before the piano.  In the kitchen the cook was doing his morning
cleaning with his usual noiselessness, only the patter of his
slippered feet and the subdued rattle of dishes betraying his
presence.  In all the great north country were only the dim sounds
from the kitchen, and her absent-minded fingers on the keyboard.

The great north country--the lonely ranch she had had so long to
herself, where for months at a time she was cut off from every other
human being save the cowboys, and a husband who was wilfully forcing
her from his inner life--the silent stretches had that year taken on
a different note.  Even those forbidding cliffs, with their long,
uneven lines, had become the hunting ground of scientists--very human
scientists--a cemetery of bygone ages with an absorbing story to
tell.  Professor Bulkeley, big, childlike in his simplicity, frank in
his likes and fears, with an instinctive strain of gallantry so
pleasing to one accustomed to the stifled gentleness of the West and
the proprietary affection of her English husband--would he ever come
again?  Would there be enough in that isolated land to lure him back
another year?

She hummed as she played, her eyes staring vacantly at the wall
before her.

When he uttered her name softly from the open door she did not hear
him.  But when he repeated it, stepping into the room, her face
reddened hotly.  She tried to drop her eyes from his but they refused
her will; something strange about his appearance held there in spite
of her.  He was without his spectacles.  Never before had she seen
him thus.  It was as if he had disrobed before her, so naked did he
appear, for the depths of simplicity and dependence had gone with the
horn rims.  Even his shoulders seemed to have straightened.

He must have noticed the flush on her face.  His lips moved as if he
were speaking to himself.  Then, fumblingly, he put on the spectacles.

"That's funny," he said lightly, but his face was pale.  "I didn't
know you had that bit of Chopin among your music.  So many of the old
masters suffer from the emotionless piano.  Taming the ivory keys is
an art so many dabble at that almost none of them know when they have
mastered them--or care.  In all of us our hearts are nearer our
throats than our fingers.  Please hum it again for me, will you?"

He was speaking rapidly, nervously, and she had time to force herself
to a rational reply.

"To-night--maybe.  I--I didn't know what I was playing; I didn't know
I was humming at all.  In reality I was only dreaming."

The recollection of her dreams revived the flush in her face, and she
rose abruptly from the piano to hide her confusion.  He took one
quick step forward, but stopped himself with a sudden breath.

"Is your husband in?  I'd like to see him."

"He hasn't returned yet."

He frowned with sudden impatience.

"I hoped--I thought he would surely be back this morning.  I couldn't
wait.  I wanted to see him right away."

She came nearer to him and peered up into his face.

"Why do you want to see him?  Tell me--please."  Her little hands
were gripped over her bosom.  "Oh, don't tell me you, too, are mixed
up in all these things.  I hoped there was someone--someone I might
talk to if things went worse.  You stopped me once----"

"I'm afraid I can be of no use to you, Mrs. Aikens," he replied
formally.

She shuddered and put her hands before her face, and he turned away
quickly.

"I don't think you need worry," he told her in a low, lifeless voice.
"Your husband is his own worst enemy.  I believe God intended him to
be a model in more than body ... but something went wrong--only
temporarily, I believe.  The jealous gods--the old very human Greek
gods may have been less a myth than an allegory--touched his mind
when it was most sensitive."

She moved over to the side-table and began to readjust the pile of
papers.  She was strangely moved by his defence of her husband.

"May I thank you, Professor Bulkeley, for Jim's sake?"

"I--I'd like you to," he stammered eagerly.  "It's an instinct to do
one's best for Jim Aikens--especially for _me_."

She realised then how near the danger line they had been, and how
firmly he had steered them to safety.  It seemed to give her the
chance to place their relationship on the old innocent level, when
compliments were no deeper than their wording.

"And what of Jim's wife--is she worthy of such a paragon, or----"

"Jim's wife," he repeated vaguely.

"Perhaps she's the evil influence you call a god."

He turned on her with dilated eyes.

"You knew--you--knew?  My God!  She knew!"

Her knees were trembling with a sudden overwhelming fear, but she
stumbled over to the table beside him and stared into his reluctant
eyes.

With a burst the outer door opened and Cockney entered.  At sight of
the two standing there so close, the man's eyes falling before hers,
his great shoulders shook and his chin went out.

"Ah!"  It was a breath rather than a word.  "So this is what you do
when I'm away?  This is what guest number two does to requite our
hospitality?  Is this the way of palæontologists, or of Americans,
or"--his voice went hard as steel--"of a sneaking cur who represents
nothing but the vicious things that make beasts of men?"

A flame sprang to the Professor's eyes, but the horror in Mary's
quelled it, and he only shrugged his shoulders.

"You do not answer," Cockney hissed.  "You have at least the common
sense to make no denial.  There have been terrible things happen in
lonely places out here, but nothing so bad as this, you dirty cad."

He faced his wife, his chest heaving and falling.

"Go to your room.  I don't want witnesses."

But Mary Aikens had reached the limit of her subservience.  She stood
before him unfalteringly and glared back into his furious eyes.

"Very well!"  He laughed recklessly.  "Perhaps it's better so.
Perhaps it'll do you good to see me twist the rotten life from
him--with these fingers--these fingers."

He held before him his great hands, the fingers crooked like claws.
His eyes seemed to protrude, and his teeth were bare like a beast's.

"She'll hear the screams from that big soft throat of yours, you
hound, and your dying gasps.  And I'll laugh--I'll laugh!"

He crouched, the crooked fingers thrust before him.

