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 carefully. "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 moralising. "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, c