Lone Morgan, over at Elk Spring camp, was just sitting down to eat his midday meal when some one shouted outside. Lone stiffened in his chair, felt under his coat, and then got up with some deliberation and looked out of the window before he went to the door. All this was a matter of habit, bred of Lone's youth in the feud country, and had nothing whatever to do with his conscience.
"Hello!" he called, standing in the doorway and grinning a welcome to Swan, who stood with one arm resting on the board gate. "She's on the table—come on in."
"I don't know if you're home with the door shut like that," Swan explained, coming up to the cabin. "I chased a coyote from Rock City to here, and by golly, he's going yet! I'll get him sometime, maybe. He's smart, but you can beat anything with thinking if you don't stop thinking. Always the other feller stops sometimes, and then you get him. You believe that?"
"It most generally works out that way," Lone admitted, getting another plate and cup from the cupboard, which was merely a box nailed with its bottom to the wall, and a flour sack tacked across the front for a curtain. "Even a coyote slips up now and then, I reckon."
Swan sat down, smoothing his tousled yellow hair with both hands as he did so. "By golly, my shoulder is sore yet from carrying Brit Hunter," he remarked carelessly, flexing his muscles and grimacing a little.
Lone was pouring the coffee, and he ran Swan's cup over before he noticed what he was doing. Swan looked up at him and looked away again, reaching for a cloth to wipe the spilled coffee from the table.
"How was that?" Lone asked, turning away to the stove. "What-all happened to Brit Hunter?"
Swan, with his plate filled and his coffee well sweetened, proceeded to relate with much detail the story of Brit's misfortune. "By golly, I don't see how he don't get killed," he finished, helping himself to another biscuit. "Bygolly,I don't. Falling into Spirit Canyon is like getting dragged by a horse. It should kill a man. What you think, Lone?"
"It didn't, you say." Lone's eyes were turned to his coffee cup.
"It don't kill Brit Hunter—not yet. I think maybe he dies with all his bones broke, like that. By golly, that shows you what could happen if a man don't think. Brit should look at that chain on his wheel before he starts down that road."
"Oh. His brake didn't hold, eh?"
"I look at that wagon," Swan answered carefully. "It is something funny about that chain. I worked hauling logs in the mountains, once. It is something damn funny about that chain, the way it's fixed."
Lone did not ask him for particulars, as perhaps Swan expected. He did not speak at all for awhile, but presently pushed back his plate as if his appetite were gone.
"It's like Fred Thurman," Swan continued moralizing. "If Fred don't ride backwards, I bet he don't get killed—like that."
"Where's Brit now?" Lone asked, getting up and putting on his hat. "At the ranch?"
"Or heaven, maybe," Swan responded sententiously. "But my dog Yack, he don't howl yet. I guess Brit's at the ranch."
"Sorry I'm busy to-day," said Lone, opening the door. "You stay as long as you like, Swan. I've got some riding to do."
"I'll wash the dishes, and then I maybe will think quicker than that coyote. I'm after him, by golly, till I get him."
Lone muttered something and went out. Within five minutes Swan, hearing hoofbeats, looked out through a crack in the door and saw Lone riding at a gallop along the trail to Rock City. "Good bait. He swallows the hook," he commented to himself, and his good-natured grin was not brightening his face while he washed the dishes and tidied the cabin.
With Lone rode bitterness of soul and a sick fear that had nothing to do with his own destiny. How long ago Brit had been hurled into the canyon Lone did not know; he had not asked. But he judged that it must have been very recently. Swan had not told him of anything but the runaway, and of helping to carry Brit home—and of the "damn funny thing about the chain"—the rough-lock, he must have meant.Too well Lone understood the sinister meaning that probably lay behind that phrase.
"They've started on the Quirt now," he told himself with foreboding. "She's been telling her father——"
Lone fell into bitter argument with himself. Just how far was it justifiable to mind his own business? And if he did not mind it, what possible chance had he against a power so ruthless and so cunning? An accident to a man driving a loaded wagon down the Spirit Canyon grade had a diabolic plausibility that no man in the country could question. Brit, he reasoned, could not have known before he started that his rough-lock had been tampered with, else he would have fixed it. Neither was Brit the man to forget the brake on his load. If Brit lived, he might talk as much as he pleased, but he could never prove that his accident had been deliberately staged with murderous intent.
Lone lifted his head and looked away across the empty miles of sageland to the quiet blue of the mountains beyond. Peace—the peace of untroubled wilderness—brooded over the land. Far in the distance, against the rim of rugged hills, was an irregular splotch of brown which wasthe headquarters of the Sawtooth. Lone turned his wrist to the right, and John Doe, obeying the rein signal, left the trail and began picking his way stiff-legged down the steep slope of the ridge, heading directly toward the home ranch.
John Doe was streaked with sweat and his flanks were palpitating with fatigue when Lone rode up to the corral and dismounted. Pop Bridgers saw him and came bow-legging eagerly forward with gossip titillating on his meddlesome tongue, but Lone stalked by him with only a surly nod. Bob Warfield he saw at a distance and gave no sign of recognition. He met Hawkins coming down from his house and stopped in the trail.
"Have you got time to go back to the office and fix up my time, Hawkins?" he asked without prelude. "I'm quitting to-day."
Hawkins stared and named the Biblical place of torment. "What yuh quittin' for, Lone?" he added incredulously. "All you boys got a raise last month; ain't that good enough?"
"Plenty good enough, so long as I work for the outfit."
"Well, what's wrong? You've been with usfive years, Lone, and it's suited you all right so far——"
Lone looked at him. "Say, I never set out tomarrythe Sawtooth," he stated calmly. "And if I have married you-all by accident, you can get a bill of divorce for desertion. This ain't the first time a man ever quit yuh, is it, Hawkins?"
"No—and there ain't a man on the pay roll we can't do without," Hawkins retorted, his neck stiffening with resentment. "It's a kinda rusty trick, though, Lone, quittin' without notice and leaving a camp empty."
"Elk Spring won't run away," Lone assured him without emotion. "She's been left alone a week or two at a time during roundups. I don't reckon the outfit'll bust up before you get a man down there."
The foreman looked at him curiously, for this was not like Lone, whose tone had always been soft and friendly, and whose manner had no hint of brusqueness. There was a light, too, in Lone's eyes that had not been there before. But Hawkins would not question him further. If Lone Morgan or any other man wanted to quit, that was his privilege,—providing, of course, that his leaving was not likely to menace the peaceand security of the Sawtooth. Lone had made it a point to mind his own business, always. He had never asked questions, he had never surmised or gossiped. So Hawkins gave him a check for his wages and let him go with no more than a foreman's natural reluctance to lose a trustworthy man.
By hard riding along short cuts, Lone reached the Quirt ranch and dropped reins at the doorstep, not much past mid-afternoon.
"I rode over to see if there's anything I can do," he said, when Lorraine opened the door to him. He did not like to ask about her father, fearing that the news would be bad.
"Why, thank you for coming." Lorraine stepped back, tacitly inviting him to enter. "Dad knows us to-day, but of course he's terribly hurt and can't talk much. We do need some one to go to town for things. Frank helps me with dad, and Jim and Sorry are trying to keep things going on the ranch. And Swan does what he can, of course, but——"
"I just thought you maybe needed somebody right bad," said Lone quietly, meaning a great deal more than Lorraine dreamed that he meant. "I'm not doing anything at all, right now, so Ican just as well help out as not. I can go to town right away, if I can borrow a horse. John Doe, he's pretty tired. I been pushing him right through—not knowing there was a town trip ahead of him."
Lorraine found her eyes going misty. He was so quiet, and so reassuring in his quiet. Half her burden seemed to slip from her shoulders while she looked at him. She turned away, groping for the door latch.
"You may see dad, if you like, while I get the list of things the doctor ordered. He left only a little while ago, and I was waiting for one of the boys to come back so I could send him to town."
It was on Lone's tongue to ask why the doctor had not taken in the order himself and instructed some one to bring out the things; but he remembered how very busy with its own affairs was Echo and decided that the doctor was wise.
He tiptoed in to the bed and saw a sallow face covered with stubbly gray whiskers and framed with white bandages. Brit opened his eyes and moved his thin lips in some kind of greeting, and Lone sat down on the edge of a chair, feeling as miserably guilty as if he himself had brought the old man to this pass. It seemed to him that Britmust know more of the accident than Swan had told, and the thought did not add to his comfort. He waited until Brit opened his eyes again, and then he leaned forward, holding Brit's wandering glance with his own intent gaze.
"I ain't working now," he said, lowering his voice so that Lorraine could not hear. "So I'm going to stay here and help see you through with this. I've quit the Sawtooth."
Brit's eyes cleared and studied Lone's face. "D'you know—anything?"
"No, I don't." Lone's face hardened a little. "But I wanted you to know that I'm—with the Quirt, now."
"Frank hire yuh?"
"No. I ain't hired at all. I'm just—withyuh."
"We—need yuh," said Brit grimly, looking Lone straight in the eyes.
"Frank come yet?" The peevish impatience of an invalid whose horizon has narrowed to his own personal welfare and wants was in Brit's voice. Two weeks he had been sick, and his temper had not sweetened with the pain of his broken bones and the enforced idleness. Brit was the type of man who is never quiet unless he is asleep or too ill to get out of bed.
Lorraine came to the doorway and looked in at him. Two weeks had set their mark on her also. She seemed older, quieter in her ways; there were shadows in her eyes and a new seriousness in the set of her mouth. She had had her burdens, and she had borne them with more patience than many an older woman would have done, but what she thought of those burdens she did not say.
"No, dad—but I thought I heard a wagon a little while ago. He must be coming," she said.
"Where's Lone at?" Brit moved restlessly on the pillow and twisted his face at the pain.
"Lone isn't back, either."
"He ain't? Where'd he go?"
Lorraine came to the bedside and, lifting Brit's head carefully, arranged the pillow as she knew he liked it. "I don't know where he went," she said dully. "He rode off just after dinner. Do you want your supper now? Or would you rather wait until Frank brings the fruit?"
"I'd ruther wait—if Frank don't take all night," Brit grumbled. "I hope he ain't connected up with that Echo booze. If he has——"
"Oh, no, dad! Don't borrow trouble. Frank was anxious to get home as soon as he could. He'll be coming any minute, now. I'll go listen for the wagon."
"No use listenin'. You couldn't hear it in that sand—not till he gits to the gate. I don't see where Lone goes to, all the time. Where's Jim and Sorry, then?"
"Oh, they've had their supper and gone to the bunk-house. Do you want them?"
"No! What'd I want 'em fur? Not to look at, that's sure. I want to know how things is going on this ranch. And from all I can make out, they ain't goin' at all," Brit fretted. "What was you 'n Lone talkin' so long about, out in thekitchen last night? Seems to me you 'n' him have got a lot to say to each other, Raine."
"Why, nothing in particular. We were just—talking. We're all human beings, dad; we have to talk sometimes. There's nothing else to do."
"Well, I caught something about the Sawtooth. I don't want you talking to Lone or anybody else about that outfit, Raine. I told yuh so once. He's all right—I ain't saying anything against Lone—but the less you have to say the more you'll have to be thankful fur, mebby."
"I was wondering if Swan could have gotten word somehow to the Sawtooth and had them telephone out that you were hurt. And Lone was drawing a map of the trails and showing me how far it was from the canyon to the Sawtooth ranch. And he was asking me just how it happened that the brake didn't hold, and I said it must have been all right, because I saw you come out from under the wagon just before you hitched up. I thought you were fixing the chain on them."
"Huh?" Brit lifted his head off the pillow and let it drop back again, because of the pain in his shoulder. "You never seen me crawl outfrom under no wagon. I come straight down the hill to the team."
"Well, I saw some one. He went up into the brush. I thought it was you." Lorraine turned in the doorway and stood looking at him perplexedly. "We shouldn't be talking about it, dad—the doctor said we mustn't. But are yousureit wasn't you? Because I certainly saw a man crawl out from under the wagon and start up the hill. Then the horses acted up, and I couldn't see him after Yellowjacket jumped off the road."
Brit lay staring up at the ceiling, apparently unheeding her explanation. Lorraine watched him for a minute and returned to the kitchen door, peering out and listening for Frank to come from Echo with supplies and the mail and, more important just now, fresh fruit for her father.
"I think he's coming, dad," she called in to her father. "I just heard something down by the gate."
She could save a few minutes, she thought, by running down to the corral where Frank would probably stop and unload the few sacks of grain he was bringing, before he drove up to the house. Frank was very methodical in a fussy, purposeless way, she had observed. Twice he had drivento Echo since her father had been hurt, and each time he had stopped at the corral on his way to the house. So she closed the screen door behind her, careful that it should not slam, and ran down the path in the heavy dusk wherein crickets were rasping a strident chorus.
"Oh! It's you, is it, Lone?" she exclaimed, when she neared the vague figure of a man unsaddling a horse. "You didn't see Frank coming anywhere, did you? Dad won't have his supper until Frank comes with the things I sent for. He's late."
Lone was lifting the saddle off the back of John Doe, which he had bought from the Sawtooth because he was fond of the horse. He hesitated and replaced the saddle, pulling the blanket straight under it.
"I saw him coming an hour ago," he said. "I was back up on the ridge, and I saw a team turn into the Quirt trail from the ford. It couldn't be anybody but Frank. I'll ride out and meet him."
He was mounted and gone before she realized that he was ready. She heard the sharp staccato of John Doe's hoofbeats and wondered why Lone had not waited for another word from her. It was as if she had told him that Frank was insome terrible danger,—yet she had merely complained that he was late. The bunk-house door opened, and Sorry came out on the doorstep, stood there a minute and came slowly to meet her as she retraced her steps to the house.
"Where'd Lone go so sudden?" he asked, when she came close to him in the dusk. "That was him, wasn't it?"
Lorraine stopped and stood looking at him without speaking. A vague terror had seized her. She wanted to scream, and yet she could think of nothing to scream over. It was Lone's haste, she told herself impatiently. Her nerves were ragged from nursing her dad and from worrying over things she must not talk about,—that forbidden subject which never left her mind for long.
"Wasn't that him?" Sorry repeated uneasily. "What took him off again in such a rush?"
"Oh, I don't know! He said Frank should have been here long ago. He went to look for him. Sorry," she cried suddenly, "whatisthe matter with this place? I feel as if something horrible was just ready to jump out at us all. I—I want my back against something solid, all the time, so that nothing can creep up behind.Nothing," she added desperately, "could happen to Frank between here and the turn-off at the ford, could it? Lone saw him turn into our trail over an hour ago, he said."
Sorry, his fingers thrust into his overalls pockets, his thumbs hooked over the waistband, spat into the sand beside the path. "Well, he started off with a cracked doubletree," he said slowly. "He mighta busted 'er pullin' through that sand hollow. She was wired up pretty good, though, and there was more wire in the rig. I don't know of anything else that'd be liable to happen, unless——"
"Unless what?" Lorraine prompted sharply. "There's too much that isn't talked about, on this ranch. What else could happen?"
Sorry edged away from her. "Well—I dunno as anything would be liable to happen," he said uncomfortably. "'Taint likely him 'n' Brit 'd both have accidents—not right hand-runnin'."
"Accidents?" Lorraine felt her throat squeeze together. "Sorry, you don't mean—Sawtooth accidents?" she blurted.
She surprised a grunt out of Sorry, who looked over his shoulder as if he feared eavesdroppers. "Where'd you git that idee?" he demanded. "Idunno what you mean. Ain't that yore dad callin' yuh?"
Lorraine ignored the hint. "Youdoknow what I mean. Why did you say they wouldn't both be likely to have accidents hand-running? And why don't youdosomething? Why does every one just keep still and let things happen, and not say a word? If there's any chance of Frank having an—anaccident, I should think you'd be out looking after him, and not standing there with your hands in your pockets just waiting to see if he shows up or if he doesn't show up. You're all just like these rabbits out in the sage. You'll hide under a bush and wait until you're almost stepped on before you so much as wiggle an ear! I'm getting good and tired of this meek business!"
"We-ell," Sorry drawled amiably as she went past him, "playin' rabbit-under-a-bush mebby don't look purty, but it's dern good life insurance."
"A coward's policy," Lorraine taunted him over her shoulder, and went to see what her father wanted. When he, too, wanted to know why Lone had come and gone again in such a hurry, Lorraine felt all the courage go out of herat once. Their very uneasiness seemed to prove that there was more than enough cause for it. Yet, when she forced herself to stop and think, it was all about nothing. Frank had driven to Echo and had not returned exactly on time, though a dozen things might have detained him.
She was listening at the door when Swan appeared unexpectedly before her, having walked over from the Thurman ranch after doing the chores. To him she observed that Frank was an hour late, and Swan, whistling softly to Jack—Lorraine was surprised to hear how closely the call resembled the chirp of a bird—strode away without so much as a pretense at excuse. Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not daring to wonder.
Her father called to her fretfully, and she went in to him again and told him what Sorry had said about the cracked doubletree, and persuaded him to let her bring his supper at once, and to have the fruit later when Frank arrived. Brit did not say much, but she sensed his uneasiness, and her own increased in proportion. Later she saw two tiny, glowing points down by the corral and knew that Sorry and Jim were down there, waiting and listening, ready to do whatever was needed ofthem; although what that would be she could not even conjecture.
She made her father comfortable, chattered aimlessly to combat her understanding of his moody silence, and listened and waited and tried her pitiful best not to think that anything could be wrong. The subdued chuckling of the wagon in the sand outside the gate startled her with its unmistakable reality after so many false impressions that she heard it.
"Frank's coming, dad," she announced relievedly, "and I'll go and get the mail and the fruit."
She ran down the path again, almost light-hearted in her relief from that vague terror which had held her for the past hour. From the corral Sorry and Jim came walking up the path to meet the wagon which was making straight for the bunk-house instead of going first to the stable. One man rode on the seat, driving the team which walked slowly, oddly, reminding Lorraine of a funeral procession. Beside the wagon rode Lone, his head drooped a little in the starlight. It was not until the team stopped before the bunk-house that Lorraine knew what it was that gave her that strange, creepy feeling of disaster. It was not Frank Johnson, but Swan Vjolmar whoclimbed limberly down from the seat without speaking and turned toward the back of the wagon.
"Why, where's Frank?" she asked, going up to where Lone was dismounting in silence.
"He's there—in the wagon. We picked him up back here about three-quarters of a mile or so."
"What's the matter? Is he drunk?" This was Sorry who came up to Swan and stood ready to lend a hand.
"He's so drunk he falls out of wagon down the road, but he don't have whisky smell by his face," was Swan's ambiguous reply.
"He's not hurt, is he?" Lorraine pressed close, and felt a hand on her arm pulling her gently away.
"He's hurt," Lone said, just behind her. "We'll take him into the bunk-house and bring him to. Run along to the house and don't worry—and don't say anything to your dad, either. There's no need to bother him about it. We'll look after Frank."
Already Swan and Sorry and Jim were lifting Frank's limp form from the rear of the wagon. It sagged in their arms like a dead thing, andLorraine stepped back shuddering as they passed her. A minute later she followed them inside, where Jim was lighting the lamp with shaking fingers. By the glow of the match Lorraine saw how sober Jim looked, how his chin was trembling under the drooping, sandy mustache. She stared at him, hating to read the emotion in his heavy face that she had always thought so utterly void of feeling.
"It isn't—he isn't——" she began, and turned upon Swan, who was beside the bunk, looking down at Frank's upturned face. "Swan, if it's serious enough for a doctor, can't you send another thought message to your mother?" she asked. "He looks—oh, Lone! He isn'tdead, is he?"
Swan turned his head and stared down at her, and from her face his glance went sharply to Lone's downcast face. He looked again at Lorraine.
"To-night I can't talk with my mind," Swan told her bluntly. "Not always I can do that. I could ask Lone how can a man be drunk so he falls off the wagon when no whisky smell is on his breath."
"Breath? Hell! There ain't no breath tosmell," Sorry exclaimed as unexpectedly as his speeches usually were. "If he's breathin' I can't tell it on him."
"He's got to be breathing!" Lone declared with a suppressed fierceness that made them all look at him. "I found a half bottle of whisky in his pocket—but Swan's right. There wasn't a smell of it on his breath—I tell you now, boys, that he was lying in the sand between two sagebushes, on his face. And there is where he got the blow—behind his ear. It's one of them accidents that you've got to figure out for yourself."
"Oh, do something!" Lorraine cried distractedly. "Never mind now how it happened, or whether he was drunk or not—bring him to his senses first, and let him explain. If there's whisky, wouldn't that help if he swallowed some now? And there's medicine for dad's bruises in the house. I'll get it. And Swan! Won't youpleasetalk to your mother and tell her we need the doctor?"
Swan drew back. "I can't," he said shortly. "Better you send to Echo for telegraph. And if you have medicine, it should be on his head quick."
Lone was standing with his fingers pressed onFrank's wrist. He looked up, hesitated, drew out his knife and opened the small blade. He moved so that his back was to Lorraine, and still holding the wrist he made a small, clean cut in the flesh. The three others stooped, stared with tightened lips at the bloodless incision, straightened and looked at one another dumbly.
"I'd like to lie to you," Lone told Lorraine, speaking over his shoulder. "But I won't. You're too game and too square. Go and stay with your dad, but don't let him know—get him to sleep. We don't need that medicine, nor a doctor either. Frank's dead. I reckon he was dead when he hit the ground."
At daybreak Swan was striding toward the place where Frank Johnson had been found. Lone, his face moody, his eyes clouded with thought, rode beside him, while Jack trotted loose-jointedly at Swan's heels. Swan had his rifle, and Lone's six-shooter showed now and then under his coat when the wind flipped back a corner. Neither had spoken since they left the ranch, where Jim was wandering dismally here and there, trying to do the chores when his heart was heavy with a sense of personal loss and grim foreboding. None save Brit had slept during the night—and Brit had slept only because Lorraine had prudently given him a full dose of the sedative left by the doctor for that very purpose. Sorry had gone to Echo to send a telegram to the coroner, and he was likely to return now at any time. Wherefore Swan and Lone were going to look over the ground before others had trampledout what evidence there might be in the shape of footprints.
They reached the spot where the team had stopped of its own accord in crossing a little, green meadow, and had gone to feeding. Lone pulled up and half turned in the saddle, looking at Swan questioningly.
"Is that dog of yours any good at trailing?" he asked abruptly. "I've got a theory that somebody was in that wagon with Frank, and drove on a ways before he jumped out. I believe if you'd put that dog on the trail——"
"If I put that dog on the trail he stays on the trail all day, maybe," Swan averred with some pride. "By golly, he follows a coyote till he drops."
"Well, it's a coyote we're after now," said Lone. "A sheep-killer that has made his last killin'. Right here's where I rode up and caught the team, last night. We better take a look along here for tracks."
Swan stared at him curiously, but he did not speak, and the two went on more slowly, their glances roving here and there along the trail edge, looking for footprints. Once the dog Jack swung off the trail into the brush, and Swan followed him while Lone stopped and awaited the result. Swan came back presently, with Jack sulking at his heels.
"Yack, he take up the trail of a coyote," Swan explained, "but it's got the four legs, and Yack, he don't understand me when I don't follow. He thinks I'm crazy this morning."
"I reckon the team came on toward home after the fellow jumped out," Lone observed. "He'd plan that way, seems to me. I know I would."
"I guess that's right. I don't have experience in killing somebody," Swan returned blandly, and Lone was too preoccupied to wonder at the unaccustomed sarcasm.
A little farther along Swan swooped down upon a blue dotted handkerchief of the kind which men find so useful where laundries are but a name. Again Lone stopped and bent to examine it as Swan spread it out in his hands. A few tiny grains of sandstone rattled out, and in the center was a small blood spot. Swan looked up straight into Lone's dark, brooding eyes.
"By golly, Lone, you would do that, too, if you kill somebody," he began in a new tone,—the tone which Lorraine had heard indistinctly in the bunk-house when Swan was talking to the doctor."Do you think I'm a damn fool, just because I'm a Swede? You are smart—you think out every little thing. But you make a big mistake if you don't think some one else may be using his brain, too. This handkerchief I have seen you pull from your pocket too many times. And it had a rock in it last night, and the blood shows that it was used to hit Frank behind the ear. You think it all out—but maybe I've been thinking too. Now you're under arrest. Just stay on your horse—he can't run faster than a bullet, and I don't miss coyotes when I shoot them on the run."
"The hell you say!" Lone stared at him. "Where's your authority, Swan?"
Swan lifted the rifle to a comfortable, firing position, the muzzle pointing straight at Lone's chest. With his left hand he turned back his coat and disclosed a badge pinned to the lining.
"I'm a United States Marshal, that's all; a government hunter," he stated. "I'm hot on the trail of coyotes—all kinds. Throw that six-shooter over there in the brush, will you?"
"I hate to get the barrel all sanded up," Lone objected mildly. "You can pack it, can't you?" He grinned a little as he handed out the gun, muzzle toward himself. "You're playing safe,Swan, but if that dog of yours is any good, you'll have a change of heart pretty quick. Isn't that a man's track, just beside that flat rock? Put the dog on, why don't you?"
"Yack is on already," Swan pointed out. "Ride ahead of me, Lone."
With a shrug of his shoulders Lone obeyed, following the dog as it trotted through the brush on the trail of a man's footprints which Swan had shown it. A man might have had some trouble in keeping to the trail, but Jack trotted easily along and never once seemed at fault. In a very few minutes he stopped in a rocky depression where a horse had been tied, and waited for Swan, wagging his tail and showing his teeth in a panting smile. The man he had trailed had mounted and ridden toward the ridge to the west. Swan examined the tracks, and Lone sat on his horse watching him.
Jack picked up the trail where the horseman had walked away toward the road, and Swan followed him, motioning Lone to ride ahead.
"You could tell me about this, I think, but I can find out for myself," he observed, glancing at Lone briefly.
"Sure, you can find out, if you use your eyesand do a little thinking," Lone replied. "I hope you do lay the evidence on the right doorstep."
"I will," Swan promised, looking ahead to where Jack was nosing his way through the sagebrush.
They brought up at the edge of the road nearly a quarter of a mile nearer Echo than the place where Frank's body had been found. They saw where the man had climbed into the wagon, and followed to where they had found Frank beside the road, lying just as he had pitched forward from the wagon seat.
"I think," said Swan quietly, "we will go now and find out where that horse went last night."
"A good idea," Lone agreed. "Do you see how it was done, Swan? When he saw the team coming, away back toward Echo, he rode down into that wash and tied his horse. He was walking when Frank overtook him, I reckon—maybe claiming his horse had broke away from him. He had a rock in his handkerchief. Frank stopped and gave him a lift, and he used the rock first chance he got. Then I reckon he stuck the whisky bottle in Frank's pocket and heaved him out. He dropped the handkerchief out of his hip pocket when he jumped out of the rig. It's rightsimple, and if folks didn't get to wondering about it, it'd be safe as any killing can be. As safe," he added meaningly, "as dragging Fred Thurman, or unhooking Brit's chain-lock before he started down the canyon with his load of posts."
Swan did not answer, but turned back to where the horse had been left tied and took up the trail from there. As before, the dog trotted along, Lone riding close behind him and Swan striding after. They did not really need the dog, for the hoofprints were easily followed for the greater part of the way.
They had gone perhaps four miles when Lone turned, resting a hand on the cantle of his saddle while he looked back at Swan. "You see where he was headed for, don't yuh, Swan?" he asked, his tone as friendly as though he was not under arrest as a murderer. "If he didn't go to Whisper, I'll eat my hat."
"You're the man to know," Swan retorted grimly. And then, because Lone's horse had slowed in a long climb over a ridge, he came up even with a stirrup. "Lone, I hate to do it. I'd like you, if you don't kill for a living. But for that I could shoot you quick as a coyote. You're smart—but not smart enough. You gave yourself away when I showed you Fred's saddle. After that I knew who was the Sawtooth killer that I came here to find."
"You thought you knew," Lone corrected calmly.
"You don't have to lie," Swan informed him bluntly. "You don't have to tell anything. I find out for myself if I make mistake."
"Go to it," Lone advised him coldly. "It don't make a darn bit of difference to me whether I ride in front of you or behind. I'm so glad you're here on the job, Swan, that I'm plumb willing to be tied hand and foot if it'll help you any."
"When a man's too damn willing to be my prisoner," Swan observed seriously, "he gets tied, all right. Put out your hands, Lone. You look good to me with bracelets on, when you talk so willing to go to jail for murder."
He had slipped the rifle butt to the ground, and before Lone quite realized what he was doing Swan had a short, wicked-looking automatic pistol in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other. Lone flushed, but there was nothing to do but hold out his hands.
In her fictitious West Lorraine had long since come to look upon violence as a synonym for picturesqueness; murder and mystery were inevitably an accompaniment of chaps and spurs. But when a man she had cooked breakfast for, had talked with just a few hours ago, lay dead in the bunk-house, she forgot that it was merely an expected incident of Western life. She lay in her bed shaking with nervous dread, and the shrill rasping of the crickets and tree-toads was unendurable.
After the first shock had passed a deep, fighting rage filled her, made her long for day so that she might fight back somehow. Who was the Sawtooth Company, that they could sweep human beings from their path so ruthlessly and never be called to account? Not once did she doubt that this was the doing of the Sawtooth,another carefully planned "accident" calculated to rid the country of another man who in some fashion had become inimical to their interests.
From Lone she had learned a good deal about the new irrigation project which lay very close to the Sawtooth's heart. She could see how the Quirt ranch, with its water rights and its big, fertile meadows and its fences and silent disapprobation of the Sawtooth's methods, might be looked upon as an obstacle which they would be glad to remove.
That her father had been sent down that grade with a brake deliberately made useless was a horrible thought which she could not put from her mind. She had thought and thought until it seemed to her that she knew exactly how and why the killer's plans had gone awry. She was certain that she and Swan had prevented him from climbing down into the canyon and making sure that her dad did not live to tell what mischance had overtaken him. He had probably been watching while she and Swan made that stretcher and carried her dad away out of his reach. He would not shoother,—he would not dare. Nor would he dare come to the cabin and finish the job he had begun. But he had managed to kill Frank—poor old Frank, who would never grumble and argue over little things again.
There was nothing picturesque, nothing adventurous about it. It was just straight, heart-breaking tragedy, that had its sordid side too. Her dad was a querulous sick man absorbed by his sufferings and not yet out of danger, if she read the doctor's face aright. Jim and Sorry had taken orders all their life, and they would not be able to handle the ranch work alone; yet how else would it be done? There was Lone,—instinctively she turned her thoughts to him for comfort. Lone would stay and help, and somehow it would be managed.
But to think that these things could be done without fear of retribution. Jim and Sorry, Swan and Lone had not attempted to hide their belief that the Sawtooth was responsible for Frank's death, yet not one of them had hinted at the possibility of calling the sheriff, or placing the blame where it belonged. They seemed brow-beaten into the belief that it would be useless to fight back. They seemed to look upon the doings of the Sawtooth as an act of Providence, like being struck by lightning or freezing to death, as men sometimes did in that country.
To Lorraine that passive submission was the most intolerable part, the one thing she could not, would not endure. Had she lived all of her life on the Quirt, she probably would never have thought of fighting back and would have accepted conditions just as her dad seemed to accept them. But her mimic West had taught her that women sometimes dared where the men had hesitated. It never occurred to her that she should submit to the inevitable just because the men appeared to do so.
Wherefore it was a new Lorraine who rose at daybreak and silently cooked breakfast for the men, learned from Jim that Sorry was not back from Echo, and that Swan and Lone had gone down to the place where Frank had been found. She poured Jim's coffee and went on her tiptoes to see if her father still slept. She dreaded his awakening and the moment when she must tell him about Frank, and she had an unreasonable hope that the news might be kept from him until the doctor came again.
Brit was awake, and the look in his eyes frightened Lorraine so that she stopped in the middle of the room, staring at him fascinated.
"Well," he said flatly, "who is it this time? Lone, or—Frank?"
"Why—who is what?" Lorraine parried awkwardly. "I don't——"
"Did they git Frank, las' night?" Brit's eyes seemed to bore into her soul, searching pitilessly for the truth. "Don't lie to me, Raine—it ain't going to help any. Was it Frank or Lone? They's a dead man laid out on this ranch. Who is it?"
"F-frank," Lorraine stammered, backing away from him. "H-how did you know?"
"How did it happen?" Brit's eyes were terrible.
Lorraine shuddered while she told him.
"Rabbits in a trap," Brit muttered, staring at the low ceiling. "Can't prove nothing—couldn't convict anybody if we could prove it. Bill Warfield's got this county under his thumb. Rabbits in a trap. Raine, you better pack up and go home to your mother. There's goin' to be hell a-poppin' if I live to git outa this bed."
Lorraine stooped over him, and her eyes were almost as terrible as were Brit's. "Let it pop. We aren't quitters, are we, dad? I'm going to stay with you." Then she saw tears spilling overBrit's eyelids and left the room hurriedly, fighting back a storm of weeping. She herself could not mourn for Frank with any sense of great personal loss, but it was different with her dad. He and Frank had lived together for so many years that his loyal heart ached with grief for that surly, faithful old partner of his.
