"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 centre 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 bunkhouse 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."