Professor Bulkeley had not moved since Cockney entered.  Slowly now
he removed his spectacles and laid them on the table.

"You'd better leave the room, Mrs. Aikens," he ordered quietly.

"She's not going for you if she wouldn't for me!" Cockney thundered.
"If she does, I swear to God I'll kill her without mercy when I'm
through with you."

There were to be no blows in the struggle, the Professor knew.  He
was to be choked to death with those claw-like fingers; the whistling
of his tightening throat was to be the triumph of his mad foe.  So be
it; neither would he strike until he must.

As Cockney leaped the Professor neither struck nor retired.  His body
twisted far side ways and his right arm wound round Cockney's waist.
And the big rancher, who had never yet met his equal, was lifted
clear of the floor and flung back almost to the wall.

Mary Aikens gasped.  She had thought of but one outcome to the uneven
struggle.  But the Professor was standing there as if nothing had
happened, while Cockney, stumbling over a chair, saved himself from
falling only by thrusting a long arm against the wall.

"Will you let me explain, Mr. Aikens?  It would be better for both of
us--for you as well as for me."

But Cockney was past reason.  A flash of diabolical anticipation lit
his face, making it only the more terrible.

"Ah!  So you have muscle under those flabby clothes!  So much the
better.  When I've killed you there'll be no remorse.  It's man to
man, muscle to muscle.  We'll see who's the stronger."

He advanced with the deliberation of unflinchable
purpose--slowly--slowly.

Mary Aikens stifled a scream to a moan.

The Professor met him half-way.  One wrist in either hand he seized
before Cockney could dodge.  Cockney's right, clasped in the
Professor's left, went up.  The other the Professor wrenched
downward, and the pain of it made Cockney's face twist.  Thus, face
to face they stood for seconds, muscle pressing against muscle,
Cockney straining to tear his wrists from the bands of steel that
gripped them.  Their heads fell over each other's shoulders.  For one
moment of dizziness Mary Aikens thought her husband's bared teeth
would sink into his opponent's back.

Slowly Cockney's left hand bent behind his back.  He began to
struggle with his whole body, wrenching, fighting.  He read the
Professor's purpose.  It was body to body now.  The Professor's left
hand was having its way with Cockney's right.  Cockney saw defeat,
horrible defeat, staring him in the face.  He let his left yield and
concentrated on his right.  And inch by inch the Professor's left
fell back before it.  Another inch and his grip would be broken.

Mary Aikens gasped.

The Professor heard it.  His teeth bared like Cockney's, the lips
drawn thin and bloodless.  He, too, became the beast fighting for his
life.  His shoulders heaved a little, as if new vigour had entered
them--and his left began to win back what it had lost.  Up and up it
moved, and straight above their shoulders the arms halted.

To Mary Aikens they seemed to stand thus for hours, neither yielding
an inch.  It was endurance as well as strength now, and surely there
the hardened rancher would win.  But almost imperceptibly over
Cockney's back the arms began to move.  Cockney stiffened his body
against it, and with failure his back bent.  With the fury of
insanity he writhed, but the hold on him now was more relentless than
ever.

With a groan that was as much shriek he sank suddenly to his knees,
blank incredulity distorting his crimson face.

Instantly the Professor's hands fell from him.  Perspiration dripped
from both swollen faces.  Cockney leaped back, dropped his head, and
charged with a bellow.  Foam was dripping from his mouth.

The Professor met the lowered head with his knee, stooped over
Cockney's back and encircled his waist, and tossed him in a
somersault over his head.  The high riding heels crashed into the
ceiling as they went over, bringing down a shower of plaster and
dust, but the falling man landed on his feet against the stove.  It
fell with a clatter, and the pipes went with it.

The Professor's teeth were still bared.  He saw nothing now but the
enemy before him, the death that waited for either one of them.  With
a heave he sent the table slithering into the wall.  Crouching,
circling, glaring, he moved on Cockney.  It was to the death now.

Mary Aikens could stand it no longer.

"Don't, don't!" she cried.  "Oh, Professor!  Don't kill him, for my
sake!"

Professor Bulkeley shivered, stopped where he crouched, and with a
long, quivering breath straightened and moved backward.

On Cockney the effect was different.  A moment ago his resources
seemed to be exhausted--baffled by this man he had ridiculed.  But
the appeal of his wife--to the Professor--_for him_--drove the blood
to his eyes.

"I'll kill you!" he frothed.  "I'll kill you!"

He mouthed it like a madman, his great head rolling loosely, his
fingers closing and opening.

"And you, too, you Jezebel!"

Through panting lips the Professor spoke:

"It wouldn't be the first time you'd done a deed like that to a
woman, would it--_Jim Cathers_?"

Cockney staggered back, his hand fumbling at his lips.

"Jim--Cathers!" he faltered.  "You know--that!"

Mary Aikens' eyes dilated.  She came swiftly to the Professor.

"Jim Cathers?  What do you mean?"

The Professor shifted his eyes to hers--and Cockney sprang forward.
The Professor threw up his arms but missed, and Cockney's right hand
wound round his neck and hooked beneath his shoulder.  The shock and
strain almost dislocated the Professor's neck, and his eyes closed,
his legs shook.  He braced against the wave of dizziness, but he was
powerless against such a hold of such a powerful maniac.  There was
nothing now but submission or a broken neck.  Either meant death.
Burning waves of agony and dull insensibility chased each other
through his head.

Cockney shouted derisively.

"Now--now!"

The Professor's arms fell limply away, his knees bent.  A burst of
agony parted his swollen lips.