But Lorraine's fighting blood was up, and she could not waste time in weeping. She drank a cup of coffee, went out and called Jim, and told him that she was going to take a ride, and that she wanted a decent horse.
"You can take mine," Jim offered. "He's gentle and easy-gaited. I'll go saddle up. When do you want to go?"
"Right now, as soon as I'm ready. I'll fix dad's breakfast, and you can look after him until Lone and Swan come back. One of them will stay with him then. I may be gone for three or four hours. I'll go crazy if I stay here any longer."
Jim eyed her while he bit off a chew of tobacco. "It'd be a good thing if you had some neighbor woman come in and stay with yuh," he said slowly. "But there ain't any I can think of that'd be much force. You take Snake and ridearound close and forget things for awhile." He hesitated, his hand moving slowly back to his pocket. "If yuh feel like you want a gun——"
Lorraine laughed bitterly. "You don't think any accident would happen tome, do you?"
"Well, no—er I wouldn't advise yuh to go ridin'," Jim said thoughtfully. "This here gun's kinda techy, anyway, unless you're used to a quick trigger. Yuh might be safer without it than with it."
By the time she was ready, Jim was tying his horse, Snake, to the corral. Lorraine walked slowly past the bunk-house with her face turned from it and her thoughts dwelling terrifiedly upon what lay within. Once she was past she began running, as if she were trying to outrun her thoughts. Jim watched her gravely, untied Snake and stood at his head while she mounted, then walked ahead of her to the gate and opened it for her.
"Yore nerves are sure shot to hell," he blurted sympathetically as she rode past him. "I guess you need a ride, all right. Snake's plumb safe, so yuh got no call to worry about him. Take it easy, Raine, on the worrying. That's about the worst thing you can do."
Lorraine gave him a grateful glance and a faint attempt at a smile, and rode up the trail she always took,—the trail where she had met Lone that day when he returned her purse, the trail that led to Fred Thurman's ranch and to Sugar Spring and, if you took a certain turn at a certain place, to Granite Ridge and beyond.
Up on the ridge nearest the house Al Woodruff shifted his position so that he could watch her go. He had been watching Lone and Swan and the dog, trailing certain tracks through the sagebrush down below, and when Lorraine rode away from the Quirt they were in the wagon road, fussing around the place where Frank had been found.
"They can't pin nothing onme," Al tried to comfort himself. "If that damn girl would keep her mouth shut I could stand a trial, even. They ain't got any evidence whatever, unless she saw me at Rock City that night." He turned and looked again toward the two men down on the road and tilted his mouth down at the corners in a sour grin.
"Go to it and be damned to you!" he muttered. "You haven't got the dope, and you can't git it,either. Trail that horse if you want to—I'd like to see yuh amuse yourselves that way!"
He turned again to stare after Lorraine, meditating deeply. If she had only been a man, he would have known exactly how to still her tongue, but he had never before been called upon to deal with the problem of keeping a woman quiet. He saw that she was taking the trail toward Fred Thurman's, and that she was riding swiftly, as if she had some errand in that direction, something urgent. Al was very adept at reading men's moods and intentions from small details in their behavior. He had seen Lorraine start on several leisurely, purposeless rides, and her changed manner held a significance which he did not attempt to belittle.
He led his horse down the side of the ridge opposite the road and the house, mounted there and rode away after Lorraine, keeping parallel with the trail but never using it, as was his habit. He made no attempt to overtake her, and not once did Lorraine glimpse him or suspect that she was being followed. Al knew well the art of concealing his movements and his proximity from the inquisitive eyes of another man's saddle horse, and Snake had no more suspicion than hisrider that they were not altogether alone that morning.
Lorraine sent him over the trail at a pace which Jim had long since reserved for emergencies. But Snake appeared perfectly able and willing to hold it and never stumbled or slowed unexpectedly as did Yellowjacket, wherefore Lorraine rode faster than she would have done had she known more about horses.
Still, Snake held his own better than even Jim would have believed, and carried Lorraine up over Granite Ridge and down into the Sawtooth flat almost as quickly as Lorraine expected him to do. She came up to the Sawtooth ranch-houses with Snake in a lather of sweat and with her own determination unweakened to carry the war into the camp of her enemy. It was, she firmly believed, what should have been done long ago; what would have curbed effectually the arrogant powers of the Sawtooth.
She glanced at the foreman's cottage only to make sure that Hawkins was nowhere in sight there, and rode on toward the corrals, intercepting Hawkins and a large, well-groomed, smooth-faced man whom she knew at once must be Senator Warfield himself. Unconsciously Lorrainementally fitted herself into a dramatic movie "scene" and plunged straight into the subject.
"There has been," she said tensely, "another Sawtooth accident. It worked better than the last one, when my father was sent over the grade into Spirit Canyon. Frank Johnson isdead. I am here to discover what you are going to do about it?" Her eyes were flashing, her chest was rising and falling rapidly when she had finished. She looked straight into Senator Warfield's face, her own full in the sunlight, so that, had there been a camera "shooting" the scene, her expression would have been fully revealed—though she did not realize all that.
Senator Warfield looked her over calmly (just as a director would have wished him to do) and turned to Hawkins. "Who is this girl?" he asked. "Is she the one who came here temporarily—deranged?"
"She's the girl," Hawkins affirmed, his eyes everywhere but on Lorraine's face. "Brit Hunter's daughter—they say."
"Theysay? Iamhis daughter! How dare you take that tone, Mr. Hawkins? My home is at the Quirt. When you strike at the Quirt you strike at me. When you strike at me I am goingto strike back. Since I came here two men have been killed and my father has been nearly killed. He may die yet—I don't know what effect this shock will have upon him. But I know that Frank is dead, and that it's up to me now to see that justice is done. You—you cowards! You will kill a man for the sake of a few dollars, but you kill in the dark. You cover your murders under the pretense of accidents. I want to tell you this: Of all the men you have murdered, Frank Johnson will be avenged. You are going to answer for that. I shall see that youdoanswer for it! There is justice in this country, theremustbe. I'm going to demand that justice shall be measured out to you. I——"
"Was she violent, before?" Senator Warfield asked Hawkins in an undertone which Lorraine heard distinctly. "You're a deputy, Hawkins. If this keeps on, I'm afraid you will have to take her in and have her committed for insanity. It's a shame, poor thing. At her age it is pitiful. Look how she has ridden that horse! Another mile would have finished him."
"Do you mean to say you think I'm crazy? What an idea! It seems to me, Senator Warfield, that you are crazy yourself, to imagine thatyou can go on killing people and thinking you will never have to pay the penalty. Youwillpay. There is law in this land, even if——"
"This is pathetic," said Senator Warfield, still speaking to Hawkins. "Her father—if he is her father—is sick and not able to take care of her. We'll have to assume the responsibility ourselves, I'm afraid, Hawkins. She may harm herself, or——"
Lorraine turned white. She had never seen just such a situation arise in a screen story, but she knew what danger might lie in being accused of insanity. While Warfield was speaking, she had a swift vision of the evidence they could bring against her; how she had arrived there delirious after having walked out from Echo,—why, they would call even that a symptom of insanity! Lone had warned her of what people would say if she told any one of what she saw in Rock City, perhaps really believing that she had imagined it all. Lone might even think that she had some mental twist! Her world was reeling around her.
