stopped in the middle of the room, staring at him fascinated.
"Well," he said flatly, "who is it this time? Lone, or--Frank?"
"Why--who is what?" Lorraine parried awkwardly. "I don't----"
"Did they git Frank, las' night?" Brit's eyes seemed to bore into her
soul, searching pitilessly for the truth. "Don't lie to me, Raine--it
ain't going to help any. Was it Frank or Lone? They's a dead man laid
out on this ranch. Who is it?"
"F-frank," Lorraine stammered, backing away from him. "H-how did you
know?"
"How did it happen?" Brit's eyes were terrible.
Lorraine shuddered while she told him.
"Rabbits in a trap," Brit muttered, staring at the low ceiling. "Can't
prove nothing--couldn't convict anybody if we could prove it. Bill
Warfield's got this county under his thumb. Rabbits in a trap. Raine,
you better pack up and go home to your mother. There's goin' to be hell
a-poppin' if I live to git outa this bed."
Lorraine stooped over him, and her eyes were almost as terrible as were
Brit's. "Let it pop. We aren't quitters, are we, dad? I'm going to stay
with you." Then she saw tears spilling over Brit's eyelids and left the
room hurriedly, fighting back a storm of weeping. She herself could not
mourn for Frank with any sense of great personal loss, but it was
different with her dad. He and Frank had lived together for so many
years that his loyal heart ached with grief for that surly, faithful old
partner of his.
But Lorraine's fighting blood was up, and she could not waste time in
weeping. She drank a cup of coffee, went out and called Jim, and told
him that she was going to take a ride, and that she wanted a decent
horse.
"You can take mine," Jim offered. "He's gentle and easy-gaited. I'll go
saddle up. When do you want to go?"
"Right now, as soon as I'm ready. I'll fix dad's breakfast, and you can
look after him until Lone and Swan come back. One of them will stay with
him then. I may be gone for three or four hours. I'll go crazy if I stay
here any longer."
Jim eyed her while he bit off a chew of tobacco. "It'd be a good thing
if you had some neighbor woman come in and stay with yuh," he said
slowly. "But there ain't any I can think of that'd be much force. You
take Snake and ride around close and forget things for awhile." He
hesitated, his hand moving slowly back to his pocket. "If yuh feel like
you want a gun----"
Lorraine laughed bitterly. "You don't think any accident would happen to
_me_, do you?"
"Well, no--er I wouldn't advise yuh to go ridin'," Jim said
thoughtfully. "This here gun's kinda techy, anyway, unless you're used
to a quick trigger. Yuh might be safer without it than with it."
By the time she was ready, Jim was tying his horse, Snake, to the
corral. Lorraine walked slowly past the bunk-house with her face turned
from it and her thoughts dwelling terrifiedly upon what lay within. Once
she was past she began running, as if she were trying to outrun her
thoughts. Jim watched her gravely, untied Snake and stood at his head
while she mounted, then walked ahead of her to the gate and opened it
for her.
"Yore nerves are sure shot to hell," he blurted sympathetically as she
rode past him. "I guess you need a ride, all right. Snake's plumb safe,
so yuh got no call to worry about him. Take it easy, Raine, on the
worrying. That's about the worst thing you can do."
Lorraine gave him a grateful glance and a faint attempt at a smile, and
rode up the trail she always took,--the trail where she had met Lone
that day when he returned her purse, the trail that led to Fred
Thurman's ranch and to Sugar Spring and, if you took a certain turn at a
certain place, to Granite Ridge and beyond.
Up on the ridge nearest the house Al Woodruff shifted his position so
that he could watch her go. He had been watching Lone and Swan and the
dog, trailing certain tracks through the sagebrush down below, and when
Lorraine rode away from the Quirt they were in the wagon road, fussing
around the place where Frank had been found.
"They can't pin nothing on _me_," Al tried to comfort himself. "If that
damn girl would keep her mouth shut I could stand a trial, even. They
ain't got any evidence whatever, unless she saw me at Rock City that
night." He turned and looked again toward the two men down on the road
and tilted his mouth down at the corners in a sour grin.
"Go to it and be damned to you!" he muttered. "You haven't got the dope,
and you can't git it, either. Trail that horse if you want to--I'd like
to see yuh amuse yourselves that way!"
He turned again to stare after Lorraine, meditating deeply. If she had
only been a man, he would have known exactly how to still her tongue,
but he had never before been called upon to deal with the problem of
keeping a woman quiet. He saw that she was taking the trail toward Fred
Thurman's, and that she was riding swiftly, as if she had some errand in
that direction, something urgent. Al was very adept at reading men's
moods and intentions from small details in their behavior. He had seen
Lorraine start on several leisurely, purposeless rides, and her changed
manner held a significance which he did not attempt to belittle.
He led his horse down the side of the ridge opposite the road and the
house, mounted there and rode away after Lorraine, keeping parallel with
the trail but never using it, as was his habit. He made no attempt to
overtake her, and not once did Lorraine glimpse him or suspect that she
was being followed. Al knew well the art of concealing his movements and
his proximity from the inquisitive eyes of another man's saddle horse,
and Snake had no more suspicion than his rider that they were not
altogether alone that morning.
Lorraine sent him over the trail at a pace which Jim had long since
reserved for emergencies. But Snake appeared perfectly able and willing
to hold it and never stumbled or slowed unexpectedly as did
Yellowjacket, wherefore Lorraine rode faster than she would have done
had she known more about horses.
Still, Snake held his own better than even Jim would have believed, and
carried Lorraine up over Granite Ridge and down into the Sawtooth flat
almost as quickly as Lorraine expected him to do. She came up to the
Sawtooth ranch-houses with Snake in a lather of sweat and with her own
determination unweakened to carry the war into the camp of her enemy. It
was, she firmly believed, what should have been done long ago; what
would have curbed effectually the arrogant powers of the Sawtooth.
She glanced at the foreman's cottage only to make sure that Hawkins was
nowhere in sight there, and rode on toward the corrals, intercepting
Hawkins and a large, well-groomed, smooth-faced man whom she knew at
once must be Senator Warfield himself. Unconsciously Lorraine mentally
fitted herself into a dramatic movie "scene" and plunged straight into
the subject.
"There has been," she said tensely, "another Sawtooth accident. It
worked better than the last one, when my father was sent over the grade
into Spirit Canyon. Frank Johnson is _dead_. I am here to discover what
you are going to do about it?" Her eyes were flashing, her chest was
rising and falling rapidly when she had finished. She looked straight
into Senator Warfield's face, her own full in the sunlight, so that, had
there been a camera "shooting" the scene, her expression would have been
fully revealed--though she did not realize all that.
Senator Warfield looked her over calmly (just as a director would have
wished him to do) and turned to Hawkins. "Who is this girl?" he asked.
"Is she the one who came here temporarily--deranged?"
"She's the girl," Hawkins affirmed, his eyes everywhere but on
Lorraine's face. "Brit Hunter's daughter--they say."
"They _say_? I _am_ his daughter! How dare you take that tone, Mr.
Hawkins? My home is at the Quirt. When you strike at the Quirt you
strike at me. When you strike at me I am going to strike back. Since I
came here two men have been killed and my father has been nearly killed.
He may die yet--I don't know what effect this shock will have upon him.
But I know that Frank is dead, and that it's up to me now to see that
justice is done. You--you cowards! You will kill a man for the sake of a
few dollars, but you kill in the dark. You cover your murders under the
pretense of accidents. I want to tell you this: Of all the men you have
murdered, Frank Johnson will be avenged. You are going to answer for
that. I shall see that you _do_ answer for it! There is justice in this
country, there _must_ be. I'm going to demand that justice shall be
measured out to you. I----"
"Was she violent, before?" Senator Warfield asked Hawkins in an
undertone which Lorraine heard distinctly. "You're a deputy, Hawkins. If
this keeps on, I'm afraid you will have to take her in and have her
committed for insanity. It's a shame, poor thing. At her age it is
pitiful. Look how she has ridden that horse! Another mile would have
finished him."
