"I could help your father very much," he said soberly, "but I should
tell you a secret if I do that. I should maybe ask that you tell a lie
if somebody asks questions. Could you do that, Miss?"

"Lie?" Lorraine laughed uncertainly. "I'd _kill_!--if that would help
dad."

Swan was folding his coat very carefully and placing it under Brit's
head. "My mother I love like that," he said, without looking up. "My
mother I love so well that I talk with my thoughts to her sometimes. You
believe people can talk with their thoughts?"

"I don't know--what's that got to do with helping dad?" Lorraine knelt
beside Brit and began stroking his forehead softly, as is the soothing
way of women with their sick.

"I could send my thought to my mother. I could say to her that a man is
hurt and that a doctor must come very quickly to the Quirt ranch. I
could do that, Miss, but I should not like it if people knew that I did
it. They would maybe say that I am crazy. They would laugh at me, and it
is not right to laugh at those things."

"I'm not laughing. If you can do it, for heaven's sake go ahead! I don't
believe it, but I won't tell any one, if that's what you want."

"If some neighbors should ask, 'How did that doctor come so quick?'----"

"I'd rather lie and say I sent for him, than say that you or any one
else sent a telepathic message. That would sound more like a lie than a
lie would. How are we going to make a stretcher? We've got to get him
home, somehow----"

"At my cabin is blankets," Swan told her briskly. "I can climb the
hill--it is up there. In a little while I will come back."

He started off without waiting to see what Lorraine would have to say
about it, and with some misgivings she watched him run down to the
canyon's bottom and go forging up the opposite side with a most amazing
speed and certainty. In travel pictures she had seen mountain sheep
climb like that, and she likened him now to one of them. It seemed a
shame that he was a bit crazy, she thought; and immediately she recalled
his perfect assurance when he told her of sending thought messages to
his mother. She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on
the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of
communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorraine
rather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable
theory.

Considering the distance, he was back in a surprisingly short time with
two blank