Chapter 13. Lone Takes His Stand

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_ CHAPTER THIRTEEN. LONE TAKES HIS STAND

Lone Morgan, over at Elk Spring camp, was just sitting down to eat his midday meal when some one shouted outside. Lone stiffened in his chair, felt under his coat, and then got up with some deliberation and looked out of the window before he went to the door. All this was a matter of habit, bred of Lone's youth in the feud country, and had nothing whatever to do with his conscience.

"Hello!" he called, standing in the doorway and grinning a welcome to Swan, who stood with one arm resting on the board gate. "She's on the table--come on in."

"I don't know if you're home with the door shut like that," Swan explained, coming up to the cabin. "I chased a coyote from Rock City to here, and by golly, he's going yet! I'll get him sometime, maybe. He's smart, but you can beat anything with thinking if you don't stop thinking. Always the other feller stops sometimes, and then you get him. You believe that?"

"It most generally works out that way," Lone admitted, getting another plate and cup from the cupboard, which was merely a box nailed with its bottom to the wall, and a flour sack tacked across the front for a curtain. "Even a coyote slips up now and then, I reckon."

Swan sat down, smoothing his tousled yellow hair with both hands as he did so. "By golly, my shoulder is sore yet from carrying Brit Hunter," he remarked carelessly, flexing his muscles and grimacing a little.

Lone was pouring the coffee, and he ran Swan's cup over before he noticed what he was doing. Swan looked up at him and looked away again, reaching for a cloth to wipe the spilled coffee from the table.

"How was that?" Lone asked, turning away to the stove. "What-all happened to Brit Hunter?"

Swan, with his plate filled and his coffee well sweetened, proceeded to relate with much detail the story of Brit's misfortune. "By golly, I don't see how he don't get killed," he finished, helping himself to another biscuit. "By _golly_, I don't. Falling into Spirit Canyon is like getting dragged by a horse. It should kill a man. What you think, Lone?"

"It didn't, you say." Lone's eyes were turned to his coffee cup.

"It don't kill Brit Hunter--not yet. I think maybe he dies with all his bones broke, like that. By golly, that shows you what could happen if a man don't think. Brit should look at that chain on his wheel before he starts down that road."

"Oh. His brake didn't hold, eh?"

"I look at that wagon," Swan answered carefully. "It is something funny about that chain. I worked hauling logs in the mountains, once. It is something damn funny about that chain, the way it's fixed."

Lone did not ask him for particulars, as perhaps Swan expected. He did not speak at all for awhile, but presently pushed back his plate as if his appetite were gone.

"It's like Fred Thurman," Swan continued moralizing. "If Fred don't ride backwards, I bet he don't get killed--like that."

"Where's Brit now?" Lone asked, getting up and putting on his hat. "At the ranch?"

"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."

Hawkins stared and named the Biblical place of torment. "What yuh quittin' for, Lone?" he added incredulously. "All you boys got a raise last month; ain't that good enough?"

"Plenty good enough, so long as I work for the outfit."

"Well, what's wrong? You've been with us five years, Lone, and it's suited you all right so far----"

Lone looked at him. "Say, I never set out to _marry_ the Sawtooth," he stated calmly. "And if I have married you-all by accident, you can get a bill of divorce for desertion. This ain't the first time a man ever quit yuh, is it, Hawkins?"

"No--and there ain't a man on the pay roll we can't do without," Hawkins retorted, his neck stiffening with resentment. "It's a kinda rusty trick, though, Lone, quittin' without notice and leaving a camp empty."

"Elk Spring won't run away," Lone assured him without emotion. "She's been left alone a week or two at a time during roundups. I don't reckon the outfit'll bust up before you get a man down there."

The foreman looked at him curiously, for this was not like Lone, whose tone had always been soft and friendly, and whose manner had no hint of brusqueness. There was a light, too, in Lone's eyes that had not been there before. But Hawkins would not question him further. If Lone Morgan or any other man wanted to quit, that was his privilege,--providing, of course, that his leaving was not likely to menace the peace and security of the Sawtooth. Lone had made it a point to mind his own business, always. He had never asked questions, he had never surmised or gossiped. So Hawkins gave him a check for his wages and let him go with no more than a foreman's natural reluctance to lose a trustworthy man.

By hard riding along short cuts, Lone reached the Quirt ranch and dropped reins at the doorstep, not much past mid-afternoon.

"I rode over to see if there's anything I can do," he said, when Lorraine opened the door to him. He did not like to ask about her father, fearing that the news would be bad.

"Why, thank you for coming." Lorraine stepped back, tacitly inviting him to enter. "Dad knows us to-day, but of course he's terribly hurt and can't talk much. We do need some one to go to town for things. Frank helps me with dad, and Jim and Sorry are trying to keep things going on the ranch. And Swan does what he can, of course, but----"

"I just thought you maybe needed somebody right bad," said Lone quietly, meaning a great deal more than Lorraine dreamed that he meant. "I'm not doing anything at all, right now, so I can just as well help out as not. I can go to town right away, if I can borrow a horse. John Doe, he's pretty tired. I been pushing him right through--not knowing there was a town trip ahead of him."

Lorraine found her eyes going misty. He was so quiet, and so reassuring in his quiet. Half her burden seemed to slip from her shoulders while she looked at him. She turned away, groping for the door latch.

"You may see dad, if you like, while I get the list of things the doctor ordered. He left only a little while ago, and I was waiting for one of the boys to come back so I could send him to town."

It was on Lone's tongue to ask why the doctor had not taken in the order himself and instructed some one to bring out the things; but he remembered how very busy with its own affairs was Echo and decided that the doctor was wise.

He tiptoed in to the bed and saw a sallow face covered with stubbly gray whiskers and framed with white bandages. Brit opened his eyes and moved his thin lips in some kind of greeting, and Lone sat down on the edge of a chair, feeling as miserably guilty as if he himself had brought the old man to this pass. It seemed to him that Brit must know more of the accident than Swan had told, and the thought did not add to his comfort. He waited until Brit opened his eyes again, and then he leaned forward, holding Brit's wandering glance with his own intent gaze.

"I ain't working now," he said, lowering his voice so that Lorraine could not hear. "So I'm going to stay here and help see you through with this. I've quit the Sawtooth."

Brit's eyes cleared and studied Lone's face. "D'you know--anything?"

"No, I don't." Lone's face hardened a little. "But I wanted you to know that I'm--with the Quirt, now."

"Frank hire yuh?"

"No. I ain't hired at all. I'm just--_with_ yuh."

"We--need yuh," said Brit grimly, looking Lone straight in the eyes. _

Read next: Chapter 14. "Frank's Dead"

Read previous: Chapter 12. The Quirt Parries The First Blow

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