re
inevitably an accompaniment of chaps and spurs. But when a man she had
cooked breakfast for, had talked with just a few hours ago, lay dead in
the bunk-house, she forgot that it was merely an expected incident of
Western life. She lay in her bed shaking with nervous dread, and the
shrill rasping of the crickets and tree-toads was unendurable.

After the first shock had passed a deep, fighting rage filled her, made
her long for day so that she might fight back somehow. Who was the
Sawtooth Company, that they could sweep human beings from their path so
ruthlessly and never be called to account? Not once did she doubt that
this was the doing of the Sawtooth, another carefully planned
"accident" calculated to rid the country of another man who in some
fashion had become inimical to their interests.

From Lone she had learned a good deal about the new irrigation project
which lay very close to the Sawtooth's heart. She could see how the
Quirt ranch, with its water rights and its big, fertile meadows and its
fences and silent disapprobation of the Sawtooth's methods, might be
looked upon as an obstacle which they would be glad to remove.

That her father had been sent down that grade with a brake deliberately
made useless was a horrible thought which she could not put from her
mind. She had thought and thought until it seemed to her that she knew
exactly how and why the killer's plans had gone awry. She was certain
that she and Swan had prevented him from climbing down into the canyon
and making sure that her dad did not live to tell what mischance had
overtaken him. He had probably been watching while she and Swan made
that stretcher and carried her dad away out of his reach. He would not
shoot _her_,--he would not dare. Nor would he dare come to the cabin and
finish the job he had begun. But he had managed to kill Frank--poor old
Frank, who would never grumble and argue over little things again.

There was nothing picturesque, nothing adventurous about it. It was just
straight, heart-breaking tragedy, that had its sordid side too. Her dad
was a querulous sick man absorbed by his sufferings and not yet out of
danger, if she read the doctor's face aright. Jim and Sorry had taken
orders all their life, and they would not be able to handle the ranch
work alone; yet how else would it be done? There was Lone,--instinctively
she turned her thoughts to him for comfort. Lone would stay and help,
and somehow it would be managed