pursuit of the outlaws. What was it in the insolent
look of the Senator's ranch hand that had suddenly dashed the doughty
Briton's reverence for the instrument of the law?

A barb wire fence tacked to spindly cottonwood trees marked the line of
an irregular homestead; and the Ranger swung into a gate extemporized
from barb wire on two adjustable posts. Behind the gate, stood a log
shack; on the windows, cheap lace curtains; behind the lace curtains, a
vague movement of peeping faces and a querulous termagant voice: "I
ain't a goin' to have you mixed up in no scrap; so there, Dan Flood!"

Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It
opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl
papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist
had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible.

"Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat.

"Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover
tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile
played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!"
The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again.

"Is he--_home_?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet.

"No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called
'way! Is there any message?"

Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the
frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed
her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as
a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a
pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door knob.

"Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where
the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of
gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald."
"There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering
bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for
an outsider--"

"Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about
it."

He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the
ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to
clock work stockings and high heeled slippers.

"A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye
the sheriff's--woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn