"My God, that girl mustn't tell that to any one else!" he exclaimed
apprehensively. "No matter who she is or what she is, she mustn't tell
that!"

"Hello! Who you talking to? I heard somebody talking----" The bushes
parted above a low, rocky ledge and a face peered out, smiling
good-humoredly. Lone started a little and pulled up.

"Oh, hello, Swan. I was just telling this horse of mine all I was going
to do to him. Say, you're a chancey bird, Swan, yelling from the brush,
like that. Some folks woulda taken a shot at you."

"Then they'd hit me, sure," Swan observed, letting himself down into the
trail. He, too, was wet from his hat crown to his shoes, that squelched
when he landed lightly on his toes. "Anybody would be ashamed to shoot
at a mark so large as I am. I'd say they're poor shooters." And he added
irrelevantly, as he held up a grayish pelt, "I got that coyote I been
chasing for two weeks. He was sure smart. He had me guessing. But I made
him guess some, maybe. He guessed wrong this time."

Lone's eyes narrowed while he looked Swan over. "You must have been out
all night," he said. "You're crazier about hunting than I am."

"Wet bushes," Swan corrected carelessly. "I been tramping since
daylight. It's my work to hunt, like it's your work to ride." He had
swung into the trail ahead of John Doe and was walking with long
strides,--the tallest, straightest, limberest young Swede in all the
country. He had the bluest eyes, the readiest smile, the healthiest
color, the sunniest hair and disposition the Sawtooth country had seen
for many a day. He had homesteaded an eighty-acre claim on the south
side of Bear Top and had by that means gained possession of two living
springs and the only accessible portion of Wilder Creek where it crossed
the meadow called Skyline before it plunged into a gulch too narrow for
cattle to water with any safety.

The Sawtooth Cattle Company had for years "covered" that eighty-acre
patch of government land, never dreaming that any one would ever file on
it. Swan Vjolmar was there and had his log cabin roofed and ready for
the door and windows before the Sawtooth discovered his presence. Now,
nearly a year afterwards, he was accepted in a tolerant, half-friendly
spirit. He had not objected to the Sawtooth cattle which still watered
at Skyline Meadow. He was a "Government hunter" and he had killed many
coyotes and lynx and even a mountain lion or two. Lone wondered
sometimes what the