Mary Aikens saw only certain death to one of them--and the other a
murderer--if she did not act quickly.  She seized a Chinese vase from
the piano beside her and, closing her eyes, brought it down with all
her might on her husband's head.  Dimly she heard staggering feet,
the thud of a body, and then she fell unconscious.




CHAPTER XXV

COCKNEY'S STORY

Her first impression was of a warm, tender hand holding a cold cloth
to her temples.  She reached up and seized it; but it was jerked from
her grasp.  She opened her eyes and looked into Professor Bulkeley's
face bending over her.  Instantly he rose to his feet.

"You'll be all right now," he said coldly, and left her.

It was so cruel.  She wanted to cry out against him.  But across the
room she could see him and the cook bending over the prostrate form
of her husband.  A vague sense of the emotions that must be
controlling the Professor closed her lips.  The cook retreated to the
kitchen, and they heard him close the back door and pass rapidly away
toward the ranch buildings.

The Professor lifted Cockney against the wall.  He was partly
conscious now, a large bandage covering the upper part of his head.
He looked over at his wife, puzzled.  Memory returned to him in a
wave, and he struggled to stand up.  But the Professor's strong hand
pressed him back.

"Wait, Jim Cathers!  There are things you should know."

He drew from an inside pocket a newspaper clipping carefully folded
in a piece of stiff paper, and held it out to Cockney.

"You'll know by that that I'm not the man to insult any man's wife.
Perhaps you'll realise how I've held myself these many weeks."

He thrust the clipping into Cockney's nerveless hand.

"I believe I can trust it to you now--as well as the next move.
You're a free man.  It's an open race between us now....  But you've
the inside track--and I'll leave you there till the decision's made.
I think I know Cockney Aikens, if I didn't Jim Cathers."

Without looking at Mary he went out, though she hungered for his
eyes.  Cockney staggered to his feet and sank into a chair, staring
at the clipping.  Once or twice as he read, the back of his hand
pressed against his forehead, and at the end he closed his eyes.
Mary Aikens stood leaning on the piano, scarcely breathing.

Presently he looked at her.

"Sit down, Mary."  His voice was like the old courting days.  "I have
a--a story to tell you."

She sank to the piano seat, her arms outstretched over the keyboard.

"It's a story that suffers from being withheld from you so long.  You
should have known it--_Mary Merrill_--before you--you consented to
come here--no, you should never have heard it, for it should never
have been necessary to tell you....  I thought the only one who knew
it was myself--it was my story--the story of a broken, degraded life.
It is better--and worse than I thought....

"_You are not my wife._"

She was conscious of a numbing chaos or emotions that clouded her
brain--but there was joy there with the bewilderment; joy--and shame.

He drew a broken breath.

"You are not my wife--unless--unless ... I was born in England--in
Surrey--you need know nothing more definite than that.  My name is
Jim Cathers--you heard it.  My people had money--too much of it for
my good.  There are many in England like that....  I was
spoilt--spoilt as a baby, as a boy, as a youth....  It was in my
youth it began to twist my life.  My money--everyone knew of it.
That was part of my parents' creed.  The girls about knew that Jim
Cathers was the catch of the country-side--they thought of nothing
but my money....  Money--and position--count so much more in love
over there--because all men are not equal.  Love is more impersonal,
I suppose....

"There was one--Dorothy Swaine.  She was a--a publican's daughter.  I
have only this excuse--a miserable one--that the publican over there
is rated differently from where you were raised.  I met her on one of
my orgies.  She was pretty; I was a fool.  She wanted my money and
name.  I--I wanted ... Mary Merrill.  I loved her as much as my
shallow nature in those days knew how....  I married her."

He swallowed hard, and crushed the bit of paper in his nervous hand,
but smoothed it out again carefully on his knees.

"We scarcely lived together.  Father and mother were
disgusted--insulted--disgraced.  In our family had been an actress or
two of no great reputation, it is true, morally or artistically, and
one of my uncles had married a maid.  But always something was done
to gloss it over--money and position are called on so often to do
that--and the upper lips of the Cathers remained stiff....

"Father brought me back from France--where we had gone on our brief
honeymoon--when the money was spent....  Dorothy ... she was handed a
sum of money....  She took it hanging round my neck with the wails of
a broken heart.  I didn't suspect--about the money, and I swore I'd
return when I could keep her....  You see, I had been trained to no
profession.  I'd been to a Public School, an expensive and exclusive
one ... and they--that kind--do nothing to correct a foolish lad's
sense of proportion.  I was one of a vast body over there whose only
profession is to uphold the family traditions and to spend.  That
meant the Army--or the Church....

"The longer I was kept from her, the more madly I thought I loved
her....  Yes--the more I _loved_ her.  I want to be square: I did
love her.  One night I could stand it no longer.  I stole away from
the house....  I remember how I thrilled at the sight of the lights
of her father's inn.  I pictured her joy at sight of me.  I swore to
myself never to leave her again.  There would be some way of making a
home for the rest of our lives.  You see, I didn't know then she had
taken the money.  I crept up to the inn through the darkness, partly
to surprise her, partly that inquisitive eyes might not carry back
the story to my father.  Nine out of ten of the neighbourhood would
have leaped at the opportunity of winning father's favour...

"I found her almost as I had pictured her--leaning on the gate ...
almost ... almost ... She was not alone...."

Mary Aikens was listening with drumming ears.  "You are not my
wife--you are not my wife!"  It kept ringing down everything else, so
that she heard him only as against a strong wind that steals words
and phrases.

