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
you _sure_ it 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 driven to 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 in some 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, "what _is_ the 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. "I
dunno what you mean. Ain't that yore dad callin' yuh?"
Lorraine ignored the hint. "You _do_ know what I mean. Why did you say
they wouldn't both be likely to have accidents hand-running? And why
don't you _do_ something? 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--an _accident_, 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 her at 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 of them;
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 who climbed 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, and
Lorraine 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't _dead_, 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 to smell," 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 you _please_ talk 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 on Frank'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."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SWAN TRAILS A COYOTE
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 trampled out 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 eyes and 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 right simple, 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.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE SAWTOOTH SHOWS ITS HAND
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
shoot _her_,--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.