"No! What'd I want 'em fur? Not to look at, that's sure. I want to know
how things is going on this ranch. And from all I can make out, they
ain't goin' at all," Brit fretted. "What was you 'n Lone talkin' so long
about, out in the kitchen last night? Seems to me you 'n' him have got
a lot to say to each other, Raine."

"Why, nothing in particular. We were just--talking. We're all human
beings, dad; we have to talk sometimes. There's nothing else to do."

"Well, I caught something about the Sawtooth. I don't want you talking
to Lone or anybody else about that outfit, Raine. I told yuh so once.
He's all right--I ain't saying anything against Lone--but the less you
have to say the more you'll have to be thankful fur, mebby."

"I was wondering if Swan could have gotten word somehow to the Sawtooth
and had them telephone out that you were hurt. And Lone was drawing a
map of the trails and showing me how far it was from the canyon to the
Sawtooth ranch. And he was asking me just how it happened that the brake
didn't hold, and I said it must have been all right, because I saw you
come out from under the wagon just before you hitched up. I thought you
were fixing the chain on them."

"Huh?" Brit lifted his head off the pillow and let it drop back again,
because of the pain in his shoulder. "You never seen me crawl out from
under no wagon. I come straight down the hill to the team."

"Well, I saw some one. He went up into the brush. I thought it was you."
Lorraine turned in the doorway and stood looking at him perplexedly. "We
shouldn't be talking about it, dad--the doctor said we mustn't. But are
you _sure_ it wasn't you? Because I certainly saw a man crawl out from
under the wagon and start up the hill. Then the horses acted up, and I
couldn't see him after Yellowjacket jumped off the road."

Brit lay staring up at the ceiling, apparently unheeding her
explanation. Lorraine watched him for a minute and returned to the
kitchen door, peering out and listening for Frank to come from Echo with
supplies and the mail and, more important just now, fresh fruit for her
father.

"I think he's coming, dad," she called in to her father. "I just heard
something down by the gate."

She could save a few minutes, she thought, by running down to the corral
where Frank would probably stop and unload the few sacks of grain he was
bringing, before he drove up to the house. Frank was very methodical in
a fussy, purposeless way, she had ob