,
Brit was her father, and his silence was not the inertia of a dull mind,
she knew. He seemed bottled-up, somehow, and bitter. She caught his hand
and held it, feeling its roughness between her two soft palms.

"Dad, I've got to tell you. I feel trapped, somehow. Did his horse have
a white face, dad?"

"Yes, he's a blaze-faced roan. Why?" Brit moved uncomfortably, but he
did not take his hand away from her. "What do you know about it, Raine?"

"I saw a man shoot Fred Thurman and push his foot through the stirrup.
And, dad, I believe it was that man at Whisper. The one I saw had on a
brown hat, and this man wears a brown hat--and I was advised not to tell
any one I had been at that place they call Rock City, when the storm
came. Dad, would an innocent man--one that didn't have anything to do
with a crime--would he try to cover it up afterwards?"

Brit's hand shook when he removed the pipe from his mouth and laid it on
the table. His face had turned gray while Lorraine watched him
fearfully. He laid his hand on her shoulder, pressing down hard--and at
last his eyes met her big, searching ones.

"If he wanted to _live_--in this country--he'd have to. Leastways, he'd
have to keep his mouth shut," he said grimly.

"And he'd try to shut the mouths of others----"

"If he cared anything about them, he would. You ain't told anybody what
you saw, have yuh?"

Lorraine hid her face against his arm. "Just Lone Morgan, and he thought
I was crazy and imagined it. That was in the morning, when he found me.
And he--he wanted me to go on thinking it was just a nightmare--that I'd
imagined the whole thing. And I did, for awhile. But this man at Whisper
tried to find out where I was that night----"

Brit pulled abruptly away from her, got up and opened the door. He
stood there for a time, looking out into the gloom of early nightfall.
He seemed to be listening, Lorraine thought. When he came back to her
his voice was lower, his manner intangibly furtive.

"You didn't tell him anything, did you?" he asked, as if there had been
no pause in their talk.

"No--I made him believe I wasn't there. Or I tried to. And dad! As I was
going to cross that creek just before you come to Rock City, two men
came along on horseback, and I hid before they saw me. They stopped to
water their horses, and they were talking. They said something about the
TJ had been here a long time, but they would get theirs, and it was like
sitting into a poker ga