She whirled Snake on his hind feet, struck him sharply with the quirt and was galloping back over the trail past the Hawkins house beforeSenator Warfield had finished advising Hawkins. She saw Mrs. Hawkins standing in the door, staring at her, but she did not stop. They would take her to the asylum; she felt that the Sawtooth had the power, that she had played directly into their hands, and that they would be as ruthless in dealing with her as they had been with the nesters whom they had killed. She knew it, she had read it in the inscrutable, level look of Senator Warfield, in the half cringing, wholly subservient manner of Hawkins when he listened to his master.
"They're fiends!" she cried aloud once, while she urged Snake up the slope of Granite Ridge. "I believe they'd kill me if they were sure they could get away with it. But they could frame an insanity charge and put me—my God, what fiends they are!"
At the Sawtooth, Senator Warfield was talking with Mrs. Hawkins while her husband saddled two horses. Mrs. Hawkins lived within her four walls and called that, her "spere," and spoke of her husband as "he." You know the type of woman. That Senator Warfield was anything less than a godlike man who stood very high on the ladder of Fame, she would never believe. Soshe related garrulously certain incoherent, aimless utterances of Lorraine's, and cried a little, and thought it was perfectly awful that a sweet, pretty girl like that should be crazy. She would have made an ideal witness against Lorraine, her very sympathy carrying conviction of Lorraine's need of it. That she did not convince Senator Warfield of Lorraine's mental derangement was a mere detail. Senator Warfield had reasons for knowing that Lorraine was merely afflicted with a dangerous amount of knowledge and was using it without discretion.
"You mustn't let her run loose and maybe kill herself or somebody else!" Mrs. Hawkins exclaimed. "Oh, Senator, it's awful to think of! When she went past the house I knew the poor thing wasn't right——"
"We'll overtake her," Senator Warfield assured her comfortingly. "She can't go very far on that horse. She'd ridden him half to death, getting here. He won't hold out—he can't. She came here, I suppose, because she had been here before. A sanitarium may be able to restore her to a normal condition. I can't believe it's anything more than some nervous disorder. Now don't worry, my good woman. Just have a roomready, so that she will be comfortable here until we can get her to a sanitarium. It isn't hopeless, I assure you—but I'm mighty glad I happened to be here so that I can take charge of the case. Now here comes Hawkins. We'll bring her back—don't you worry."
"Well, take her away as quick as you can, Senator. I'm scared of crazy people. His brother went crazy in our house and——"
"Yes, yes—we'll take care of her. Poor girl, I wish that I had been here when she first came," said the senator, as he went to meet Hawkins, who was riding up from the corrals leading two horses—one for Lorraine, which shows what was his opinion of Snake.
For a time the trail seemed to lead toward Whisper. Then it turned away and seemed about to end abruptly on a flat outcropping of rock two miles from Whisper camp. Lone frowned and stared at the ground, and Swan spoke sharply to Jack, who was nosing back and forth, at fault if ever a dog was. But presently he took up the scent and led them down a barren slope and into grassy ground where a bunch of horses grazed contentedly. Jack singled out one and ran toward it silently, as he had done all his trailing that morning. The horse looked up, stared and went galloping down the little valley, stampeding the others with him.
"That's about where I thought we'd wind up—in a saddle bunch," Lone observed disgustedly. "If I had the evidence you're carrying in your pocket, Swan, I'd put that darn dog on the scent of the man, not the horse."
"The man I've got," Swan retorted. "I don't have to trail him."
"Well, now, youthinkyou've got him. Here's good, level ground—I couldn't get outa sight in less than ten minutes, afoot. Let me walk out a ways, and you see if that handkerchief's mine. Oh, search me all you want to, first," he added, when he read the suspicion in Swan's eyes. "Make yourself safe as yuh please, but give me a fair show. You've made up your mind I'm the killer, and you've been fitting the evidence to me—or trying to."
"It fits," Swan pointed out drily.
"You see if it does. The dog'll tell you all about it in about two minutes if you give him a chance."
Swan looked at him. "Yack don't lie. By golly, I raised that dog to trail, and hetrails, you bet! He's cocker spaniel and bloodhound, and he knows things, that dog. All right, Lone, you walk over to that black rock and set down. If you think you frame something, maybe, I pack a dead man to the Quirt again."
"You can, for all me," Lone replied quietly. "I'd about as soon go that way as the way I am now."
Swan watched him until he was seated on the rock as directed, his manacled hands resting on his knees, his face turned toward the horses. Then Swan took the blue handkerchief from his pocket, called Jack to him and muttered something in Swedish while the dog sniffed at the cloth. "Find him, Yack," said Swan, standing straight again.
Jack went sniffing obediently in wide circles, crossing unconcernedly Lone's footprints while he trotted back and forth. He hesitated once on the trail of the horse he had followed, stopped and looked at Swan inquiringly, and whined. Swan whistled the dog to him with a peculiar, birdlike note and called to Lone.
"You come back, Lone, and let Yack take a damn good smell of you. By golly, if that dog lies to me this time, I lick him good!"
Lone came back, grinning a little. "All right, now maybe you'll listen to reason. I ain't the kind to tell all I know and some besides, Swan. I've been a Sawtooth man, and a fellow kinda hates to throw down his outfit deliberate. But they're going too strong for any white man to stand for. I quit them when they tried to get Brit Hunter. I don'tknowso much, Swan, butI'm pretty good at guessing. So if you'll come with me to Whisper, your dog may show yuh who owns that handkerchief. If he don't, then I'm making a mistake, and I'd like to be set right."
"Somebody rode that horse," Swan meditated aloud. "Yack don't make a mistake like that, and I don't think I'm blind. Where's the man that was on the horse? What you think, Lone?"
"Me? I think there was another horse somewhere close to that outcropping, tied to a bush, maybe. I think the man you're after changed horses there, just on a chance that somebody might trail him from the road. You put your dog on the trail of that one particular horse, and he showed yuh where it was feeding with the bunch. It looks to me like it was turned loose, back there, and come on alone. Your man went to Whisper; I'll bank money on that. Anyway, your dog'll know if he's been there."
Swan thought it over, his eyes moving here and there to every hint of movement between the skyline and himself. Suddenly he turned to Lone, his face flushing with honest shame.