"Do you mean to say you think I'm crazy? What an idea! It seems to me,
Senator Warfield, that you are crazy yourself, to imagine that you can
go on killing people and thinking you will never have to pay the
penalty. You _will_ pay. There is law in this land, even if----"
"This is pathetic," said Senator Warfield, still speaking to Hawkins.
"Her father--if he is her father--is sick and not able to take care of
her. We'll have to assume the responsibility ourselves, I'm afraid,
Hawkins. She may harm herself, or----"
Lorraine turned white. She had never seen just such a situation arise in
a screen story, but she knew what danger might lie in being accused of
insanity. While Warfield was speaking, she had a swift vision of the
evidence they could bring against her; how she had arrived there
delirious after having walked out from Echo,--why, they would call even
that a symptom of insanity! Lone had warned her of what people would say
if she told any one of what she saw in Rock City, perhaps really
believing that she had imagined it all. Lone might even think that she
had some mental twist! Her world was reeling around her.
She whirled Snake on his hind feet, struck him sharply with the quirt
and was galloping back over the trail past the Hawkins house before
Senator Warfield had finished advising Hawkins. She saw Mrs. Hawkins
standing in the door, staring at her, but she did not stop. They would
take her to the asylum; she felt that the Sawtooth had the power, that
she had played directly into their hands, and that they would be as
ruthless in dealing with her as they had been with the nesters whom they
had killed. She knew it, she had read it in the inscrutable, level look
of Senator Warfield, in the half cringing, wholly subservient manner of
Hawkins when he listened to his master.
"They're fiends!" she cried aloud once, while she urged Snake up the
slope of Granite Ridge. "I believe they'd kill me if they were sure they
could get away with it. But they could frame an insanity charge and put
me--my God, what fiends they are!"
At the Sawtooth, Senator Warfield was talking with Mrs. Hawkins while
her husband saddled two horses. Mrs. Hawkins lived within her four walls
and called that, her "spere," and spoke of her husband as "he." You know
the type of woman. That Senator Warfield was anything less than a
godlike man who stood very high on the ladder of Fame, she would never
believe. So she related garrulously certain incoherent, aimless
utterances of Lorraine's, and cried a little, and thought it was
perfectly awful that a sweet, pretty girl like that should be crazy. She
would have made an ideal witness against Lorraine, her very sympathy
carrying conviction of Lorraine's need of it. That she did not convince
Senator Warfield of Lorraine's mental derangement was a mere detail.
Senator Warfield had reasons for knowing that Lorraine was merely
afflicted with a dangerous amount of knowledge and was using it without
discretion.
"You mustn't let her run loose and maybe kill herself or somebody else!"
Mrs. Hawkins exclaimed. "Oh, Senator, it's awful to think of! When she
went past the house I knew the poor thing wasn't right----"
"We'll overtake her," Senator Warfield assured her comfortingly. "She
can't go very far on that horse. She'd ridden him half to death, getting
here. He won't hold out--he can't. She came here, I suppose, because she
had been here before. A sanitarium may be able to restore her to a
normal condition. I can't believe it's anything more than some nervous
disorder. Now don't worry, my good woman. Just have a room ready, so
that she will be comfortable here until we can get her to a sanitarium.
It isn't hopeless, I assure you--but I'm mighty glad I happened to be
here so that I can take charge of the case. Now here comes Hawkins.
We'll bring her back--don't you worry."