"There was a man with her....  I heard what they were saying....  I
followed them...."


His voice trailed off to a whisper; his unseeing eyes stared far
through the paper spread on his knee.

"When he was gone I--I took her by the throat--I was a big, strong
fellow even then--and I squeezed--squeezed--squeezed.  I could feel
her breath bubbling through my fingers ... and then it ceased....  I
flung her on the ground and ran.  I told father.  He crammed all the
money he had in my pocket and started me off for Liverpool....  I
turned up here in Canada as Jim Aikens....

"There isn't much more.  Father kept me supplied with money through a
firm of Winnipeg lawyers.  There has been no stinting--the name of
Cathers must never be sullied again--so long as I stayed away.

"For years I thought I had killed her--my wife.  Not a word in all
that time have I heard directly from home.  I dared not write for
fear my letters would be traced, and neither father nor mother have
written me--ever told me Dorothy did not die.  Until a year after I
married you I thought I was free to marry."

Her hands fell from her face, a gasp of relief broke from her.  He
understood.

"Oh, Mary!  I never was brute enough to marry you, knowing--my wife
to be alive.  You are innocent--as I am--of that....  More than a
year ago I saw her picture in a New York paper.  She was on the
stage--she'd come to America--perhaps to look for me....  For some
reason she had clung to her own name--perhaps she expected me to
recognise her, for she was well known then.  I knew her cruel smile,
her smirking innocence, her shameless invitation.  And I--I was a
bigamist....  You were not my wife....  After that I went to the
dogs.  It was bad enough to have murdered her, even for the cause I
had; it was worse to realise what I had done to you....  I married
you too hastily, Mary.  I wanted to stifle that gurgling breath that
was always ringing in my ears, to feel that I was bound at
last--everlastingly--to a woman I could safely cherish....  I didn't
love you for yourself in those days, Mary, as I have learned to
since.  And by the time I knew you were not my wife I loved you too
much to let you love me until--until somehow I was purged, I didn't
figure how.  If separation must come to us, I didn't want you to
suffer as I would.  _I wouldn't let you love me._"

He bowed his head in his hands, and his great shoulders shook.

"That is why I've--I've played the brute, Mary.  God knows it hurt me
more than it did you.  But--but it was coming easier lately.  A man
can't lower himself to that, even for virtue's sake, without sinking
a step.  Of late I've sunk several.  One was jealousy.  You weren't
mine, but I wouldn't let anyone else have you.  I hated that man--and
now I know why.  I've hated everyone, even the men who look at you in
town.  I think I've been going mad for love of you, Mary....  And
now--now----"

He was reading the clipping again.

"What have you there?" she asked, and her voice was dead, hopeless.

"Dorothy Swaine is dead.  And I am free--free!"

He rose to his feet.  A radiant light was in his eyes, and his arms
stretched out to her.

"Mary, do you understand?  I am free.  We can look the world in the
face----"

But in Mary Merrill's face was no answering light.

"Jim!  Jim!" she wailed.  "Why--oh, why didn't you trust me?  Why
didn't you tell me a year ago?"

He pulled up, swaying, and his hands fell slowly to his side.

"Why--Mary!"

It was the moan of despair, of freshly-lit fires for ever
extinguished.

Mary Merrill rose from the piano seat, her hands tight against her
cheeks, and tottered to her room.  For a full minute he stared
unbelievingly at the locked door, then he lifted his Stetson slowly
from the floor and stumbled out.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE CHASE AMONG THE CLIFFS

The heart-stricken man staggered down the gravel path before the
house and struck blindly across the prairie toward the river.  Pink
Eye, standing with drooping rein, tilted his ears and neighed to him,
but he was deaf and blind to everything save his bleeding heart.
Something in the rugged lines of the river cliffs drew him on.
_There_ was clamour to match the chaos in his mind, _there_ was
solitude and loneliness where to fight out the problem that stretched
out and on through the rest of his days.  Pink Eye neighed again, and
tried to follow sideways, but a foot caught a dragging rein and
pulled him up.

Cockney plunged through the long grass to the height west of the
ranch valley and dropped limply into the first ragged peaks, where he
lay on his back, staring with unseeing eyes into the cloudless sky.
His head was paining him, and the bandage had slipped, but he thought
it all a part of his mental suffering.  Dimly his mind went back to
the beginning--to his fight with Professor Bulkeley.  But defeat did
not trouble him now; the struggle was nothing more to him than a
series of pictures of Mary's emotions.  A groan--a gasp--a cry--the
swinging of that small arm that settled the issue.  That was what
blinded his eyes with tears and shook his body with sobs.  There lay
the verdict he had sought so rashly to alter with his story.
Love--he knew it now--was not a thing of many lives.  One could not
kill it and hope ever again to breathe life into its nostrils.
Love--real love--came but once.  It lived but once.  Like a leaf that
withers before an icy wind, love died for ever at the hand of cruelty.

For the past year--ever since he knew he had no right to marry
Mary--he had suffered trebly, the ignominy of a bigamist, the horror
of the injury he had done her, and the tearing agony of his grim
fight to destroy her love before it learned the truth.  And he only
knew how well he had succeeded in that when he would have given his
life to change it.  Ever since he had laid foul hands on a woman's
throat he had been an insult to her sex.

