"Well, now, you think you'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 he trails, 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't know so much, Swan, but I'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?"