"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 was the 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."