Big Cockney Aikens covered his face and shuddered.  If a lifetime of
repentance----  But there was to be no chance for repentance--there
could be none without Mary.  He must go on and on, living his life
alone--no Mary, no pardon of God or himself without Mary to keep him
straight.  The years ahead were a long road of blank despair
leading--where?  Without Mary, without friends, without hope, without
ambition or plans or pride--the end could only be that to which he
had been tending this past year of reckless memory.

He rolled over on his face in his anguish.  Below him the cliff
dropped away for more than a hundred feet to a jumble of rock.  A few
yards of eroded eminences, and then the rushing torrent of the river.
There lay peace--forgetfulness--an end of the struggle.  He lay
peering down into it with misty eyes--wondering.

But Cockney Aikens' self-condemnation was too deep for that.  His sin
was too great for such a simple ending.  His destiny--his
punishment--was to live until God cried quits and gave him happy
release.  Only addled cowards thought thus to escape the penalty of
their misdeeds.

He clambered hastily to his feet and moved to where a wide ledge lay
beneath him, cutting him off from the sheer drop to the river bottom.
He was too weak just then to fight temptation, and he fled from it.

Then he saw Isabel Bulkeley.  She was seated on the ledge, screened,
except from above, by the fallen rubble.  Hammer and chisel and whisk
lay at her feet.  Her hand supported her chin, and her eyes were
fixed on the river below.  She, too, was sad.  Cockney, sensitive to
the suffering of mankind, felt it in every line of her figure.

Presently he saw her start and raise her head as if listening.  The
next instant she had seized her chisel and was hammering at the rock
at her feet.

Around the face of the cliff only a few yards away came Dakota
Fraley, Winchester strapped over his shoulder.

* * * * *

Stamford wound his way slowly from before the hidden valley, along
the rocky lip of the Red Deer canyon.  His arms and legs ached, and
his mind was wearier still, but he crept carefully along like a
conspirator.  He knew that somewhere farther down the river he would
find the Bulkeleys; he was thankful that that day they had chosen the
south side for their explorations.

With the thought came another: his days with Isabel Bulkeley were
over--he might never see her again.  Slow as was his progress in the
roughness of the way and the care of his advance, he was in no hurry.
So long as he was away by nightfall he would be satisfied--the longer
it was delayed, the better.  He settled himself in the comfortable
hollow of a rock.

A man burst from the prairies above, far ahead of him, leaped to the
cover of the upper rocks, and in one swift glance swept the cliff
below.  With scarcely an instant's pause he dropped into a crevice,
and Stamford could see him working a perilous but rapid descent with
back and hands and knees.  Reaching a ledge, he began to leap
downward from rock to rock like a goat, swinging himself by his arms,
unhesitating, sure-footed.

Stamford blinked as the huge figure of Professor Bulkeley threw
itself down the last height and landed on the water's edge.

There he paused only long enough to cast one quick glance upward at
the height behind him, another on either side into the torrent, then
he leaped far out into the water.  Stamford gasped.  It was nothing
short of suicide.  Human flesh or human muscle could not master the
rush of that foaming current.

There the sullen eddies told of a fierce pull beneath--and out beyond
was the bubbling foam of rocks crowding the surface.

The Professor disappeared.  But the big head came up farther down,
shook itself like a spaniel, and started for the other shore.
Stamford swept the lashing water with his glasses, but there was
nothing now to be seen save the roaring torrent.

He climbed warily upward.  Something out there on the
prairie--something of dire peril--had driven the Professor to such a
risk.

Peering over the edge, he saw a circle of mounted cowboys closing in
on the place where the Professor had disappeared.  They were in no
hurry.  Dakota and his companions knew that cliff--they knew the
hopelessness of escape from their pursuing vengeance.  Dakota laughed
wildly and waved his rifle; Alkali drew his hand expressively across
his mouth, and General took a last look at his rifle.  Fifty yards
from the cliff edge they dismounted and came on, crouching, creeping
in on their prey.  When no shot greeted them, they moved faster,
tightening the arch of the circle.

"It's a shame to take the money, boys," jeered Dakota.  "The old
fossil thought he could make it here.  He don't know these rocks.
Anyway there won't be no funeral service; the grave's just yawning
for him down there."

He was on the edge now, looking down to the river.  They spread out
in sudden surprise and alarm, searching among the upper rocks with
drawn revolvers; several of them carried their rifles as well.  The
foreman started down, leaving his rifle at the top.  Right and left
was unscalable wall; below, it seemed almost as impassable.  They
were puzzled--furious.

A mocking laugh drifted to them above the rattle of the waters.
Across the river, three hundred yards below them, the Professor was
standing, waving his hand.  Bean Slade threw forward his rifle and
fired, and a chip of rock broke into the air several yards above the
mocking foe.  The Professor waved again and disappeared.

Dakota, his face livid, climbed up to the prairie.

"Get back to the ranch.  Take my horse with you.  I'll attend to this
little affair myself.  One of us isn't going to sleep in no bed this
night....  Besides, I got a little personal matter to settle, and
this seems a mighty good chance.  You fellers wouldn't be interested."

He jerked his Winchester back over his shoulder and started
down-stream.

The others rode away, laughing significantly.  Stamford slunk from
his hiding-place on Dakota's trail.  He had no idea what was in
Dakota's mind, but in that mood he was dangerous, and it was
someone's business to keep an eye on him.

Presently, far down the river on the other shore, something moved
among the rocks.  Dakota was invisible in a bend in the cliff, and
Stamford fixed his glasses on the spot and watched.  The Professor
was there, straining at something, jerking forward as if for a fresh
hold, and pulling back slowly again.  To Stamford's amazement the
raft came foot by foot into view from this side of the river and
moved out toward the straining figure.  And on it was Gee-Gee.  The
jerking of the craft made the horse rear once or twice, and his legs
were braced in terror.  Stamford noticed then that the raft was
turned for the opposite passage, the higher end toward the shore it
was leaving.

