"Look here, Raine. I don't want you talking about what you saw. I don't want you thinkin' about it. What's the use? Thurman's dead and buried. The cor'ner come and held an inquest, and the jury agreed it was an accident. I was on the jury. The sheriff's took charge of his property. You couldn't prove what you saw, even if you was to try." He looked at her very much as Lone Morgan had looked at her. His next words were very nearly what Lone Morgan had said, Lorraine remembered. "You don't know this country like I know it. Folks live in it mainly because they don't go around blatting everything they see and hear and think."
"You have laws, don't you, dad? You spoke about the sheriff——"
"The sheriff!" Brit laughed harshly. "Yes, we got a sheriff, and we got a jail, and a judge—all the makin's of law. But we ain't got one thing that goes with it, and that's justice. You'd best make up your mind like the cor'ner's jury done, that Fred Thurman was drug to death by his horse. That's all that'll ever be proved, and if you can't prove nothing else you better keep your mouth shut."
Lorraine sprang up and stood facing her father, every nerve taut with protest. "You don't mean to tell me, dad, that you and Frank Johnson and Lone Morgan and—everybody in the country are cowards, do you?"
Brit looked at her patiently. "No," he said in the tone of acknowledged defeat, "we ain't cowards, Raine. A man ain't a coward when he stands with his hands over his head. Most generally it's because some one's got the drop on 'im."
Lorraine would not accept that. "You think so, because you don't fight," she cried hotly. "No one is holding a gun at your head. Dad! I thought Westerners never quit. It's fight to the finish, always. Why, I've seen one man fight a whole outfit and win. He couldn't be beaten because he wouldn't give up. Why——"
Brit gave her a tolerant glance. "Where'd you see all that, Raine?" He moved to the table, picked up his pipe and knocked out the ashes on the stove hearth. His movements were those of an aging man—yet Brit Hunter was not old, as age is reckoned.
"Well—in stories—but it was reasonable and logical and possible, just the same. If you use your brains you can outwit them, and if you have any nerve——"
Brit made a sound somewhat like a snort. "These days, when politics is played by the big fellows, and the law is used to make money for 'em, it takes nerve just to hang on," he said. "Nobody but a dang fool would fight." Slow anger grew within him. He turned upon Lorraine almost fiercely. "D'yuh think me and Frank could fight the Sawtooth and get anything out of it but a coffin apiece, maybe?" he demanded harshly. "Don't the Sawtooth own this country? Warfield's got the sheriff in his pocket, and the cor'ner, and the judge, and the stock inspector—he's Senator Warfield, and what he wants he gets. He gets through the law that you was talking about a little while ago. What you goin' to do about it? If I had the money and the land and the political pull he's got, mebby I'd have me sheriff and a judge, too.
"Fred Thurman tried to fight the Sawtooth over a water right he owned and they wanted. They had the case runnin' in court till they like to of took the last dollar he had. He got bull-headed. That water right meant the hull ranch—everything he owned. You can't run a ranch without water. And when he'd took the case up and up till it got to the Supreme Court, and he stood some show of winnin' out—he had an accident. He was drug to death by his horse."