ES 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 carefull