Against the pressure of that current, with Gee-Gee aboard, Professor
Bulkeley was pulling the raft by sheer force of muscle and the weight
of his body.

By the time Dakota came into view again Gee-Gee and the Professor had
passed into the rocks on the other side.  In time the cowboy arrived
at the mooring platform.  He saw the raft across the river and sat
down under cover to think.  In a minute he lifted a huge stone and
approached the end of the cable.  A few heavy blows severed it, and
the wire, with a spitting of fume, sank into the stream.  The raft,
freed, floated down the current, bumped against hidden rocks,
splintered, split apart, one section swinging to destruction lower
down.

Dakota lifted his head and laughed into the opposite cliffs.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE BATTLE ON THE CLIFFS

Stamford came to the raft-landing on the river's edge, tired and
perturbed, and seated himself to rest.  He was very weary and hungry.
Dakota had gone on faster and faster.  Suddenly Stamford remembered
that somewhere ahead, down that cliff, Isabel Bulkeley would be
waiting for her brother.  He picked himself up in a fever of anxiety
and plunged recklessly on.

He was still far away when he saw them--Isabel and Dakota.  The
cowboy was sitting boldly on a rock close to her, one foot swinging.
His Stetson was pushed to the back of his head, and now and then he
threw back his head to laugh.  Isabel did not laugh.  Stamford saw
her withdraw suddenly and turn, and Dakota reached swiftly for her,
seizing her arm.  She struggled but did not scream.  Dakota laughed
and drew her to him.

At that moment Cockney Aikens hurled himself from above and landed on
all-fours close to Dakota.  The cowboy recoiled, leaped farther back,
and his hand went to his belt.  Cockney raised himself, lunged, and
Dakota flashed his gun and fired.  Cockney halted for but the
fraction of a second, then his great fist landed on Dakota's face,
and the cowboy tumbled back among the rocks.

Cockney seemed to go limp then; he sank to his side.  But he turned
to Isabel and pointed, and she dropped behind a rock.  The wounded
man rolled himself slowly to cover.  Dakota was nowhere to be seen.
Cockney threw his left arm over the rock to ease his position, and a
spot of smoke broke from the place where Dakota was hiding, and the
arm slid off and Cockney fell back in a contorted position.  Another
burst of smoke, and Isabel ducked.  Dakota was keeping them both to
cover.

Stamford dashed upward to the prairie to make better speed.  He could
see Cockney better now.  His left arm lay limp.  One side of shirt
and trousers was soaked with blood.  His one sound hand reached up
and pushed a bandage from his eyes.  On the exposed rock, ten yards
away, lay his revolver.  In his leap from the rocks it had fallen
from his belt.  He was unarmed, of which Dakota was evidently
ignorant.  Cockney's hand was fumbling at his belt.  Isabel, too, had
her eyes on the revolver.

Stamford dropped to cover in the upper rocks behind Isabel to
consider the situation.  Then he advanced stealthily to the edge of
the open, drew a long breath, and dashed out on the ledge where the
revolver lay.  He scooped it up and tossed it to Cockney.  As he
turned Dakota fired.  A hot needle pierced his left shoulder.  A
second bullet missed him altogether, though it fanned his hair.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed, as he sank beside Isabel.  "Gosh!"

It was so boyishly inadequate that Isabel smiled through the fear
that had come into her eyes.

"Bah!" he jeered.  "I thought those cowpunchers were dead shots."

He kept his left shoulder away from her and settled down with his
back to the rock.  He did not ask for an explanation.  It only
mattered that Dakota was on one side and the other three of them on
the other.  Cockney, by the sound of things, was making it hot for
Dakota, now that he had his gun.  A curse from the cowboy registered
a nip.  Stamford grinned foolishly.

"I bet on Cockney," he said.

"But he's wounded, terribly wounded."

He raised himself to look over.  Cockney was lying on his stomach far
out from cover.  His left arm was horribly unnatural, but his right
held the gun pointed at the rock behind which Dakota lay.

A flash of movement brought an immediate report from Cockney's
revolver, and Dakota's gun rattled out on the open ledge.  A second
shot sent it far out of reach.

Cockney's plan was evident: Dakota was not to be allowed to take aim.
The cowboy was a two-gun man, Cockney knew.  A Stetson showed above
the rock, but Cockney ignored it; bits of rock jerked up in the air
but failed to draw fire.  Suddenly Dakota exposed his second gun and
fired, Cockney returning it instantly.  Both seemed to have missed.
The chance shot was repeated from the other side of the rock, and
Cockney failed to reply.

For a minute or two the battle waned.  Dakota tried a third shot.
Both guns spoke together.  Stamford, his eyes held by the
recklessness of the wounded rancher lying there in the open, saw one
of his feet jerk.  At the same moment Dakota's second gun jangled
among the rocks, though it did not come into view.  They waited for
its reappearance, but evidently the shot had damaged it.

"He has a rifle, Cockney," Stamford shouted.

Cockney nodded without turning his head.

After a long time the rifle snapped, but it did not show.  Twice it
was repeated.  Dakota was summoning his friends.

An answering volley burst out down the river, followed by the shouts
of the cowboys.  Dakota jeered.