"Loney, take a damn Swede and give him something he believes, and you could pull histeeth before you pull that notion from his thick head. You acted funny, that day Fred Thurman was killed, and you gave yourself away at the stable when I showed you that saddle. So I think you're the killer, and I keep on thinking that, and I've been trying to catch you with evidence. I'm a Swede, all right! Square head. Built of wood two inches thick. Loney, you kick me good. You don't have time to ride over here, get some other horse and ride back to the Quirt after Frank was killed. You got there before I did, last night. We know Frank was dead not much more than one hour when we get him to the bunk-house. Yack, he gives you a good alibi."
"I sure am glad we took the time to trail that horse, then," Lone remarked, while Swan was removing the handcuffs. "You're all right, Swan. Nothing like sticking to an idea till you know it's wrong. Now, let's stick to mine for awhile. Let's go on to Whisper. It ain't far."
They returned to the rocky hillside where the trail had been covered, and searched here and there for the tracks of another horse; found the trail and followed it easily enough to Whisper. Swan put Jack once more on the scent ofthe handkerchief, and if actions meant anything, Jack proved conclusively that he found the Whisper camp reeking with the scent.
But that was all,—since Al was at that moment trailing Lorraine toward the Sawtooth.
"We may as well eat," Swan suggested. "We'll get him, by golly, but we don't have to starve ourselves."
"He wouldn't know we're after him," Lone agreed. "He'll stick around so as not to raise suspicion. And he might come back, most any time. If he does, we'll say I'm out with you after coyotes, and we stopped here for a meal. That's good enough to satisfy him—till you get the drop on him. But I want to tell yuh, Swan, you can't take Al Woodruff as easy as you took me. And you couldn't have taken me so easy if I'd been the man you wanted. Al would kill you as easy as you kill coyotes. Give him a reason, and you won't need to give him a chance along with it. He'll find the chance himself."
Because they thought it likely that Al would soon return, they did not hurry. They were hungry, and they cooked enough food for four men and ate it leisurely. Jim was at the ranch,Sorry had undoubtedly returned before now, and the coroner would probably not arrive before noon, at the earliest.
Swan wanted to take Al Woodruff back with him in irons. He wanted to confront the coroner with the evidence he had found and the testimony which Lone could give. There had been too many killings already, he asserted in his naïve way; the sooner Al Woodruff was locked up, the safer the country would be.
He discussed with Lone the possibility of making Al talk,—the chance of his implicating the Sawtooth. Lone did not hope for much and said so.
"If Al was a talker he wouldn't be holding the job he's got," Lone argued. "Don't get the wrong idea again, Swan. Yuh may pin this on to Al, but that won't let the Sawtooth in. The Sawtooth's too slick for that. They'd be more likely to make up a lynching party right in the outfit and hang Al as an example than they would try to shield him. He's played a lone hand, Swan, right from the start, unless I'm badly mistaken. The Sawtooth's paid him for playing it, that's all."
"Warfield, he's the man I want," Swan confided. "It's for more than killing these men. It goes into politics, Loney, and it goes deep. He's bad for the government. Getting Warfield for having men killed is getting Warfield without telling secrets of politics. Warfield, he's a smart man, by golly. He knows some one is after him in politics, but he don't know some one is after him at home. So the big Swede has got to be smart enough to get the evidence against him for killing."
"Well, I wish yuh luck, Swan, but I can't say you're going at it right. Al won't talk, I tell yuh."
Swan did not believe that. He waited another hour and made a mental inventory of everything in camp while he waited. Then, chiefly because Lone's impatience finally influenced him, he set out to see where Al had gone.
According to Jack, Al had gone to the corral. From there they put Jack on the freshest hoofprints leaving the place, and were led here and there in an apparently aimless journey to nowhere until, after Jack had been at fault in another rock patch, the trail took them straight away to the ridge overlooking the Quirt ranch. The two men looked at one another.
"That's like Al," Lone commented drily. "Coyotes are foolish, alongside him, and you'll find it out. I'll bet he's been watching this place since daybreak."
"Where he goes, Yack will follow," Swan grinned cheerfully. "And I follow Yack. We'll get him, Lone. That dog, he never quits till I say quit."
"You better go down and get a horse, then," Lone advised. "They're all gentle. Al's mounted, remember. He's maybe gone over to the Sawtooth, and that's farther than you can walk."
"I can walk all day and all night, when I need to go like that. I can take short cuts that a horse can't take. I think I shall go on my own legs."
"Well, I'm going down to the house first. I know them two men riding down to the gate. I want to see what the boss and Hawkins have got to say about this last 'accident.' Better come on down, Swan. You might pick up something. They're heading for the ranch, all right. Going to make a play at being neighborly, I reckon."
"You bet I want to see Warfield," Swan assented rather eagerly and called Jack, who hadnosed around the spot where Al had waited so long and was now trotting along the ridge on the next lap of Al's journey.
They reached the gate in time to meet Warfield and Hawkins face to face. Hawkins gave Lone a quick, questioning look and nodded carelessly to Swan. Warfield, having a delicate errand to perform and knowing how much depended upon first impressions, pulled up eagerly when he recognized Lone.
"Has the girl arrived safely, Lone?" he asked anxiously.
"What girl?" Lone looked at him noncommittally.
"Miss—ah—Hunter. Have you been away all the forenoon? The girl came to the ranch in such a condition that I was afraid she might do herself or some one else an injury. Has she been unbalanced for long?"
"If you mean Lorraine Hunter, she was all right last time I saw her, and that was last night." Lone's eyes narrowed a little as he watched the two. "You say she went to the Sawtooth?"
"She came pelting over there crazier than when you brought her in," Hawkins broke ingruffly. "She ain't safe going around alone like that."
Senator Warfield glanced at him impatiently. "Is there any truth in her declaring that Frank Johnson is dead? She seemed to have had a shock of some kind. She was raving crazy, and in her rambling talk she said something about Frank Johnson having died last night."
Lone glanced back as he led the way through the gate which Swan was holding open. "He didn't die—he got killed last night," he corrected.
"Killed! And how did that happen? It was impossible to get two coherent sentences out of the girl." Senator Warfield rode through just behind Lone and reined close, lowering his voice. "No use in letting this get out," he said confidentially. "It may be that the girl's dementia is some curable nervous disorder, and you know what an injustice it would be if it became noised around that the girl is crazy. How much English does that Swede know?"
"Not any more than he needs to get along on," Lone answered, instinctively on guard. "He's all right—just a good-natured kinda cuss that wouldn't harm anybody."
He glanced uneasily at the house, hoping thatLorraine was safe inside, yet fearing that she would not be safe anywhere. Sane or insane, she was in danger if Senator Warfield considered her of sufficient importance to bring him out on horseback to the Quirt ranch. Lone knew how seldom the owner of the Sawtooth rode on horseback since he had high-powered cars to carry him in soft comfort.
"I'll go see if she's home," Lone explained, and reined John Doe toward the house.