"Well, take her away as quick as you can, Senator. I'm scared of crazy
people. His brother went crazy in our house and----"
"Yes, yes--we'll take care of her. Poor girl, I wish that I had been
here when she first came," said the senator, as he went to meet Hawkins,
who was riding up from the corrals leading two horses--one for Lorraine,
which shows what was his opinion of Snake.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
YACK DON'T LIE
For a time the trail seemed to lead toward Whisper. Then it turned away
and seemed about to end abruptly on a flat outcropping of rock two miles
from Whisper camp. Lone frowned and stared at the ground, and Swan spoke
sharply to Jack, who was nosing back and forth, at fault if ever a dog
was. But presently he took up the scent and led them down a barren slope
and into grassy ground where a bunch of horses grazed contentedly. Jack
singled out one and ran toward it silently, as he had done all his
trailing that morning. The horse looked up, stared and went galloping
down the little valley, stampeding the others with him.
"That's about where I thought we'd wind up--in a saddle bunch," Lone
observed disgustedly. "If I had the evidence you're carrying in your
pocket, Swan, I'd put that darn dog on the scent of the man, not the
horse."
"The man I've got," Swan retorted. "I don't have to trail him."
"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?"
"_Me_? I think there was another horse somewhere close to that
outcropping, tied to a bush, maybe. I think the man you're after changed
horses there, just on a chance that somebody might trail him from the
road. You put your dog on the trail of that one particular horse, and he
showed yuh where it was feeding with the bunch. It looks to me like it
was turned loose, back there, and come on alone. Your man went to
Whisper; I'll bank money on that. Anyway, your dog'll know if he's been
there."
Swan thought it over, his eyes moving here and there to every hint of
movement between the skyline and himself. Suddenly he turned to Lone,
his face flushing with honest shame.
"Loney, take a damn Swede and give him something he believes, and you
could pull his teeth before you pull that notion from his thick head.
You acted funny, that day Fred Thurman was killed, and you gave yourself
away at the stable when I showed you that saddle. So I think you're the
killer, and I keep on thinking that, and I've been trying to catch you
with evidence. I'm a Swede, all right! Square head. Built of wood two
inches thick. Loney, you kick me good. You don't have time to ride over
here, get some other horse and ride back to the Quirt after Frank was
killed. You got there before I did, last night. We know Frank was dead
not much more than one hour when we get him to the bunk-house. Yack, he
gives you a good alibi."
"I sure am glad we took the time to trail that horse, then," Lone
remarked, while Swan was removing the handcuffs. "You're all right,
Swan. Nothing like sticking to an idea till you know it's wrong. Now,
let's stick to mine for awhile. Let's go on to Whisper. It ain't far."
They returned to the rocky hillside where the trail had been covered,
and searched here and there for the tracks of another horse; found the
trail and followed it easily enough to Whisper. Swan put Jack once more
on the scent of the handkerchief, and if actions meant anything, Jack
proved conclusively that he found the Whisper camp reeking with the
scent.
But that was all,--since Al was at that moment trailing Lorraine toward
the Sawtooth.
"We may as well eat," Swan suggested. "We'll get him, by golly, but we
don't have to starve ourselves."
"He wouldn't know we're after him," Lone agreed. "He'll stick around so
as not to raise suspicion. And he might come back, most any time. If he
does, we'll say I'm out with you after coyotes, and we stopped here for
a meal. That's good enough to satisfy him--till you get the drop on him.
But I want to tell yuh, Swan, you can't take Al Woodruff as easy as you
took me. And you couldn't have taken me so easy if I'd been the man you
wanted. Al would kill you as easy as you kill coyotes. Give him a
reason, and you won't need to give him a chance along with it. He'll
find the chance himself."
Because they thought it likely that Al would soon return, they did not
hurry. They were hungry, and they cooked enough food for four men and
ate it leisurely. Jim was at the ranch, Sorry had undoubtedly returned
before now, and the coroner would probably not arrive before noon, at
the earliest.
Swan wanted to take Al Woodruff back with him in irons. He wanted to
confront the coroner with the evidence he had found and the testimony
which Lone could give. There had been too many killings already, he
asserted in his naive way; the sooner Al Woodruff was locked up, the
safer the country would be.