"And now, Cockney Aikens, comes the end o' the chapter.  I knew you
been tracking us all summer.  You've drawn your little share of the
rustling manys a year without knowing it--but there'll not be a damn
cent for you of the big bunch we're taking out to-night.  Then we'll
scoop all that's left--including dear little Mary and the girl there."

Stamford took a chance.  He looked out to the east.  The cowboys were
coming on the run, darting from cover to cover.  At the end of the
ledge they separated, some slinking over the edge to work up behind.

"I knew you killed Kid Loveridge at Dunmore Junction that day,"
Dakota went on, "just 'cause he shot a slinking Policeman who'd 'a'
got us shore if he hadn't.  I've always held one bullet for you ever
since.  If you'd told the Police you'd 'a' got it sooner.  You didn't
know I fired the other bullet that got the Corporal.  I only wish I'd
been nearer to help the Kid.  You was too quick on the draw for him."

Cockney was stiffly trying to drag himself to cover, his eyes darting
about for a place to make a last stand.

"Stamford," he called, "can you get her to one of those fissures--the
one my right foot's pointing at?  I can protect you from here, I
think."

Stamford examined the crevice.

"It's too far," he said.  "We're not badly off here."

Cockney's revolver spat, and Muck Norsley flopped from the edge of
the cliff and lay half in the open.  Two others bolted across and
sank out of sight.  Cockney fired again but missed.  Two of their
enemies were now at their backs.

Stamford moved round Isabel and watched behind.  A rifle barrel came
slowly into sight and dropped until it almost covered them--then the
peak of a Stetson.  He raised himself to protect the girl at his side.

"Isabel," he whispered, "it looks as if it's about time to say
something--to tell you that--I love you.  If you can say anything
that'll make me go with a smile--quick!"

His eye was on the rifle.  He hated the thought of being shot in the
back.  But the rifle lifted unexpectedly to the sky, and Bean Slade
reared his bony shoulders into view.

"It's only a woman, boys!" he shouted, with a scornful laugh.  "A
woman!"

"Bean," growled Stamford, "it may seem ungrateful, but why didn't you
wait a second?"

"Shoot, you blasted idiot!" shrieked Dakota.  "They're all in it.
Get the boss and that editor-fellow anyway."

Stamford grinned sheepishly at Bean's lanky figure leaning over the
rock, and turned to Isabel.

"I guess it's up to me to postpone the tale.  I'm a bit too
thin-skinned for this kind of a game."

"You don't _need_ to postpone it--Morton," Isabel whispered.

"Yes, shoot, and do it quick!" muttered Stamford.  "Before I waken.
Do you know," he said, with a whimsical smile, "I've a feeling we're
going to pull through."

Ten yards from Bean Slade rose the ruddy countenance of General
Jones.  Deliberately he raised his rifle.

Like a flash Bean fired, and with the report General crumpled out of
sight.

"That's for Billy Windover," cried Bean, expectorating.

With the shot Cockney turned his head weakly.  Dakota heard General's
single cry and stood out in the open to fire.  Without a groan Bean
slid from the rock.

"And that's for General," hissed Dakota, dropping to cover.

Bean lifted his head and looked into Stamford's eyes.  A slow smile
passed across his lean features.

"Ta-ta!" he murmured, and dropped back lifeless.

Stamford's eyes were blinded with tears.  For the first time an
overpowering fury rose within him.  He reached to his pocket and drew
a small automatic.

"Damn!" he exploded.  "I forgot all about it."  He fumbled the little
weapon in unaccustomed hand.  "But what does the beastly thing do?  I
never fired one in my life."

She grabbed it from him and fired, and a figure that had been trying
to creep across behind them darted back.  Cockney turned his head and
smiled wanly at them.  His gun was lying beside him now; he seemed
too weak to help.

"I'll just toddle over and get Bean's rifle," Stamford announced.  "I
seem to be useful only as an ammunition wagon in this fracas.  Never
fired a gun in my life, but I'll close my eyes and--darn the
consequences!  It may scare them almost as much as me.  If I could
only hit that rock in front of Dakota----"

He had risen to his feet, but she seized his arm.

"I'm going with you," she said.

He blinked into her eyes.

"That means?"

"It's dangerous; you're not going without me."

A shot broke from behind them and struck the rock above their heads.

"I think," smiled Stamford, "the second instalment of that serial is
about due.  I love you, Isabel."

For answer she reached up and pulled his lips to hers.  At the kiss
he paled.

"Life without this," he sighed, "could never equal death with it."

"But why not life _with_ it?" she smiled.

"That," he said, "is worth any risk."

He looked at her, but she was watching the rocks behind with raised
revolver.

Alkali Sam shouted:

"D'ye want the gal, Dakota?"

"You're shore right I do, old hoss!"

"Cudn't yo hang the li'l editor-chap t' yer watch chain?  He don't
seem wuth powder."

Stamford glared.

"Keep one bullet," he ordered Isabel.  Then he smiled.  "They don't
seem to like me."

Alkali was shouting a ribald song as he climbed upward for a better
shot.

"I think," said Stamford, "things are going to happen."

What happened was a new sound from across the river--the pound of a
running herd.  Silence fell suddenly over the tragedy on the ledge;
every eye was turned to the opposite cliffs.

Swiftly along the edge of the cliff galloped a bunch of steers, their
tails held high.  And driving them on was Professor Bulkeley, mounted
on Gee-Gee, two huge dogs bounding before him.

Stamford peered over the rock at Cockney--he could not help it.  But
Cockney was almost past surprise.  Dakota and his comrades were
shouting to each other excitedly.  Isabel was laughing at Stamford
from the corner of her eye.  She nodded to his unspoken query.

