y. "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 h