He discussed with Lone the possibility of making Al talk,--the chance of
his implicating the Sawtooth. Lone did not hope for much and said so.
"If Al was a talker he wouldn't be holding the job he's got," Lone
argued. "Don't get the wrong idea again, Swan. Yuh may pin this on to
Al, but that won't let the Sawtooth in. The Sawtooth's too slick for
that. They'd be more likely to make up a lynching party right in the
outfit and hang Al as an example than they would try to shield him. He's
played a lone hand, Swan, right from the start, unless I'm badly
mistaken. The Sawtooth's paid him for playing it, that's all."
"Warfield, he's the man I want," Swan confided. "It's for more than
killing these men. It goes into politics, Loney, and it goes deep. He's
bad for the government. Getting Warfield for having men killed is
getting Warfield without telling secrets of politics. Warfield, he's a
smart man, by golly. He knows some one is after him in politics, but he
don't know some one is after him at home. So the big Swede has got to be
smart enough to get the evidence against him for killing."
"Well, I wish yuh luck, Swan, but I can't say you're going at it right.
Al won't talk, I tell yuh."
Swan did not believe that. He waited another hour and made a mental
inventory of everything in camp while he waited. Then, chiefly because
Lone's impatience finally influenced him, he set out to see where Al had
gone.
According to Jack, Al had gone to the corral. From there they put Jack
on the freshest hoofprints leaving the place, and were led here and
there in an apparently aimless journey to nowhere until, after Jack had
been at fault in another rock patch, the trail took them straight away
to the ridge overlooking the Quirt ranch. The two men looked at one
another.
"That's like Al," Lone commented drily. "Coyotes are foolish, alongside
him, and you'll find it out. I'll bet he's been watching this place
since daybreak."
"Where he goes, Yack will follow," Swan grinned cheerfully. "And I
follow Yack. We'll get him, Lone. That dog, he never quits till I say
quit."
"You better go down and get a horse, then," Lone advised. "They're all
gentle. Al's mounted, remember. He's maybe gone over to the Sawtooth,
and that's farther than you can walk."
"I can walk all day and all night, when I need to go like that. I can
take short cuts that a horse can't take. I think I shall go on my own
legs."
"Well, I'm going down to the house first. I know them two men riding
down to the gate. I want to see what the boss and Hawkins have got to
say about this last 'accident.' Better come on down, Swan. You might
pick up something. They're heading for the ranch, all right. Going to
make a play at being neighborly, I reckon."
"You bet I want to see Warfield," Swan assented rather eagerly and
called Jack, who had nosed around the spot where Al had waited so long
and was now trotting along the ridge on the next lap of Al's journey.
They reached the gate in time to meet Warfield and Hawkins face to face.
Hawkins gave Lone a quick, questioning look and nodded carelessly to
Swan. Warfield, having a delicate errand to perform and knowing how much
depended upon first impressions, pulled up eagerly when he recognized
Lone.
"Has the girl arrived safely, Lone?" he asked anxiously.
"What girl?" Lone looked at him noncommittally.
"Miss--ah--Hunter. Have you been away all the forenoon? The girl came to
the ranch in such a condition that I was afraid she might do herself or
some one else an injury. Has she been unbalanced for long?"
"If you mean Lorraine Hunter, she was all right last time I saw her, and
that was last night." Lone's eyes narrowed a little as he watched the
two. "You say she went to the Sawtooth?"
"She came pelting over there crazier than when you brought her in,"
Hawkins broke in gruffly. "She ain't safe going around alone like
that."
Senator Warfield glanced at him impatiently. "Is there any truth in her
declaring that Frank Johnson is dead? She seemed to have had a shock of
some kind. She was raving crazy, and in her rambling talk she said
something about Frank Johnson having died last night."
Lone glanced back as he led the way through the gate which Swan was
holding open. "He didn't die--he got killed last night," he corrected.