But between them and the help in sight an impassable canyon ran.

The Professor, with the roar of the cattle and the river in his ears,
had heard nothing.  He would pass them by without a suspicion that
within rifle range his sister and friends were in direst peril.
Stamford and Isabel shouted, but no noise they could make would carry
against the clamour closing the Professor in.  Isabel fired into the
air until the automatic was empty.  It was useless.

Stamford darted to Bean's lifeless body.  Leaning the rifle on the
rock he took as careful aim as he knew how at the running cattle, but
missed.  He repeated the failure.  Then, reckless of exposure, he
carried the rifle to Cockney.  Lifting the heavy man to his side, he
thrust the rifle before him and held it against the rock.  Cockney's
face twisted in pain, but he placed his eye to the stock, held his
breath, and pulled the trigger.

A steer leaped, stumbled, and those behind trod over it.  A second
time a steer fell.  Cockney sank back.  He could stand it no longer.

As the first steer went down, the Professor pulled up sharply.  He
had not heard the shot, but he recognised the results.  The next shot
he heard.  And then a third snapped from the rock where Dakota lay,
and Gee-Gee sank to his side.

Dakota sent a piercing whistle over the river, and the two great dogs
came slinking to the edge of the cliff and lay looking over.

Dakota jeered aloud.

"Them was two fine pups the Inspector got for us, Alkali.  I'll
borrow dogs like them any time they come to the West.  I need 'em in
my biz."

"Hurrah for Dakota Fraley an' his glad eye!" shouted Alkali.
"Dakota, boy, you're a devil with dogs an' skirts."

A rifle-shot broke from across the river.  Dakota Fraley raised
himself with a spasmodic jerk, a look of shocked incredulity on his
swarthy face, and fell full length out on the ledge.  His limbs
scarcely twitched as he lay.  Cockney smiled weakly.

Alkali and Dude could be heard seeking cover from the newer peril.
Again and again the rifle-shots came from the unseen marksman.  Bits
of rock flew about the two cowboys.  Stamford rose in his excitement
and waved his hat.  He could see bullet after bullet flash a white
sideways mark on the face of the cliff, and the chips rise lower down
where the bullet had bent its course.  At the fifth shot Alkali cried
out.  Richochet shooting was an art even he, notorious gunman as he
was, had never learned.

The firing ceased as suddenly as it had begun.  The Dude remained.
Suddenly above them a stern command rasped down.  Two Mounted
Policemen leaned over the edge of the cliff, their rifles covering
Dude.

The cowboy stepped out, his arms up.  The battle on the ledge above
the Red Deer was ended.


Stamford and Isabel ran to Cockney.  He was lying at full length, his
left arm crumpled under him.  The bandage on his head had slipped.
He looked up in Stamford's face and smiled.

"My guest--to the last--anyway, Stamford.  I'm going to--beat
you--away--from the H-Lazy Z."

Isabel whispered to one of the Mounted Police, who dashed up to his
horse and rode away.

"No--don't touch me.  Let me lie--awhile.  Where's the Professor?"

An exclamation from Sergeant Prior drew their eyes to the opposite
shore.  The Professor had jumped into the river--he could not wait to
go round by the ford.  They watched, Stamford satisfied that what the
powerful fellow had done once he could repeat, Isabel alarmed,
Sergeant Prior frankly sceptical.

They did their best for Cockney where he lay, but there was so little
to be done.  When they attempted to lift him, he swooned, and they
left him at last and waited--waited.

The dripping Professor bounded up the rocks, scrambling from foothold
to foothold.

"You're safe, dear?" he panted, when Isabel ran to him.

For one terrible moment Stamford stared at them.  She read his fear
and touched his arm.

"Morton, Morton!  He is only a brother.  I've been helping him in
this case--I do sometimes."

"Heavens, Prior!" cried the Professor.  "I feared you'd be too late.
I stampeded the cattle.  I had to.  They were taking them away
to-night."  Then he saw Cockney.  "My God, Aikens!  What have they
done to you?"  He sank beside the wounded man.

"This is--my bad day," murmured Cockney, with a twisted smile.
"First you thrashed me--now I'm--on the way, Professor."

"Not Professor, Cockney--Amos Barnes, of the Mounted Police."

Cockney smiled.  "I suspected....  I helped you--what I could.  But I
hated--the Police so.  _Your_ English saddle....  Pink Eye yours now
without--breaking into the corral--at nights."

Mary Aikens ran along the ledge and sank by his side.  She was out on
Matana when the Policeman found her.

"Jim!  Jim!"

He pressed her feebly back with his right hand.

"No sentiment--Mary....  I--haven't time.  You're--in good hands.
This is the best way--out."  His breath was coming in gasps.
"Now--now, Mary Merrill--just one kiss--to help me on my way ... in
memory of ... what might have been.  If--Amos--doesn't mind."

She touched his lips tenderly with her own, and the tears rained on
his face.  He opened his eyes, and the sweet smile of big, kindly,
light-hearted Cockney Aikens relieved the end.

Amos Barnes gently raised the weeping woman to her feet.

"He died as you would have him die, Mary," he whispered.  "In his
death you loved him as never in his life.  And that's how Jim would
have it.  You're going home now--to your mother.  We'll look after
the ranch.  I'll come to you when you send for me....  Poor Jim!  The
whole country loved him---but he'll rest best out here on the cliffs
of the H-Lazy Z, where he found himself."



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